The Slow Church Movement

If there isn’t a movement yet there should be. Real Live Preacher has an excellent post on High Calling Blogs on Slow Church. Watch out! This may be the new “missional.” Move over emerging/ent here comes “slow church.” Well… they said they were coming. They’ll be here any minute. They’re just a little… slow.

This is an idea whose time has come. Just as the Slow Food movement stands against the homogenization and domination of our food by corporate interests, slow church might just be the antidote we need to the gospel of consumerism. Here’s a taste from RLP’s post:

We tend to attract wounded, introverted sorts who need to sit in the woods for a while. Maybe for 2 or 3 years. The average time it takes to get a project completed at Covenant Baptist Church is three years.

You can find high-achieving churches on almost every street corner these days. And God bless those churches too, because there are a lot of things that need to be done in our world. But there also should be slow churches, churches where you can stop and catch your breath.

If you are thinking we don’t get anything done, nothing could be further from the truth. We do things. We just do them slowly. With time as no burden or constraint, we find we can do a lot with our bare hands.

So you see, things get done here. But they are slow things. They are things with natural patinas that can only grow with time. Things are settled into the ground and beautiful.

I want to be settled into the ground and beautiful too.