Design Thinking and Neighborhood Renewal

Last updated on: June 17, 2014 at 12:04 pm By John Pattison

Lately I’ve been reading about “design thinking,” and I’m starting to see its potential as a tool for community renewal. Design thinking is a structured approach many designers use to generate and develop ideas, products, and innovations. It’s most often associated with IDEO, the well-known design firm that created the first Apple mouse, and Stanford’s Institute of Design (a.k.a. “d.school”). But what began as a process to guide the development of new consumer products is now being applied, often by... Read more

Pope Francis issues a call for Slow Church!

Last updated on: August 5, 2013 at 4:04 pm By Christopher Smith

Is the Church still able to move slowly: to take the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and reassemble? Or is the Church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency? Read more

Meredith Gould’s THE SOCIAL MEDIA GOSPEL [Patheos Book Club]

Last updated on: July 31, 2013 at 3:22 pm By Christopher Smith

Meredith Gould's The Social Media Gospel is a particularly helpful resource for churches that are seeking to make sense of social media and trying to find fitting ways to use it effectively within all the particularities of their own contexts. Read more

A Conversational Way Forward: Responding to the Exodus of Millennials from our Churches

Last updated on: July 29, 2013 at 12:09 pm By Christopher Smith

As Rachel has indicated, there is a deep hunger today for church communities that can sustain these substantial sorts of conversation, and conversation is the way that we move forward in the direction we are calling Slow Church. Read more

Work, Generosity and the Schooling of Desire

Last updated on: July 24, 2013 at 12:50 pm By Christopher Smith

Mike Bowling, pastor here at Englewood Christian Church, has been preaching through the 10 commandments this year, spending 3 weeks on each commandment, one looking at the Old Testament context, one looking at what Jesus said, and one looking at that commandment in the New Testament and beyond... Read more

Slow Church and the Recovery of Culture.

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 10:17 am By Christopher Smith

What John and I are calling Slow Church, is a vision for recovering culture that begins in the local church congregation, as we share life together and as we intentionally relearn habits that nurture culture and promote the health and flourishing of our congregations, neighborhoods, cities and the world. These habits include both Sabbath and work (as modern industrialization has been driven to a large extent by the desire to avoid work). We are hopeful that culture can be recovered, but of course, just as culture has broken down the 500+ years of modernity, likewise, we expect that the healing and restoration of culture will take at least as long and perhaps even longer. Read more

Uniting Ecology and Economy – A Response to Wendell Berry

Last updated on: June 21, 2013 at 4:37 pm By Christopher Smith

In this month’s issue of The Progressive magazine, there is a wonderful article by Wendell Berry, entitled “The Commerce of Violence” (which can be read online here…), which begins: On the day of the bombing in Boston, The New York Times printed an op-ed piece by a human being who has been imprisoned at Guantánamo for more than eleven years, uncharged and, of course, untried. The occurrence of these two events on the same day was a coincidence, but that... Read more

The Virtue of Dialogue – Workshop Slides

Last updated on: June 20, 2013 at 3:30 pm By Christopher Smith

Today I led a workshop for The Center for Congregations on the practice of conversation, based on Englewood's experience with conversation, and my book The Virtue of Dialogue (Patheos Press 2012). Read more

Eyes of the Heart: A Photographic Journey Toward Receptivity

Last updated on: June 16, 2013 at 7:20 pm By Christopher Smith

Eyes of the Heart is a profoundly helpful resource in helping us to recover the lost art of attention, and will certainly be of interest to readers who are interested in photography (or those who might eventually become so) Read more

Animate.Faith: A New Kind of Christian Education

Last updated on: June 3, 2013 at 5:58 pm By Christopher Smith

Overall, animate.faith is a superb resource, that unlike most church curricula that I am familiar with, offers participants more questions than answers. Read more