1) The Nones (a.k.a., The SBNR\u2019s \u2014 Spiritual, but Not Religious).<\/strong> Carol did a delightful job of putting her finger on why the basic reasons many SBNR\u2019s are resistant to churches:
\n\u2013 They desire a more holistic faith, meeting God in everyday life
\n\u2013 They are put off by the religiosity and politics of churches<\/p>\nIt seems to me that what we are calling Slow Church intentionally addresses both of these concerns.\u00a0 What we are calling churches to is a holistic faith, a shared faith whose roots run deep and one that embraces all of the life we have been given.\u00a0 The middle part of our book, on the theme of Ecology, addresses what Peter Rollins has called our sins of abstraction, our failures to remember that God is reconciling all creation. These sins of abstraction \u2014 e.g., nationalism, partisanism (on the Right or the Left), homogeneity, theologies\/praxis of hate and exclusion \u2014 are the sorts of wounds that have made SBNR\u2019s so adamantly opposed to meeting God in the church community. I\u2019m hopefully that churches that take a more holistic view of our life together and engage SBNR\u2019s not programatically, but as friends and neighbors, we will give them a different idea of what church could be.<\/p>\n
2) Desire for Conversation as a Way of Being Together. <\/strong> Conversation is a major theme throughout our Slow Church work, and in the book, we highlight it as the final image with which we want to leave readers, re-imagining church as dinner table conversation.\u00a0 Carol outlined the generational shifts in authority and technology, that leave many with a deep desire for conversation.\u00a0\u00a0 Many people (and particularly of the younger generations) don\u2019t simply want to be faith consumers, but want to be active participants in a faith conversation.<\/p>\n3) The Need for a new Economics of Church<\/strong>.\u00a0 Many churches and particularly in the mainline denominations are being shuttered because of a perceived lack of resources. While we probably won\u2019t deal directly with this issue in the Slow Church book, there is a good deal of related thoughts to stir our economic imaginations as churches in the chapter on work and the final part of the book on economics, particularly the chapter on on the abundance of God\u2019s provision (and a critique of the myth of scarcity on which all major economic systems: capitalism and communism are based). The perceived scarcity is too often a product of our greed or failures of our imagination.\u00a0 Perhaps one way forward, as Carol so wonderfully pointed out, is in bi- (or multi-) vocational ministry, but not the sort that says to pastors, you need to find a part-time job doing retail or whatever, but rather the sort that leverages the entrepreneurship of the congregation (in the context of the particular place) to find missional ways to generate income as a church community (making artisan breads, running a coffeehouse, selling books, fixing up houses, the opportunities are endless!). And this basic idea leads us into the monastic (or new monastic) vision of common work, of churches sustaining a holistic life together through common work that fits their context and the gifts of their congregation.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Had a fabulous time over the last few days at the Academy of Parish Clergy annual gathering in Dayton, Ohio.\u00a0 I found the diverse group of mostly mainline pastors to be extraordinarily hospitable, specifically in inviting me to represent The Englewood Review of Books there (Thanks, Bob Cornwall for the invitation!) and in allowing me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,53,4],"tags":[269,270,25965,271,273,272],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conversations","category-economics","category-what-is-slow-church","tag-academy-of-parish-clergy","tag-carol-merritt-howard","tag-economics","tag-mainline","tag-nones","tag-sbnr"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:St._Philip%27s_Episcopal_Church_in_Harrodsburg.jpg\" "\\"Mainline\\"")
<\/a>Had a fabulous time over the last few days at the Academy of Parish Clergy<\/a><\/strong> annual gathering in Dayton, Ohio.\u00a0 I found the diverse group of mostly mainline pastors to be extraordinarily hospitable, specifically in inviting me to represent The Englewood Review of Books<\/em><\/strong><\/a> there (Thanks, Bob Cornwall<\/a><\/strong> for the invitation!) and in allowing me to share bits of our story here at Englewood Christian Church<\/a><\/strong> (briefly recounted in my recent ebook, The Virtue of Dialogue<\/em><\/a>).\u00a0 Also, it was wonderful to meet Carol Howard Merritt<\/a><\/strong>, who was the main conference speaker, and chat with her about some of the challenges facing mainline churches.<\/p>\n