oSlow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus

by C. Christopher Smith &

John Pattison

C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison

We are living in a high-speed world: fast food, fast cars, fast internet...even fast church! Living in a culture of speed leads to consumerism, dehumanizing efficiency, isolation and an emphasis on quantity rather than quality. Into this bleak picture, Smith and Pattison speak a message of hope and challenge to the church to live life at a different pace. Taking inspiration from the Slow Food movement, Slow Church explores ways in which the people of God can realign themselves with kingdom values such as savoring the goodness of God, intentionally committing to one community, seeking the holistic flourishing of all things, partnering with God’s reconciling mission through our daily work, living out of abundance rather than scarcity, being a people of deep gratitude, and practicing radical hospitality. This book invites us to experience God’s transforming power in our everyday lives and reminds us that we need to slow down so that we don’t miss God at work right on our doorsteps!

(Review from Regent College)

Three Mile an Hour God

by Kosuke Koyama

Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.' Once we grasp that in Christ God chooses to walk amongst us, it changes our whole understanding of the speed of love, and the speed of theology. In Three Mile an Hour God, renowned Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama reflects beautifully on a theme lost to western theology and western culture in general - the need for slowness.

(Review from amazon.ca)

The Congregation in a Secular Age

by Andrew Root

Churches often realize they need to change. But if they're not careful, the way they change can hurt more than help.

In this culmination of his well-received Ministry in a Secular Age trilogy, leading practical theologian Andrew Root offers a new paradigm for understanding the congregation in contemporary ministry. He articulates why congregations feel pressured by the speed of change in modern life and encourages an approach that doesn't fall into the negative traps of our secular age.

Living in late modernity means our lives are constantly accelerated, and calls for change in the church often support this call to speed up. Root asserts that the recent push toward innovation in churches has led to an acceleration of congregational life that strips the sacred out of time. Many congregations are simply unable to keep up, which leads to burnout and depression. When things move too fast, we feel alienated from life and the voice of a living God.

The Congregation in a Secular Age calls congregations to reimagine what change is and how to live into this future, helping them move from relevance to resonance.

(Review from amazon.ca)

The Life We're Looking For

by Andy Crouch

Our greatest need is to be recognized—to be seen, loved, and embedded in rich relationships with those around us. But for the last century, we’ve displaced that need with the ease of technology. We’ve dreamed of mastery without relationship (what the premodern world called magic) and abundance without dependence (what Jesus called Mammon). Yet even before a pandemic disrupted that quest, we felt threatened and strangely out of place: lonely, anxious, bored amid endless options, oddly disconnected amid infinite connections.

In The Life We’re Looking For, bestselling author Andy Crouch shows how we have been seduced by a false vision of human flourishing—and how each of us can fight back. From the social innovations of the early Christian movement to the efforts of entrepreneurs working to create more humane technology, Crouch shows how we can restore true community and put people first in a world dominated by money, power, and devices.

There is a way out of our impersonal world, into a world where knowing and being known are the heartbeat of our days, our households, and our economies. Where our vulnerabilities are seen not as something to be escaped but as the key to our becoming who we were made to be together. Where technology serves us rather than masters us—and helps us become more human, not less.

(Review from amazon.ca)(R