Readers' Choice Award Winner

Best Books About the Church from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore

Fast food. Fast cars. Fast and furious. Fast forward. Fast . . . church?

The church is often idealized (or demonized) as the last bastion of a bygone era, dragging our feet as we're pulled into new moralities and new spiritualities. We guard our doctrine and our piety with great vigilance. But we often fail to notice how quickly we're capitulating, in the structures and practices of our churches, to a culture of unreflective speed, dehumanizing efficiency and dis-integrating isolationism.

In the beginning, the church ate together, traveled together and shared in all facets of life. Centered as they were on Jesus, these seemingly mundane activities took on their own significance in the mission of God. In Slow Church, Chris Smith and John Pattison invite us to leave franchise faith behind and enter into the ecology, economy and ethics of the kingdom of God, where people know each other well and love one another as Christ loved the church.

Wilson

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (M.Div., Duke Divinity School) is director of the School of Conversion in Durham, North Carolina, where he is a member of the Rutba House new monastic community. His books include Free to Be Bound, Inhabiting the Church and New Monasticism.

Pattison, John

John Pattison is managing editor of CONSPIRE magazine. Previously he served as deputy editor of the Burnside Writers Collective. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he is the coauthor of Besides the Bible.

Smith, C. Christopher

Chris Smith is editor of The Englewood Review of Books and a member of the Englewood Christian Church community on the urban Near Eastside of Indianapolis.