C. Christopher Smith

2.5 stars

The positive aspects of this book could be summed up by stating that it's good to invest time in your surrounding community and develop relationships with people (which takes time!).

Serving, as we do, a God who acts in time but is unbound by it, we can afford to enter a neighborhood with the posture of the listener. We can linger at the table. We can start work we won't see the end of. (p 52)

The fact that we are called to follow God in community is a hedge against the waywardness of our individual desires. The local church is the crucible in which our desires are transformed from the building of our individual and tribal kingdoms to the seeking of God's all-encompassing shalom. (p 225, emphasis original)

It's written by "non-professionals," and this shows in how much of their book was simply them quoting other people. I liked a lot of these quotes, but I don't know that the book itself was super necessary...

The authors have some ideas that I just can't get behind. For example, they believe churches can/should "generate income" beyond the offering plate (through coffee shops, bookstores, etc. in church buildings), and I strongly believe that income-generation is not the business of the church!

They subscribe to Walter Brueggeman's interpretation of the famine experienced in Egypt, which Joseph helped prepare for. They state that Pharaoh was being greedy and selfish by requiring people to pay for the stores of grain with their livestock, land, etc., and that Pharaoh was operating from a "scarcity mentality." In reality, this kind of distribution was all Joseph's idea and happened because God was preserving His people through this.

They also believe that the evolutionary theory is fact, apparently, as they briefly mention that the world is billions of years old.

The authors were very passionate about their subject, but unfortunately, passion doesn't equal excellence in execution. I thought the parallels of "slow church" to the "slow food" movement was taken too far, and they had to stretch a bit to make them fit.… (mehr)

Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish by C. Christopher Smith. Epiphany Library Section 6 A: Church Growth and Planning, Church Growth.
Just published in 2016, this author discusses churches as learning organizations. Reading helps us identify and learn about problems. Once we know about an issue, we can act together to transform people and societies.
The author advocates slower, more attentive reading together, out loud, to better understand material. Lectio divina, a slow reading technique developed by monks centuries ago, is still practiced today, involving reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. This helps us recover language’s spokenness. Preaching, another kind of slow reading, requires a listening, engaged congregation.
We often consider reading to be an individual act, but when we read together, out loud, it transforms the ways we see and experience the world, and the way in which our communities operate by bringing people together to serve, heal and transform society.
Reading transforms our ways of thinking when we learn new language, theories and structures but it can also transform how we engage in our societies. Think of the “Buy Local Foods” movement. Fiction in particular, allows readers to experience unfamiliar social structures by causing them to think and feel like people very different from themselves. For example, Dickens’ novels exposed the grinding poverty in Victorian England’s cities. To Kill a Mockingbird transformed how Americans thought about the plight of African Americans and civil rights. Dystopian novels like 1984 or the Hunger Games series can also serve as cautionary tales.
Philosophical and theological books help us think about human experience, especially when read them together in congregations. They help us ask, “who are we?” “Why are we (here)?” “where are we?” How do we see ourselves fitting in our neighborhood and the greater city? Do we go beyond our doors into our neighborhood? How do our neighbors regard us? Our goal is not to make successful lives for ourselves, nor to navigate turbulent times, but instead to fully understand our times so that our church might be able to live faithfully in them.
The author suggests ways to bring books to neighborhoods by holding book clubs not just on church property which might intimidate some, but in nearby coffee shops; volunteering in literacy programs; helping emerging readers as school or local library volunteers; providing books for children in schools (like our own Books Brothers!); studying books with members of other churches, gathering oral and local histories, and more.
The last chapter in the book suggests books for congregations to read together, grouped by topics like Slow Reading in Accelerating Times, Reading to Shape the Social Imagination, Theology, Urban Issues, Poetry and Fiction. We already have a few of these in the library, and I have bought a few more second hand.… (mehr)

I attended Catholic school from kindergarten through second grade. I went through first communion. After that period, I would attend Midnight Mass (on Christmas) and Easter Vigil at a Benedictine monastery (a tradition I've kept up). I tend to choose something to sacrifice for lent. Other than these things though, I don't think you could call me a practicing Christian.

I came across this book when I met one of the authors at a Slow Money National Gathering in 2014, right around the time it was first published. I found the concept compelling due to its focus around community. The book is structured around three pillars: ethics, ecology, and economy.

There's fascileness that both authors bring to their interactions with biblical citations. Although they cite the Bible extensively as part of their ontology, I didn't feel like it detracted from the book. They also shared a number of stories from their communities.

I think this book could be compelling to anyone thinking about spiritual community.… (mehr)

Summary: A discussion of how substantive conversation can be central to the growth and transformation of our churches and the people who are part of them, the ground rules and spiritual practices that enable such conversation, and how conversation might be sustained as conflict arises.

C. Christopher Smith believes that one of the reasons many of our churches are struggling and many people are heading for the exits has to do with the lack of the capacity for substantive conversation about things that really matter. Just as our physical bodies are an ongoing conversation between our various members, so our social bodies, including churches, require ongoing and deeply connected conversations for both individuals and our collective bodies to thrive. Yet we live in a society where people have lost the capacity to talk about any serious matter where they might differ and we have become isolated in echo chambers of those who think like us. Sadly, conversation in the church often is little more than polite chit-chat about sports or recipes, or where we are going out to eat afterward. This happens in a body that is an earthly echo of the mutuality and conversation of the Triune God who is "God with us."

Smith and his church have been practicing substantive conversations about ideas and practices that deeply matter in their congregation for over a decade. It was messy at times. People became angry. Some left. They learned how to set up ground rules to enable the speaking of truth in love. They developed practices to prepare for those conversations. They learned how to address conflict that can threaten to shut down conversation. This book is the distillation of that experience.

He begins by treating the subject of conversational dynamics, dealing with questions of group size, formal and informal conversation, how often a group meets, who facilitates and how to foster coherent conversations. He explores what to talk about, and not talk about, particularly when a group is learning conversation. He highlights three methods that have been developed to facilitate conversation: Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, and World Café, giving brief explanations of each method and providing additional resources in an appendix.

Perhaps one of the most important parts of the book is the section on "Spirituality for the Journey." Smith focuses on prayer as a means of being attentive to God first and throughout, including Quaker practices of silent, listening prayer. He helps us see the connection between the messiness of real life and our honesty about that, and the messiness of our conversations. Good sustained conversations have a high capacity for messiness. Finally he speaks of how we might prepare ourselves heart, mind, and body for conversation.

Conversation is critical in remembering and telling our story and discerning its next chapter. Often understanding our history and identity helps us discern how we might proceed on questions of how we might pursue our mission. The toughest season of conversation is conflict, which Smith believes is inevitable and can be healthy. Using the analogy of broken bones, he talks about acknowledging our fractures, aligning the fractured parts (our "like heartedness in Christ"), and supporting and healing the fractures.

His final chapter fuses the idea of conversation and dance and the picture of being drawn into the dancing conversation of the Triune God. His conclusion focuses on his church, Englewood Christian Church, and how conversation has eventuated in action creating a vibrant set of community ministries in the Englewood, and a church community that is integrally a part of the community in which it is situated.

The book includes numerous examples from different churches, including an appendix of examples of conversational ground rules different churches have set, and the governing principles at which a church arrived out of extended conversations on how to relate to LGBTQ+ persons joining their community in a denomination with traditional convictions.

Smith dares us to believe that the church could be the place where we recover the art of serious conversation, the kind that has the capacity to cultivate respect among people who differ, to live with messiness that defies neat resolutions, and to persist to the shared understanding that enables people to act creatively and missionally in their context. He shows how it has taken shape in real congregations, which makes it the most valuable sort of guidebook, one born out of years of trial and error and learning.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.… (mehr)