S.L.O.W. Church

Introduction

“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.  And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.”

1 Corinthians 9:24-25

“Here is something else I have learned: The fastest runners and the greatest heroes don’t always win races and battles. Wisdom, intelligence, and skill don’t always make you healthy, rich, or popular. We each have our own share of misfortune.”

Ecclesiastes 9:11

We are to run in such a way as to win the race set before us. According to Barna Research, 70% of pastors in the USA don’t make it to the end of their race.

Festina lente or “make haste slowly” is an ancient saying that is as true in ancient times as it is in the modern age. We know the tortoise beats the hare but still we are tempted to ‘sprint and hurry up’. The caterpillar is slow and ugly at first, but it turns out in the end to be swift and beautiful insect.

Speed kills. But the other trouble with speed, is that it is just so slow. Let us slow down to the speed of the Holy Spirit. In a world that glorifies and rewards fast, we need to reexamine our current practice in the light of ancient truth. Fast food, fast cars and fast relationships, fast thoughts, fast diets and fast love. God calls us to “Go low and slow” as Heidi Baker says. Lust is fast, love is slow.

To win the race set out before us and the churches we serve, we need to pace ourselves. The Pilgrim’s Progress is a process of sit, walk, run, sit, walk, run and sit again, it’s not a flat-out sprint. If we realistically want to win the crown of life, we need to slow down to the Speed of Love. Love is slow. Slow Churches are love based churches, they s.l.o.w to the speed of real relationship. We need to be counter-cultural to the status quo which medicates speed sickness with Prozac and other Pharmakeia. We medicate our pain, often missing the wisdom to deal with the cause of the pain. Conformity to a sick culture makes you sick.

Slowness, not as some understand it

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

2 Peter 3:9

The Slow Church acronym consists of four words that are useful to describe a healthy and temperate Christian lifestyle. It is also useful to speak as a counter to the fast and fear driven culture we find ourselves in. Sustainable, Local, Organic and Whole churches … Christians practicing agape in Slow Churches.

Slow as a word, not an acronym, is a term describing time. Now, God exists outside of time, He is eternal but here on earth, we are not. We are eternal beings but are also bound by time and space on this dusty planet. We also live in a cultural context, where haste is considered a virtue. Therefore, using ‘slow’ is a useful readjustment reminder, that in a fast paced world, Christians are called to live at the pace of another kingdom, not of earth. Our clock and calendar is not from this age or even dimension. Jesus engaged in eternal things.

Peter in this scripture shows us our innate, fleshly impatience. We want things now and quick and fast, so we project that speed onto God. Yet God is not slow as some understand it … He is God-paced … not world-paced. The devil is in a hurry, scurrying to and fro on the earth, knowing his time is short. He makes his servants also hurry and scurry, in aimless circles of fear based purposeless effort. We have not so learned Christ. We are undistracted, with our eyes fixed on Him.

We need to slow down to the speed of the Spirit, not the speed of our ambitions to push the numbers, that is not very representative of the image of God. God weighs us, He doesn’t count us. Slow Churches are a return to the ancient ways.

As churches we have absorbed a lot of the cultural priorities around us. Church life is often measured in two two-hour per-week sessions. There are some drive thru type gatherings … churches lending from the fast food chain models … no time to sit and eat, its about turnover. Fast Church suits a fast passed life where the dogma of more-is-better, is the order of the day. And God by His grace, uses that.

But where do you ‘tarry’, or corporately linger in the Spirit? Where His Spirit has time to work in hearts and do that spiritually formative work? When does the Holy Spirit have His way? Where is God the only Agenda? Yet, it’s not to be slow, it’s not about sloth. That is unwise. It’s about temperance, to use that important word of 1 Cor 9, it’s to reduce our speed and sometimes speed up our sloth, to a point where we meet the Spirit at His speed. To establish a rhythm of individual life and community life that is tempered and paced and budgeted for the long haul Christian Race.

Slow Churches are neither slow nor fast. They move at the Spirit’s pace. They move outside of earth time. They are Spirit-based churches. Slow Churches are spiritual churches. It’s being and doing; resting and working; it’s hammocks and hammers; it’s modality and sodality; it’s sitting and walking – it’s being settled settlers and restless pioneers. It’s where your away game is as good as your home game. Its about Jerusalem as home and about Regions Beyond always beckoning (but not overwhelming). It’s about developing healthy, safe spiritual homes and about reaching Regions Beyond. Its about spending resources on church development and spending resources on mission development – 50/50? Its about a fruitful tension between church and mission, inward focus and outward focus.

SLOW Churches are SUSTAINABLE

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…”

Hebrews 1:1-3

• He initiates and sustains. God is both Creator and Sustainer and Upholder of what he started.
• Sustainable by the Spirit. The Spirit of God sustains the work; it’s the Spirit’s activity, not by might nor by power but by His Spirit.
• Sustainable Slow Churches or spiritual families speak of a church where the leaders and people aren’t burnt out, because everyone operates at the speed of the Spirit and not out of the speed of flesh and ambition pursuing numbers.
• Sustainability is essential because we’re aiming for rewards of gold, silver and precious stones that will be tested by fire. Works that are sustainable are produced by the Spirit. Works done by the flesh, or wood, hay and stubble are unsustainable church work; their foundations are built on man, not gold, silver and precious stones.
• We don’t want burnt-out churches and burnt-out leaders because they weren’t burning the oil of God. A lot of work fails because they aren’t sustainable. We are to be a sweet smelling aroma to the Lord, a reasonable spiritual sacrifice, not making smoke offerings by our tires burning rubber – high effort for no progress but by hearts on fire.
• We have to slow down to the speed of the Spirit and not to the ability of our own competence and knowledge to do God’s work for Him.
• “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” – Isaiah 46:4.
• Sustainable speaks to the candelabra burning in the temple, and when the candle burns with oil, a beautiful light is emitted, but when the oil runs out, the wick burns and produces smoke. It diffuses and stinks and blinds one. It obscures vision. The picture is of pure oil, the Spirit of God sustaining, supplying a work versus the wick speaking of our own human flesh, our own human strength, which can burn.
• Wick and oil can both combust; one produces light, and the other produces smoke. The last option is not sustainable because you then get burnt out.
• The wise virgins supplied their lamps from the extra oil kept in their portable oil jar, which they filled with oil that comes from intimacy with Jesus. Their output (external light from lamps) was always less than their input (secret oil given by Jesus from intimacy inwardly, in the prayer closet)

SLOW Churches are LOCAL

• Churches should be locally governed as the scripture teaches. Head offices in faraway countries do not always know how to best govern local affairs.
• Hierarchical models and institutional and organizational setups often end in some kind of abuse or failure of over-control because God doesn’t build His Kingdom hierarchically. He builds His Kingdom from the ground up; it’s a servant King ruling a servant Kingdom. It’s not an empire; it’s a Kingdom where Christ the King is the Chief Servant of all. It’s not a top-down structure.
• Local speaks of autonomy and self-governance. Local churches should have their own government in terms of plurality of elders leading and forming the pillars of the church.
• It’s like a family; the husband and wife govern the family; they lead the family. Parents are best equipped to govern their own households.
• A local operating leadership model enables good and effective governance because local people know better; they are in touch with what’s happening on the ground.
• Paul planted churches, raised elders, and he moved on.
• Local is generally better than imported. (Local honey is better than imported honey because of local conditions, the local eagle understands the local currents better than eagles from a different place).
• Slow church needs to have a local value.
• You can scale well when people are autonomous. Besides scaling, a local emphasis is economical, there are savings to be made when ‘buying local’ for a community as a whole.
• Local also is about resilience and damaged control. If one congregation becomes infected by some spiritual disease, the rest are protected by their self-governing design.
• Local churches need some form of autonomy to let their particular color, light, function, gift, and uniqueness shine without being subdued, diluted or controlled by leaders far removed.

SLOW Churches are ORGANIC

• The word organic comes from the root word ‘organ’ and has different meanings. I apply it here in the context of below dictionary meanings. I do not apply it in the context of the common understanding of organic in food production where all pesticides and artificial fertilizers are frowned upon. I am a weekend farmer and I thank God for Glysophate poison! Weeds like Nutgrass don’t die any other way (certainly not by any natural means). Same with some artificial fertilizers derived from oil, they have their place. But these rich meanings of the word are really helpful as an ecclesial metaphor:
  • ‘relating to a bodily organ or organs’ (Oxford Languages)
  • ‘denoting or characterized by a harmonious relationship between the elements of a whole’ (Oxford Languages). Consider the word for ‘equip’ in Eph 4:12 – ‘katartismos’ which means “equipping the individual parts to work together in correct order”
  • ‘happening in a slow and natural way, rather than suddenly’ (Oxford Learner Dictionary)
  • ‘produced by or from living things’
• Growth in slow churches is organic, natural, zig zagging and non linear. It is not artificial and not driven by large turbo charged professional ad campaigns. It is not ‘attractional’ per se. Its not a commercially driven. Its growth from the inside out. It’s organic growth where churches grow first qualitatively and then quantitatively. God weighs us, He does not count us. Quantitative growth occurs through natural lifestyle evangelism that’s sustainable. Growth is natural. Sometimes it may be through schisms – like using cuttings in vegetative reproduction but it is not growth through aggressive church takeovers such as in merger and acquisition style ‘movement growth’ that one sees happen from time to time. Here, commonly one big church finds some formula that works for them, and then they start swallowing up a bunch of other smaller churches through a corporate-like aggressive takeovers. Local ‘pleasant boundaries’ are often disregarded. There may be some economic benefits in doing this type of growth by amalgamation because you do not duplicate resources but the opportunity cost is loss of autonomy, which is a very high price. It’s not organic growth; it’s linear growth by swallowing, growth by co-opting smaller churches, artificial growth, transfer growth and not growth through organic Spirit lead reproduction.
• The opposite of organic churches are franchise, cookie cutter patterned churches. God uses many forms thankfully but organic Slow Churches have a distinct character difference from franchise churches: each church is unique. The ‘inorganic’ type churches follow a corporate model turbocharged with tons of artificial fertilizer, where the plants grow quickly but have weak root development through the process and conditions of life outside a greenhouse. The wild mountain slopes can be inhospitable but they have other benefits as a place of growth.
• Organic food generally taste much better than genetically modified ones because growers are pushing volume and not quality, taste is lost in the process. You know the perfect looking tomato that tastes like nothing? Organic speaks of something relatively more tasty; it’s slowly grown, unique. It’s not grown in artificial, untested in the real world, spiritual mono-culture greenhouses with climate control AC and very soft seats. With cool highly entertaining programs.
• Organic church or Slow Church is a church that can survive in the bush. It has all the DNA, the spiritual, apostolic, and prophetic DNA, to survive in the jungle of a world hostile to the gospel. Organic is tougher; it’s more resilient and doesn’t quickly die. Its seeds are heirloom and keep their potency for generations.
• Organic gardens are not known for their high volume but for their high value. With unique flavours, intense colours and superior medical properties, organic crops are better quality than mass-produced supermarket GMO crops.

SLOW Churches are WHOLE

• Similar to the word organic, which denotes churches that emphasize the whole body working together, each part doing its part, the priesthood of all believers working, wholeness speak to caring for the whole person. It’s less about membership or ticking attendance, tithing or ticking training course boxes.  
• Wholeness matters when you’re establishing spiritual families with the DNA of slow kingdom. Go low and go slow because when you go fast, you miss the wholeness. (The Holy Spirit is confined to an hour to do its work in every gathering).
• When you serve Slow Churches, you are concerned about the whole person. It’s less about membership or ticking attendance, tithing or ticking training course boxes.  
• True Slow Churches disciple the whole person. They are ministering to the whole man—wholeness matters.
• The purpose of all equipping ministry is to come to the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ—the fullness, the wholeness of Christ – Ephesians 4:13 and the unity of the faith – another form of ‘wholeness’ … oneness.
• You disciple the whole person and not just a piece of their life. Discipleship is happening through community to the whole person, impacting their family, material, spiritual and emotional life. You don’t just bypass parts of their life because it doesn’t suit your church model. It’s about consistency in all areas of our lives.
• It’s a slow process but very thorough because every part of our lives become changed by the gospel.
• There are a lot of believers and churches that are not whole. They deal with a slither of a person’s life and not all of it. It’s about being a consistent Christian in all of your life’s expressions. Being an ambassador of Christ means that we acknowledge Him in all of our ways, in everything.
• Your faith community affects your whole life. It affects your work and family life. It’s a lifestyle of Christian community.
• A Slow Church implies a whole life involved. You cannot just have a ‘one-hour-tap-out-service’ on a Sunday and hope to be a Slow Church. It’s just never going to work. The Gospel’s demands on us aren’t that easy; the Gospel demands everything of us, and with that comes everything of Him the glory, gore, and agony and ecstacy included!