Marginal Christianity

https://www.facebook.com/ChrisSmithIndy?fref=ts February 25, 2014 By Christopher Smith 6 Comments There has been a lot of buzz online in recent days about the value of church attendance.  Initiated by a pair of posts by Donald Miller , ( The initial post … and the followup .), who bravely confessed that he rarely goes to church, Miller’s posts were followed up by this piece on Christianity Today’s PARSE blog , which dug a little deeper but had more of the feel of an expose, and didn’t get to the heart of what seems (to me anyway) to be the crucial issues about church. I appreciate Donald’s honesty — and Brian McLaren’s as well, in response to the PARSE piece — and I have no interest arguing for or against the positions that they described.  Rather, I want to tell my own story reflect on what we mean when we talk of church attendance or “going to church.” I grew up going to church, and continued to do so in college.  In fact, it was almost a necessity. ...

by C. Christopher Smith | December 2012 Why it's time for a conversation about Slow Church. IN SPRING 1986, a group of Italian activists led by Carlo Petrini launched a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s near the famous Spanish Steps in Rome. This protest marked the origin of the Slow Food movement, which has spread over the last 26 years to more than 150 countries. Following this Slow Food effort came a host of other Slow movements—Slow Cities, Slow Parenting, Slow Money, and more—that collectively raise opposition to the speed and industrialization of Western culture. Slow movements are beginning to recover what we have lost in our relentless pursuit of efficiency. Many Christians have been challenged by these Slow movements to consider the ways in which our faith has begun to move too fast as we make sacrifices to the gods of efficiency. This quest has sparked a renewed interest in the joys of shari...

July 24, 2012 By Christopher Smith Leave a Comment http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slowchurch/2012/07/24/lament-confession-and-the-politics-of-jesus/ This is the third Slow Church post in a short series about Lament and the Aurora Theater Shooting… You can read the previous posts here: [ Part I ] [ Part II ] “To learn to lament is to become people who stay near to the wounds of the world, singing over them and washing them, allowing the unsettling cry of pain to be heard.” — Chris Rice / Emmanuel Katongole RECONCILING ALL THINGS Continuing our reflection on what it means to lament, I want to focus now on locating lament. Generally speaking, where and how does it happen? I want to start with an insightful comment that my friend Gary Lynch left on yesterday’s post: I also believe that lament has to be and must also be something very personal, it is something that we feel in our bones and in our heart, it is each person expressing deep sadness and contrition over a particular ...