…in an odd way, I suspect that is the way it is supposed to work – namely, that the Spirit is quite good at catching us unaware. The Spirit is, as Pentecostals remind us, no tame Spirit. Rather, the Spirit is full of unanticipated surprises….
Stephen Pickard ends his book with reflections on the current state of the church in what were once presumed to be Christian cultures. It is no secret that the church has rapidly lost its standing in those cultures, leading, at least according to Pickard, to two equally disastrous strategies. One alternative Pickard characterizes as the “fast-asleep church,” which he associates with churches that continue to rely on the general presumption that religion is a “good thing” so nothing about the church needs to change. The other strategy he characterizes as the “frenetic church,” which he describes as the attempt to force new life into a dying church by meeting consumer demand. He doubts either response to the loss of the church’s status will be successful. Each in their own way fail to rely on the Holy Spirit.
Pickard proposes an alternative understanding he calls “the slow church.” We are a culture of speed, but Pickard draws on the example of monasticism to argue that the work of the Spirit is work for the long haul. It is the work of Holy Saturday in which patience and perseverance are made possible and required. Pickard refuses any suggestion that a slow church is a church that no longer has passion for justice and change, but the change sought is not that of solutions that do not last. Rather, it is the kind of church that makes possible companionship in a world based on isolation. The Spirit rests on our bodies making us capable of friendship.
I call attention to Pickard’s account of what it would mean for the church to be a slow church, because I am confident that is pointing the church to where the Spirit is leading us.
Read it all (emphasis mine).