Church: Fast or Slow?

A new book argues that the successful practices of megachurches cannot be mass-produced by small, local churches.  Instead, these small local churches should promote "slow church," drawing lessons from the slow food movement.  The slow food movement discourages the eating of fast food and encourages eating of locally grown and produced food.  Fast food, here a metaphor for the not-fully-satisfying meal of the megachurch, is viewed as not fully satisfying the community needs of the churchgoer.  See here for a RNS article about the new book and the issues it discusses.

This argument is a neat example of how religious leaders and groups draw ideas from the secular world in informing how they might or should conduct their religious operations.  Our economic analysis cannot assess whether their argument is correct or incorrect, and, of course, different religious consumers may prefer different kinds of religious services.  But the issues of club production and religious capital permeate the article despite the lack of those labels.  And at the least, the slow church people have a nice image around which to market themselves.