As John and I wrote, and now have been traveling and talking about Slow Church, one of the questions that we frequently get is, What’s the first thing our church should do to start to slow down? The book’s final chapter, “Dinner Table Conversation as a Way of Being Church,” is one answer to that question—though certainly not the only one. Creating space for conversation is both a good place to start slowing down and the way to continue on the journey of discerning a deeper life together that is attentive to ethics, ecology and economy...

C. Christopher Smith is editor of The Englewood Review of Books, and a member of the Englewood Christian Church community on the urban Near Eastside of Indianapolis. Englewood is one of the churches whose experiences gave root to the concept of Slow Church. Chris’s recent work has appeared in Books and Culture, Sojourners, The Christian Century and Indiana Green Living.