Critical Church Vernacular
As I think about the future church (or fuchurch), I am more compelled to take the vocabulary of the electronic age and apply it to our church setting. Here are two terms that every churches need to embrace.
Social Network
Facebook, Twittter, MySpace, or even Match.com all do one thing–connect people. It actually isn’t a new priciple, there have always people who used an interest to link them (ex. bowling leagues, bridge clubs). The reason it is so interesting now, and why churches need to put this in their vocabulary, is because social networking has become microcosmic! Now, instead of just having people in your church connected because they live in a certain city, you can have people in a deeper relationship because they are single moms who are back in school to get a degree as a dental hygienist, or couples who are having difficulties adopting a child from another country. Or people connected to your church who don’t even breach the walls.
Social networks, if anything, should help the church realize that Sunday School may not be the place to connect people. I wonder if the people in a Sunday School class, if given a laptop computer instead, would choose to “friend” the people they are in class with. Today’s church needs to understand that they have always been a social network , and that they need to “get small” in the way that they connect people. I call it “creating constellations”.
When you look at the stars in the sky, if you are like me, you almost always look for the Big Dipper. What is interesting is that those stars are not connected in any way, yet we draw lines in our minds to make out a water ladle. We do that with all of the constellations. We connect them. The same thing applies with people. Churches need to find the link to make constellations of its people. That can be small groups, softball teams, parents of Downs Syndrome groups, or Grandparent Harley gangs.
Open Source
Open Source refers to the idea that it is the collaboration of ideas of many people, not necessary the creators of the project. You can see this in Wordpress, or Google Wave. It suggests that the project isn’t perfected, and invites others to put their “two cents worth” of attention to it. Churches would be wise to learn this as they seek to be relevant to the next generation of Jesus followers. Instead of 40-Days of Purpose and other national campaigns that re designed to “help” church know what to do next, what if churches just set a goal in an important spiritual area (i.e. evangelism), and open sourced it to the congregation? How much money would be put to actual ministry instead of marketing methods to get your people “on board” (ok, I am done with quotations).
Someone who understands that open source is the way to effectively meet needs is Pastor Gary Marzolf of Newton, IA who handed his church attendees $100 bills and had them create a scenario to help others. The people open sourced their own ideas as to how to effectively use this money. You can see the video here. This is what more churches need to be doing, whether is is though serving the community, or even making the messages of the pastor better. At Westwind Church, the messages are not solely created by the person presenting, but by a team of church leaders. This allows for multiple views to be considered of the same passage. Churches that are daring enough to let others speak into their development will have layers of richness.
More terms on the way.
Three thoughts in response.
First, when we talking in terms of technology and using it as a communication tool we must remember that NOTHING can substitute human on human interaction. No combination of video, audio, imagery, and text can ever recreate the experience of being with another person.
Second, while I agree it is important for people to rally around common interests, experiences, and passions there is a danger in adopting a group mentality. Group mentality ignores the value of the individual. Politicians are a great example, pouring millions into their appeal to specific groups and in it all, the individual is lost. In ministry we must remember that people are not groups, but people are people. Each with intrinsic worth. The church is beautiful web of interdependence where it hurts if even one members hurts and rejoices if even one member rejoices.
Third, your use of Open Source as an analogy makes sense in that creating a market place of ideas may just provide a richer solution to a problem than if it were closed to select few. However, in the software world just because a project is Open Source doesn’t mean you can contribute. What good is it to have a copy of the source code of the program you are using if you cannot read it? You may be able to request a feature, but some else must build it.