open-sourcing your church
October 31, 2008
Article 9 from the rulebook of our denomination states, among other things, that the task of the pastor includes
- Ruling, organizing and managing the congregation
- Leadership at meetings
But if Jesus is the head of the church, and the spirit is in everybody… well, it gets kind of complicated you know…
But Jimmy Wales explains how wikipedia can function without any paid employees (video), and my flatmate explained to me last night how couchsurfing can do the same.Why do they do this? Because the people involved has a passion for what they are doing… why can’t the church do the same? I mean, really, it’s God we are talking about! Must be some people out there who has enough of a passion for God to take part in whatever open-source system is letting the kingdom of God come?
Clay Shirky talks about making organization part of the system (I’ve blogged about it). I wonder whether that might not be closer to the way of the kingdom than through the hierarchies we have created. Where everybody who become part of the system is part of the ruling, organizing and managing…
How would this look? Now that is the difficult question, but I think some of the open-source projects which we have seen might give us soem good pointers.
my contemplations 