Open source church

I had a wonderful and lengthy conversation today with a brilliant guy who’s flirting with becoming a student at Luther. On a purely selfish level I hope he will, but I’m not at all sure how well we’ll resource him. He’s someone who gets it, really gets the opportunities and challenges of media culture, and yet also is deeply embedded in Christian community and wants to stay in those multiple spaces. We got to talking about what “open source church” might look like, and I found myself getting pretty excited and energized. Just now I was reminded of that conversation as I browsed this article in the Economist, which is thinking about “the rise of the creative consumer.” What will it mean when communities of faith are led by, and sustained through, the creative agency of their members? On some level, isn’t that what Christian community at its best is about? And how will we recognize when we’re creating spaces like that nowadays?