Windows of Opportunity in Modern Day Technology

I came across an article in “Wired” magazine early last month that gave a report on where the internet has come in the last 10 years. The article was intriguing on several different levels. It’s staggering to realize how the internet has changed the world we live in and how closely it’s tied in to the development of contemporary culture. In particular, I was fascinated by author, Kevin Kelly’s, take on how the web has influenced consumerism. Take note of Kelly’s insightful point at the end of this quote in particular:

“I run a blog about cool tools. I write it for my own delight and for the benefit of friends. The Web extends my passion to a far wider group for no extra cost or effort. In this way, my site is part of a vast and growing gift economy, a visible underground of valuable creations - text, music, film, software, tools, and services - all given away for free. This gift economy fuels an abundance of choices. It spurs the grateful to reciprocate. It permits easy modification and reuse, and thus promotes consumers into producers.”

Any pastor deeply committed to disciplemaking and equipping believers for missional living can testify to the roadblocks that are created by the consumer mentality that permeates the lives of Christians in the western world today. When I read this quote, I sat up and began to ponder this question: Could the internet be opening up a window of opportunity to loosen the grip of consumerism that wields so much power to trap Christians in our smug, passive, and apathetic inactivity? It seems that, as a result of how the internet is shaping our culture, there’s a growing potential to re-new a vision for all believers to be participators in God’s Kingdom agenda.

First, however, I really think that we as pastors must find ways to encourage participation in our congregations. Many churches who’ve taken on the “emerging church” label are pursuing this idea, with varying degrees of success and faithfulness to sound ecclesiolgy (which by the way, I don’t claim to have arrived at.) It will require pastors to think creatively outside the conventional boxes. For example, how can we adjust our preaching to include dialogue and self-discovery? How can we adjust our meeting places to be more relationally friendly (vs. staring at the back of people’s heads for 2 hours and then going home)? How can we deepen the potential for participation from the congregation in worship and lessen the central focus of stage performance by musicians?

And these are primarily questions directed at worship services! The bigger, more substantial questions should really be pointed at helping people see church as something bigger than a worship gathering, as a force of redemptive change in the world. This brings to mind the staggering potential for relational connection that emerging technology presents. Towards the end of the article, Kelly draws attention to the social networking created by the participation that the internet is stirring up.

“What happens when the data flow is asymmetrical - but in favor of creators? What happens when everyone is uploading far more than they download? If everyone is busy making, altering, mixing, and mashing, who will have time to sit back and veg out? Who will be a consumer? No one. And that's just fine. A world where production outpaces consumption should not be sustainable; that's a lesson from Economics 101. But online, where many ideas that don't work in theory succeed in practice, the audience increasingly doesn't matter. What matters is the network of social creation, the community of collaborative interaction that futurist Alvin Toffler called prosumption. As with blogging and BitTorrent, prosumers produce and consume at once. The producers are the audience, the act of making is the act of watching, and every link is both a point of departure and a destination.” (emphasis mine)

What would it look like for the Body of Christ to not only be a “community of collaborative interaction,” but to find ways of allowing that community to be connected to the greater social network of the world in redemptive, incarnational ways?

I love this idea of prosumption. I think it is a key ingredient in the healthy multiplication of Christ-followers and of churches. But I'll stop for now.