Open Source Church

I find myself thinking more about how God is working in the world at large. The way in which we can see the Spirit moving in different areas and how we can engage in these areas as God’s children.

This past week I was thinking about open source software. For those who do not know what I am talking about refer to this open source site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software .

When looking at the idea of having an open, collaborative, and public way of operating I can only look at the potential for the church. There are those at the moment that are looking at how they can ‘do’ church and many models are there for exploration. Traditional, emergent, community based, denomination based and many others that look at the church in many different ways. I find the more I look into the differences of these structures, theologies and practices I see God who is creative. God who asks us to accept his grace, found in Christ, in the state we find ourselves and respond in a way that engages our personalities, experiences, context and abilities. The issue comes when our way of responding becomes the only/best way to do so. We find those that do things different to us are wrong. This goes both ways. When the ‘traditionalist’ says to the ‘emergent’ that is different therefore it is wrong and when the ‘emergent’ says to the ‘traditionalist’ that is not different therefore it is wrong. Why instead of having an us-them mentality, which to me in the church sounds really, really bad, do we not have open source approach? What do different people/groups in the kingdom do really well? How can we get them to help us de-bug the system? Who are the beta testers we can call on? What do we do really well that can help others in the kingdom?

This is a very wide view of the possibilities for the church. What if we used this idea in local centers? Inter-church and intra-church.
Different congregations discussing ideas, changing ‘applications’, enhancing basic operating systems and much more to enrich the church within local contexts.
What about different people in a local church being free to input into the different facets of the church in a way that is different. Acknowledging that people come from different places and are able to enhance and test things that may be daunting to some. Open source church would be very chaotic. New, exciting things happening that sometimes need a lot of de-bugging. Old, boring things being enhanced by someone who can see things differently. Life together would be more engaging, freeing and the church would be the better for it.