Knowtown…

Tonight our family went to our old church to attend one of their Christmas eve services. I was hoping ot hear the band play some of the songs we used to play and see some old friends and wish them a merry Christmas. We did see some old friends but the band did not play. They did some simple, traditional carols with a piano. It was nice but not what I was hoping for. The auditorium was decorated very beautifully with lighted trees and a nativity scene. There was a nice rugged looking manger that we had built for a few years ago to use as the altar for a communion service that was right at the front of the stage. Since it was a cadlelight service, there were candles all around. Everyone was dressed in their finest. I imagined it to be the clean and sterile antithesis to the stable scene of the day we were celebrating.

Later in the service, the new pastor brought the “fire and brimstone” message during a Christmas service to a whole new level. While he was walking up to start his message he knocked over one of the candles that was in the manger and it started the hay on fire. There were some pretty good flames almost instantly and while they were trying to put it out they kept knocking more candles over and starting new flare ups in the manger. Finally, one of the elders came to the rescue with a fire extinguisher before things got too out of control. Once the fire was out two men carrid the manger out of the building. The whole event only lasted 30 to 45 seconds but the whole auditorium was filled with smoke from the fire and exhaust from the fire extinguisher. Everyone’s eyes were watering and stuff. It was pretty exciting.

As the two men were carrying the smoking manger out of the room, I couldn’t help but think of the Christmas story. The Gospel tells a story of a lowly stable, most likely filled with things that made faithful Jews ceremonially unclean (animal feces, the many things that are produced with the birth of a baby…). These were things that Jewish law required to be “outside the camp”. For me, watching the manger be carried out of the beautifully decorated sanctuary filled with happy, shiny people was one of the most powerful Christmas sermons I have ever seen. How often we forget that even the wise men who were looking for the King went to Jeruselem. We still seem to look for him in places we are comfortable rather than following him into those dark places outside the camp. It is funny to me that we have substitued the “Good News for all people” with good news for those that can make the 5:00 or 7:00 service.

It was nice to see some old friends and be able to wish them happy holidays and share some long overdue hugs. But truth be told, I felt very convicted being in that room. As the manger was carried out I wondered to myself who would proclaim the good news to those who were outside the camp? Why was I listening to people sing songs about a sterile, safe, comfortable Christ and not following a dangerous, wounded savior into the ambiguous wonder of the way of the cross? I am more aware than ever of some serious changes that need to be made and hoping that I will become part of a community that can help me get there. This advent period may last a lot longer for me than I was expecting.

At any rate, I wish every one a very Merry Christmas. Looking forward to more ecclesial dreaming with you in the new year.

Peace.

Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson have authored an interesting, soon to be published paper titled, Solving the Puzzle of Human Cooperation. It is a great read that deals with many of the questions that suround why selfish, individualistic people sometimes willingly cooperate with others.

I found many of the observations to be very interesting as an ecclesial dreamer. For those of us who dream of participating in authentic ecclesial communties this paper will illuminate why this can sometimes be illusive. I also found the language of “family” that pops up every now and then to be interesting. It seems that we are more likely to cooperate with those who are “close” to us. This made me really think of the language of “adoption” that is found in the New Testament. I wonder if we would be able to put generous orthodoxy into practice if we saw one another as members of the same family. At any rate, the paper is well worth the read.

I am trying to shift gears away from open source stuff but this subject continues to interest me. I found this blog post that discusses an attempt that is being made to create an open source community in the field of biology. It highlights the problems that founders of open source communities encounter when there is already a monopoly ownwership in their field. As I read this I was reminded of many of the things I read in Vaclav Havel’s great book, The Art of the Impossible. I am sensing that things like diversity, plurality, stewardship, and the will to embrace are foundational to open source communities. Here is how the blog post begins:

bq. Imagine if Microsoft dominated the study of molecular biology because it owned the foundational knowledge of genetics and agriculture. Nobody could do research or innovate without first getting a license from the company. The field could be designed to maximize profits and thwart competitors, just as Microsoft’s Office suite has stymied innovation in word-processing programs.

I wonder if it is possible to make a connection to the proprietary nature of church planting? Imagine if (insert ecclesial institution here) dominated the process of church planting because it owned the foundational resources. Nobody could do research or innovate without first getting a license from them…

I wanted to share a few more of my thoughts on Dave’s paper, particularly the importance of being connected to a preexisting community with authoritative voices. But before I do I want to acknowledge that I am well aware that there are many shortcomings in the open source software analogy. I do realize that there is no clean cut parallel to the ecclesial realm. But having said that, I will also admit that it does not take a lot of imagination for me to make some pretty significant connections between the two. I would also encourage anyone who is interested in open source stuff to read this insightful paper for themselves as my comments hardly do it justice. Here is another lengthy excerpt:

bq. Raymond also observes that open source software projects require some locus of authority through which individual gifts are screened, recognized, and ranked. Project “owners” recognize and integrate “official” patches into the software. Unofficial or “rogue” patches that do not receive the imprimatur of the project’s owners are considered untrustworthy and deliver few, if any, reputational rewards.

bq. Raymond’s observations demonstrate that the cost of integrating granular contributions is not determinative, as Benkler suggests. Equally important is whether the integrator has sufficient authority within the community to attract contributions and to produce a coherent corpus that the community recognizes as canonical. Absent an authoritative integrator, peer production is unlikely to occur. There is little incentive to produce granular contribution without either the assurance that it will become part of a functioning whole or the hope of the obtaining the reputational rewards associated with the acceptance into the “official” product version.

bq. Further, the integrator must have some authority to screen contributions and define the canon of contributions that make up the whole work. Contributions that are completely non-functional, or even malicious, must be screened out before the corpus is released for community scrutiny. Otherwise, the cost of reviewing the product for further areas of modification and improvement will become prohibitively high for individual community members, and the product will lack any utility to end users.

bq. Raymond notes several ways in which an integrator achieves such authority. The default authority figure is the project’s founder. Indeed, Raymond notes that the open source community’s custom ”does not even permit a question as to who owns the project” if the founder remains actively involved in its development. [emphasis mine] Alternatively, the project’s founder might “pass the baton” to a group of trusted successors. Again, custom dictates that the founder’s choice of successor is rarely challenged. Finally, a later arrival can acquire ownership of a project after the founder or his chosen successors have abandoned it publicly announcing an ownership claim, and then, without significant challenge from the community, exercising the functions of the project owner. Raymond views this process as analogous to Locke’s theory of land tenure. Thus “owners” of open source projects are “homesteaders” in the “noosphere” (“the territory of ideas, the space of all thoughts”).

There is much in this excerpt that I find illuminating. First, I think this illustrates why the Emergent conversation is seen by many as a predominantly Evangelical/Protestant phenomena. It seems to me that this is because it is those of us emerging from these traditions that are finding it difficult to have that connection to the preexisting community with authoritative voices. Many Evangelical/Protestant ecclesial structures are not very accepting of open source ideology. (Yes, I know that is an over-simplified generalization. This is a blog post from an ecclesial dreamer, not a technical research paper.)

It is no secret that the Protestant church is extremely fragmented. I will be the first person to admit that the Protestant church may be more in need of repentance than emergence but we cannot undo history. It seems to me that we often forget that the Founder of our project is still actively involved in its development. We seem to get overly infatuated with the “homesteaders.” This creates problems when it comes to connecting to a preexisting community with authoritative voices. Our quest to be connected to the founder in a different way does not always go over well with the homesteaders who currently have the authoritative voices in the Protestant traditions. Our honest search for theological authenticity leads to “deconstruction” of the established paradigms of our traditions. So we lose our access to the preexisting community that should be providing the resources we need to create a gift culture.

On the other hand, many emerging ecclesial dreamers are (re)discovering Christian disciplines that have been practiced by other traditions for 2000 years. When we attempt to embody these practice we are accused of borrowing them (from the generous) or stealing them (from the less generous) from the traditions who apparently own these things exclusively. So while we find affinity with much of the theology of the other traditions, we do not belong to them either. Certainly there is not enough of a relationship for them to provide our connection to a preexisting community. This leaves those emerging from the Protestant churches in a situation that prevents us from acquiring one of the key ingredients of developing an open source ecclesial community.

As always, these are just my developing opinions—I could be wrong…

I have been rereading David Opderbeck’s paper that I mentioned in an earlier post. If you have not read it yet you are missing out. David discusses some key ingredients that help make an open source community possible. These ingredients include “layers and granularity”, “social-psychological rewards”, and a “preexisting community with authoritative voices.” The things he highlights in these areas are too numerous to quote fully here but there is one section that really resonates with me as I try to make connections between open source communities and ecclesial dreams. While discussing the preexisting community and how it relates to open source, he illustrates how the open source software communities operate:

bq. …Open source communities do not appear ex nihilo. An open source community must develop from the bottom up; it cannot be imposed from the top down.

bq. The open source software movement, for example, began when computers and software were still novelties confined primarily to universities and government. There developed a community of hackers who reveled in sharing source code so that it could be tweaked and customized. These internalized norms evolved into the broader culture of open source.

bq. Further, open source communities are not truly egalitarian. In its more idealized forms, open source rhetoric evokes a community without class conflict. In reality, an open source communtiy must have its own class system, as well as a central point (or at least central nodes), by which individual contributions are ranked. Both of these elements are essential to integrating individual contributions into a coherent commons and to establishing a basis for the social-psychological rewards that motivate peer production.

bq. Both of these additional components of open source culture have been described by Eric Raymond, an early hacker and open source software proponent. In his essay Homesteading the Noosphere, Raymond notes that open source culture is based on norms and customs adapted from the early hacker culture. He observes that open source software hackers operate in a “gift culture” in which competitive success is measured by reputation among other hackers. A good reputation is developed by imparting useful “gifts” to the community, in the form of contributions of code and bug fixes. As Raymond notes, a gift culture arises only when there is no scarcity of essential resources, as scarcity requires rationing.

Two ideas stick with me as an ecclesial dreamer. The first is the idea that open source is built from the bottom and not the top. The other is this concept of a “gift culture” and how it is tied to having essential resources. The reason these two stick out to me is that (in my limited opinion) they work against each other in the ecclesial setting. I think there are many gifted ecclesial dreamers out there who are building open source ecclesial communities from the bottom up but they are not quite able to fully form because they lack some essential resources. I am not talking about merely financial resources. As important as I think those are, I think there are other resources that may be more valuable. But most of these resources are in the possesion of localized institutional incarnations that are built on and dependent upon a top down approach so they are unable (or unwilling) to give up the resources that bottom up builders need to create the gift culture.

I have not fully thought through this so I know I am overstating many things and oversimplifying others but I think the most important resource may be the connection to a preexisting community with authoritative voices. I have a theory that the reason “Emergent” appears to be a predominantly “Evangelical” and “Protestant” phenomenon is because ecclesial dreamers who are emerging from these traditions are having the most difficult time gaining access to this particular resource. We may never get this access from our own traditions because to embody a bottom up gift culture goes against the grain of the institutions that are birthing us. Since this post is already way to long I will comment on that more fully in the next post.

Sometimes it is hard for me to talk about my church planting experience. My ability to communicate is not up to the task. But I have finally found a way to show it visually. Click this link to see a short video presentation that is a fairly accurate representation of my ecclesial dreaming attempts over the past two years. Enjoy…

I finally had a chance to watch The Terminal the other day. It was better than I was expecting it to be. I couldn’t help but think that it was such a great movie for Advent. The theme of waiting was woven into every character of the story. It really brought to the forefront of my attention all the many things I have been waiting for. Waiting with expectation is hard work. Waiting is helping me see things about myself that I do not really like so well. At any rate, if you have not seen this movie I would recommend it. Not the best movie in the world but it is worth watching.

“But I leave any day now”
–Viktor Navorski

I am taking this coming week off from work and am looking forward to some time to reflect. There are many things brewing in the corners of my soul and I have a lot on my mind. Tonight we had a short get together and asked some good questions of one another. I got stuck on one particular question and have not been able to move past it yet. Even now as I think about it I am having a difficult time with it.

Tomorrow morning I will have breakfast with a friend I have not talked with in a long time. In the past, he has been a great person to talk to when I am wrestling with important decisions. I am looking forward to this meeting.

an interesting read from http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/futureoforganisation/ that explains why future organizations need to “loosen up”:

bq. Changing expectations of working life have created a new tension at the heart of organisational strategy. Employees want more human organisations with greater autonomy and flexibility. They want an experience of work that fits with their values. They want a greater say in the future of the organisations they work for. In short, they want organisations to ‘disorganise’.

bq. At the same time, organisations are facing external pressures. Competition shows no sign of waning, new demands for accountability and growing concern about security are all forcing organisations to take greater control, ‘hyper-organising’ to cut costs or guard against potential failure.

bq. So far there are only case studies of organisations experimenting with ‘disorganisation’. While these ‘case study companies’ may represent a relatively small part of the corporate sector, they can be seen as surface manifestations of an underlying desire for employees to feel just a bit less organised.

bq. This report looks at how organisations can manage the desire among employees for a greater sense of ‘disorganisation’ in an ever more competitive and complex environment.

bq. Based on new data from polling of employees and business decision makers, Disorganisation argues that to stay organised in the deep sense of engaging their employees in a shared project, organisations may have to disorganise to allow people more freedom to express their personal values and individual identity.

Download and read the whole report here.

In the comments of a previous post, David refers to a paper he wrote titled, “The Penguin’s Genome, or Coase and Open Source Biotechnology.” This is an interesting paper that discusses the types of systems which can operate within open source commitments. The most interesting part to me is the exploration of the relationship between open source technology and the realm of biology. As an ecclesial dreamer who sees hope in open source communities and holds to the metaphor of the church as a body, this paper has numerous points that resonate with me. Now if only I were intelligent enough to make the connections. Here are some highlights from the first few pages of the paper. Hopefully, these short excerpts will whet your appetite enough to make you read the whole paper:

bq. In many ways, the analysis is similar when the technology is biologically based. It is possible to identify distinct layers in an organic communication system: “hardware” layers of cells, tissue, or organism; “software” layers of genetic code; and “content” layers of proteins and chemical cascades, produced according to the code’s instruction, that affect the organism and its environment. In some respects, genetic code functions as “law” to an organism. And, increasingly, genetic code can be manipulated to change the rules. Indeed, Lessig analogizes his view of how “code” functions on the Internet to the manner in which DNA functions in a living organism. Given these perceived similarities between computer code and biological code, the open source software movement’s success increating stable, useful products and its egalitarian spirit have fueled interest in whether open source production models can be applied to biotechnology.

Later he continues…

bq. However, there are problems with an open source approach, arising both from the nature of biologival code and the nature of the research communtiy that codes biotechnology. In biological organisms, code is not as precise, predictable, or persistent as computer code. The basis for organic code–DNA–can be mapped, but it often is difficult to connect bits of DNA with specific biological outcomes. Also, because organic code is part of a functioning organism, it causes changes in the organism, the organisms environment, and other organisms. In turn, it is changed by its surroundings. The dynamic nature of organic code and the fragility of the systems within which it finds expression raise unique challenges for defining which, if any, aspects of organic code are “law” and which, if any, aspects of organic code can be evolved through open collaborative development models.
In addition, open source development will work only within an existing community with a prestige-based reward structure mediated by authoritative voices who can define what constitutes an authentic version of the open-sourced product. Although previous discussions of open source biothechnology have assumed that such a communtiy exists, that assumption has been based largely on outdated and overly romantic notions of the “community of science.” in reality, biotechnology research is a competitive enterprise in which norms of openness and sharing are limited and complex, raising serious questions about whether existing norms could support wxtensive open source development.

As you can see there is plenty of thought provoking observations in this lengthy read to make it worth your time. I have only read it once but I expect I will post some more comments on this as I read it again and begin to digest it more. I think there are valuable insights relevent to the emerging ecclesial conversation in documents like this.