OPENsource JESUS: The Priesthood of All Believers in a User-Generated Culture

Something like the above will be the title for my now in the works dissertation. In our open-content/open-source world (or as Len Sweet would relate it: USER-GENERATED), faith expressions where denominations authorities expect the baptized (and unbaptized for that matter) to outsource their faith and mission to professionals is dead. Mission and moneys that get outsourced through denominational centers, synod offices, district offices, dioceses, etc., are seeing their pockets squeezed by a shift in understanding about who is supposed to be generating mission and authentic faith. Let's just say that the movement isn't towards centralization.

For a hands on, reality creating, input generating culture, clerical/denominational structures that insist that ministry (of any sort) be the province of a select few will increasingly find that they can no longer relate to our postmodern world. And I predict that for those of us called to bridge the clerically bound church cultures of the present with the user-generated culture that is morphing around us, the ugliness is just beginning.

Because denominational authorities will not relinquish their power and authority. However, whether they like it or not, the church IS an economy...and the economy of the church says increasingly that it will no longer stand for denominational authorities that cry partnership (i.e. "send the undesignated funds to us and WE'LL disperse them) while refusing to lead in terms of vision, management of the cultural anxieties that are ratcheting up levels of conflict in all congregations, and an articulation of the gospel and ecclesiologies that place it (and authentic contextual mission) first. No...they are all trying to shore up their power. But today, more than even, whether you find yourself in the UMC, ELCA, LCMS, ECUSA, PCUSA, or others, you come to this realization:

It's just a matter of time.

And the switch will be the way that we are knit together as churches, not whether or not there will be the church. It will exist. It will persist. It will even find ways to thrive...just as it has done over two millenia.

But I wonder, (and this is the angle of my thesis) if we might not get ahead of what's happening in the culture...and check our inventory and find that we can relate, equip, and unleash a church that can lead and in fact impact the culture. We have the tools for the whitewater around us. But we're going to have to give up our addiction to control, and give in to the Spirit, to find that we have the power to surf these waters. But these changes won't come from the centers of any of our tribes.

The key doctrine, mostly unpracticed, and certainly never theologically fleshed out (too threatening to our Protestant denominatioanl hierarchies) is the stuff of the unfinished business of the Reformation: e.g. "the priesthood of all believers." And to that I will begin to speak. So stay tuned...