I’m excited to hear more about your dissertation as you progress. Hopefully you’ll be distracting yourself from it via blog often in the coming months.

I wish I was better at writing narrative. I want to work on that. I think story telling, like that of the Synoptic Gospels, will be so important to future mission.

Rock on, holywild

This is a profound question: “I wonder how the increasing use of networking communication channels will affect the ability of a church “hierarchy” to administer the denomination as communications go node to node rather than through a central core.” In think email, facebook, and even these blogs has already eroded the ability of the church to monopolize or editorialize church discourse. And, the church will morph out of its control because of that.

I’m not saying the church is totalitarian, though we have that history. More specifically, I believe in Foucault’s understanding of power. It is not top down; rather, it is a function of discourse. Subjectivity forms itself in relation to discourse and ‘change’ or the ‘being’ of any organization exists in this way.

Your question, here, will have tremendous impact on the future of the church and its next leaders. Thanks for asking it in that way!!

That’s a great observation. I think many people hurt themselves by trying to create writing environments akin to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. It’s too easy to get lost (in a bad way) when you’re closed off.

Remember the old pictures we used to use in looking at the faith structure of the church, and how it looked in 2D? Imagine what a visual organization of a system theology would look like! Kind of like charting synaptic brain activity or something.

So, until you create a holographic multi-dimensional method of describing connected thoughts and ideas (and I hope you do it soon!), we are stuck with linear thinking, writing, etc. No wonder we have so much trouble communicating with each other!