A couple of weeks ago I attended the Christianity and the Digital Space symposium in Durham through my work on ChurchMCR.

One of the “conversation strands” I went to was about spirituality and the digital space and the conversation helped me crystalise some things have struck me over the last couple of years about how many online values or philosophies tie up very closely with what I see as Kingdom ideas, but most of these are opposed to church or christian culture.

User Generated Content (UGC)

One of the big explosions online has been the rise of UGC. Wikipedia is the shining example, but countless websites including Twitter, Facebook and MySpace rely on UGC to create their value.

The overarching idea behing UGC is that everyone has something to say or show or share. Whether they do or not is up to them, but the assupmtion is that we all have something to say or show or share. On top of this, online we all have equal opportunities to say or show or share stuff. We can all upload a video to YouTube, or start a blog for free or comment on news stories.

Compare this with many church meetings. The tacit suggestion in a Church service is that the guy (male, mostly) at the front is the only one with something meaningful to say or show or share, so he does and everyone else listens without opportunity to say or show or share what they might choose. The growth of Home Groups or Cell Groups in recent decades has provided slightly more opportunity to say or show or share with one another, but, I’d suggest, not much.

Yet I see this idea – that everyone has something to say or show or share – as a very Kingdom idea. It affirms the value, uniqueness and divine in each person. There is a Bible verse somewhere which suggests each person should bring something to share when they meet, but I don’t remember where it is – anyone know?!

And the idea that we should all be given equal opportunity to say or show or share something seems to be something God instituted when he tore the temple curtain when Jesus died. So, in an online order, I think it’s worth discovering a way that we each have equal opportunity to share with one another.

Wisdom of the Crowds

The simple idea behind this phrase is that the many know more than the few. I read a fascinating book on this called “The Wisdom of Crowds” which I highly recommend: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Crowds-Many-Smarter-Than/dp/0349116059/ The book suggests that in most cases, the more people you can get, and the more diverse they are, the better decisions or judgements they make.

The big example here is Wikipedia. There is more information there than any one person knows and the vast majority of it is extremely accurate. A couple of years ago, I wondered what a Wiki might produce if it was edited by a large number of Christians from all denominations and Worldviews. If we all share the mind of Christ, what content would emerge on this wiki, and would we see that as Truth?

God has created us all different yet we are all made in the image of God. So surely, the larger and more diverse a crowd is, the more of God they represent or show, right? Perhaps this is an aspect of christian spirituality which an online order could encourage and facilitate, in whatever ways that may take.

Discovery

The internet has made data and information more discoverable than it ever was. The majority of internet users use it for 2 things, email and search – searching to discover something.

The Church (globally) has a very strong history of covering things up and keeping information from the masses. That is one of the main reasons for the Reformation, some people wanted the Bible in their own language, but the Church demanded it only be produced in Latin which only the priest could read. It was about holding onto power (and money) and it made it impossible for the lay-person to discover God through his written word.

Jesus’ death and resurrection allows us to discover God personally and because He is so big and complex we can continue discovering Him all our lives. In fact, we ought never stop discovering Him and we can discover Him in many ways. Some of these ways are through relationships and some are through gathering information.

The internet allows us access to enormous amounts of information, stories, ideas, worldviews, theories, etc in many different formats, written word, audio, images, video, etc. Perhaps the ease of discovery and quantity of information to be discovered is something an online order could celebrate.

Collaboration

Let’s face it, Christians aren’t very good at working together! Wikipedia suggests that collaboration is “where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals”. Christians, regardless of denomination share vast amounts of common goals and beliefs, but still do their own thing as groups, or congregations.

The internet makes it easier to collaborate and makes the process easier. Again, Wikipedia is a fine example and Google’s search engine now lets users promote or remove search results thereby making their search engine ever more accurate for subsequent users. LastFM is another example where the service gets better as people collaborate by adding more information about songs, artists, labels etc. And of course increasingly popular services like Basecamp and Google Groups help people collaborate on projects or ideas by sharing information and easing communication.

Of course the largest concerted collaborative efforts are the Open Source software groups. These teams use their programming, design, technology and management knowledge for free to create software which is free. The most well known Open Source projects include OpenOffice, FireFox and Linux Operating System – and it is collaboration which bought them into being.

An online monastic order should encourage collaboration, not just on social justice projects, but on spiritual discovery, discipleship, theology, and it’s services (both services and Services!).

Decentralisation

It has been said that in terms of economics, the internet has changed the world from a handful of markets made of millions of people to millions of markets made of handfuls of people. The internet has massively decentralised resources, information, ideas and even truth.

The Church has historically been, and still is a very centralised institution. Ideas such as authority, accountability, leadership, tithing and more have become centralised in their practices in the Church. But the centralised practice of these ideas has been massively challenged by the internet which allows these ideas to flourish and work effectively, often much better, in a decentralised manner.

The majority of the Old Testament shows God engaging with man in a very centralised manner, through Kings, Judges or Prophets. Jesus’ resurrection and ascension made us a priesthood of all believers and His authority and power was given to each of us – it was a huge decentralisation. And it seems that God’s plan to redeem us and his creation will only happen through his many people obeying in different ways in different circumstances and cultures around the world, rather than a centralised institution of domination.

Most religious or monastic orders are centralised around the head, or founder, of the order. Would an online monastic order do the same or would it adopt decentralisation as much as possible in the belief that it is more effective and aligns with God’s plan and Kingdom?

More could be said about the culture of “Free” on the internet, the ease of communication in countless forms online, and how the internet has made mankind more efficient and productive (mainly!). But the points above seem to stick out in my mind.