BLOG 10.7.13. WHAT WOULD PAGE AND BRIN DO WITH THE CHURCH?

BLOG. 10/7/13. WHAT WOULD LARRY PAGE AND SERGERY BRIN DO WITH THE CHURCH?

I’ve been fascinated by watching interviews with these Silicon Valley-types who are always coming up with whole new revolutionary concepts of information age technology that render present (seemingly successful) ones to be obsolete. I think of guys like Larry Page and Sergery Brin who founded Google, and are now into GoogleX, or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, or Jeff Bezos of Amazon, or Steve Jobs of Apple. I love their capacity to see beyond what is, to concepts that are potentially and enormously more efficient and effective (and more profitable).

And I wonder what these guys would come up with if we could get them into a room with some thoughtful Christian missiologists, or ecclesiologist … and call forth their genius on the form and mission of the church. Now I know—I can already hear my traditionalist ecclesiastical professionals ridiculing the whole idea—that the very idea is somewhat outrageous, but then so were the ideas they proposed that have transformed so much of our lives. (So were the teachings of Jesus!)

For one thing, all too many who profess to be Christian leaders are wedded to patterns and concepts that they have inherited and which are proven to be very limited in their incarnational authenticity. I have found (in my limited experience) that very few of these leaders have a strong and knowledgeable grasp on the essence of the church in the design of God, or of how it is to effectively accomplish its mission of being the “missionary arm of the Holy Trinity” (Bonino) in causing the gospel of the Kingdom to be preached to every ethnic group in the world.

From at least the era of Constantine we have mistakenly conceived of the church as some kind of an institution with temples, clergy, liturgies, etc. that renderi the laity to second-class status, and with no plan how to make disciples who are contagious, mature, reproductive, and demonstrative of New Creation. So what we have in this part of the world is this huge oversupply of religious institutions, buildings, seminaries, misunderstandings of Christ’s message and mission, and the resulting baggage … but with diminishing fruitfulness.

One of these Silicon Valley geniuses made the off-hand comment that when you come up with something radically new and more effective, you have to scrap some older stuff, and sometimes people get hurt. That’s the risk.

It is interesting to read in the gospel records that when Jesus came into the context of Second Temple Judaism with his radical message of the Kingdom/New Creation that he was inaugurating, that he dismissed the temple and the temple priesthood as being no longer viable. God’s new temple, or dwelling place, was to be his people. They were to be supportive and missional communities of aliens and exiles formed by the word of Christ. They were to infiltrate every dimension of life like leaven in a loaf. Every follower of his was to be equipped to be a mature part of the mission (check out Ephesians 4).

I’d be willing to bet that in such a room full of such creative geniuses (like Larry Page and Sergery Brin) and thoughtful Christian leaders and missiologists … that there just might be some really interesting critiques and proposals. I think it would be exciting. It may be a crazy thought … but maybe not? We, the church, might learn something about ourselves that we have forgotten.

What do you think? Feed me back some comments.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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