An Ecclesial Agenda

I ran a web company for five years before I took this job, and that got me involved in so-called "free and open source software," or FOSS. FOSS is essentially a model of government based on openness, honesty, transparency, trust, and cooperation. FOSS is humans coming together to accomplish something—with their guard down. And you know what? It absolutely works. Just ask Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, etc., etc., etc. It might threaten you, but if you are in software you have to take FOSS seriously.

Also during that time, I helped start an organic produce growers' cooperative. PLOW had seven members that were trying to break into regional and national markets. They formed PLOW in order to even out their production capacities, generate the necessary volume, and (especially in the case of our Amish members) offload marketing and distribution. Our co-op flopped, but it is a viable model for human interaction. And like FOSS, cooperatives are based on openness, honesty, transparency, trust, and cooperation.

With this background, and now from inside the ACN, I can tell you that the Church—liberal or conservative—does not operate primarily based on openness, honesty, transparency, trust, and cooperation. I think we need to change that.

I am hopeful that the Church can become more open and cooperative, because even in my short time at the ACN I've seen that practicing openness within the system as presently constituted enables others to relax their guard. In the past six months, we have broadcast big events live on the Internet. We now post our high-level financials on our homepage. I am now encouraged to build relationships with communications people at our partner organizations. Singles and doubles.

But there are plenty of questions:

• Why should the Church be more open and cooperative?
  
• Building software and selling vegetables are one thing, but isn't practicing religion another?
• How do you protect against saboteurs?
• How do you guarantee that the "faith once delivered" doesn't radically change, saboteurs aside?
• What is an open-source bishop supposed to look like?
• You expect multiple software projects and cooperatives, but doesn't the Church pretend to visible unity?

So the application of FOSS and cooperative principles to the Church is not uncomplicated. But that's what makes this an agenda: a definite but general goal that will take concerted and persistent effort to understand-and-reach.