Let's fix Christianity

Stardate: St. Patrick's Day 2008, 5:18 AM. Rolled in from PyCon 5 hours ago, brain buzzing. 1100 people this year, 600 last year. Much more corporate too. Main theme: "We're hiring! Come work with really smart people on large interesting problems in sunny ______!" I spent the weekend learning to feel comfortable telling Googlers and Applers and other really smart people working on large interesting problems that I work with idiot fundamentalists on culturally regressive solutions to irrelevant problems in cloudy Pittsburgh. It was awesome. :^)

I've said before that the Church has a lot to learn from open source, and PyCon inspired me again in that direction. Here are four specific take-aways.

1. Christians need to convert themselves. Jessica and I have three kids. In raising them, I am learning myself to say "please" and "thank you." Not to grab things out of their hand. To help clean up the living room. My friends in Python are all over the map, from born-and-raised Atheist to apathetic to capitalist to Baha'i, Buddhist, Mormon, etc. I've known these people for five years now, some of them. I try as hard as I can not to start conversations about religion. But consistently, when we are together and drinking at two in the morning, what do you think many of them want to talk about? Some even want to keep talking the next day!

2. Christians need a better universalization story. I heard a guy preach this sermon: someone asks this preacher, "How big is your church?" expecting an answer in the hundreds. The preacher makes a point about the unity of the worldwide Church when he answers, "Two billion."

Folks, the Church does not have two billion people. The Church has six billion people. Everyone is part of God's family, because God created everyone. My mother and my brother and my sister do God's will, and everyone does God's will sometimes—we are all a mix of good and evil intentions. And when people do the right thing even though they are in the wrong group, God loves it!

3. Christians need to loosen up their language. We need to let our brothers and sisters use different words to say our things. We need to let Gandhi say that we must be the change we wish to see. No "but Gandhi..." We also need to make normal language more spiritual than spiritual language. Talking about crisis and battle and revival and listening to the Lord and soaking and prophetic anointings and mantles—this raises our anxiety level and makes it harder to convert ourselves. Relax! Yes, sin is real, but I am the chief of sinners. Yes there is a hell, but it is for me, not them. And God shows me mercy!

4. Christians need to take responsibility for their religion. It is not unspiritual to talk about fixing Christianity. We are His stewards. We are like Him, of His family, in His image, and we have authority under Him. If we do something, that is God doing something. And we are all responsible. Not just the priests. Not just the bishops. Everyone—the same everyone!—owns the thing to the degree that they contribute to it.

And here's the exciting part: open source has figured out how to let everyone contribute without ruining the project. We can too! Let's do more of that. :^) Feed back to Chad Whitacre.