I came across this Web 2.0 Meme Map recently. If you haven’t heard about it, the concept of Web 2.0 has a lot to do with where many see the missional/emerging church heading. Here’s the diagram:
The applications to the missional/emerging church are seemingly endless. Some of the concepts listed are:
- Trust your users
- Emergent: User behavior not predetermined
- Radical trust
- Radical decentralization
- Small pieces loosely joined
- Participation
- "An attitude, not a technology" (this one is hugely important, imho)
That last one, about it being an attitude instead of a technology, is where most church leaders get it wrong, in my opinion. Lots of people think a new program or technique is going to magically make them into a missional/emerging church, suddenly able to minister to postmodern people. But it’s not a new magic trick, it’s a fundamental paradigm change. Many people approach this like it’s just putting a new coat of paint on the church, or putting a new roof on, but it’s not. It’s harder than that. It’s tearing the building down, ripping out the foundation, and replacing it with an entirely new foundation, and then allowing that new foundation to inform how the new building looks. It’s not a technology, it’s a paradigm shift. It’s not refining our techniques, it’s rethinking our theology. Church 2.0 is rethinking the old paradigms in much the same way Web 2.0 is redefining how people use the Internet.