From High Brow Pirate to Hometown Pastor

I am about to delve into my open source roots.  Around 2001 I discovered Open Source Software and from 2004 until 2007 it paid the bills and put food on my table.  What is this and how does it relate to being a church?

For the non geeks I will not bore you with the really cool details.  Lemme summarize.  Hacker culture decided it would be better to open the source code for all to view.  This allows for collaboration and improvements.  If we all have the code, we can all use the code to modify it and make the program better…and the really cool part is that we can share it.  Now, those of you who are not coders would think…so what?  Here is the so what.  Since 2004 I have had the latest and the greatest and the most stable software and I have not had to pay a penny for it.  The creators shared it with me.  I have an office suite, I can create websites, I can balance my budget, organize my photos and music and even edit videos.  Now, if something does not work the way it should or is not doing something that I think would be cool…I can send messages to the developers and they can remove bugs, improve the security and maybe even like my keen idea. I am not much of a programmer, but I am a whiz bang bug reporter and I have found that my detailed bug reports have actually helped projects that I use on a daily basis improve.  I have a voice…I am a part.  People who CAN code can see my bug reports and DO something about them.  People who see validity to my keen idea and see others want the same keen idea to happen and they share the excitement…they can make it so (we have word count on OOo Write-we did not have that 4 years ago!!!!).

A brilliant man named Eric S Raymond wrote an essay called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".  In it he compares traditional software as the Cathedral.  A hierarchy dictates  what is to be made and others have to make it and still others have to accept what has been put together as is.  In the Bazaar everything is changing and happening and moving and adjusting and it is what the people make it and that may change day after day and we all benefit.  Anyway, before I suck all the life out of his work, lemme drive this ship home.

In a real community we share each others discoveries, hearts, traditions, worship, and so forth.  I do not dictate to the masses how we are a church, but we, as a community become the church together.  Ever changing, ever dynamic, always beautiful….and the best part of all….everyone is a part of it and there is no hierarchy except for the one we communally serve and love willfully.  

When a community makes itself and does not dictate, we allow the holy spirit the room it needs to be an integral part of us.  We all have a role, including (and especially) God.  When we remove our finite bad selves from thinking we got the answers and work it out together…we can be what God intended for us to me.  And that is more than we ever could have imagined.

The Bible is our core kernel and we cannot improve on that piece of code.  But the community we build around that core is a project we should all be invited to share…not just on Sunday…but every day.