Flattening the church

**Tom Friedman, in his book “The World is Flat” describes a world that has been transformed by what he calls the “ten flatteners,” mostly technological innovations that are tearing down the barriers that seemed so permanent not all that long ago. Space, time and matter are all being downgraded by the emerging of a new kind of intelligence. (See also Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind.")

As someone who has watched a church attempt to cope with the changes, I find Friedman’s views illuminating. Though what follows is a description of what’s going on in business, it also applies to churches:

"Globalization 2.0 was really the era of mainframe computing, which was very vertical - command-and-control oriented, with companies and their individual departments tending to be organized in vertical silos. Globalization 3.0, which is built around the convergence of the ten flatteners, and particularly the combination of the PC, the microprocessor, the Internet, and fiber optics, flipped the playing field from largely top-down to more side to side. And this naturally fostered and demanded new business practices, which were less about command and control and more about connecting and collaborating horizontally." (pp 178-179)

Friedman quotes Carly Fiorina, late of HP:

"How you collaborate horizontally and manage horizontally requires a totally different set of skills."

Churches tend to be very top down organizations – and the thinking tends to mimic it. All ideas, authority, permissions and initiatives must originate at the uppermost levels and be channeled down to those below. It’s hard to see how such thinking can survive the “ten flatteners.”

But churches don’t have to be organized in this obsolete way. Exactly how they should be organized and run is still unclear, but it seems obvious that what is going on in business and society in general will have to be taken into account.

There are many formerly churched folks who are distributed out into this ever-flatter world and they are carrying on the basic research that will be needed if and when their churches finally admit to a need for change. They are working “side to side” and in some cases side-BY-side in small groups, implementing the spiritual vision of church founders in a context that seems so toxic to the traditional model.

The primary ingredient in this research process is their CONNECTIVITY. Not just email but Instant Messaging, Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) like Skype, cell phones, Web groups, and an ever-expanding array of connectors are enabling this “Diaspora” to share ideas, test new approaches, and generally build the Wiki-like wisdom that will be so necessary in the New Church.