Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All [Perfect Paperback]

Landon Whitsitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2011

Open source software makes the basic program instructions available for anyone to see and edit. An 'open source church,' likewise, is one in which the basic functions of mission and ministry are open to anyone. Members feel free to pursue their callings from God that are consistent with what God has called the congregation to be and do. But what does 'open source church' look like?
In Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All, Landon Whitsitt argues that Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can see and edit, might be the most instructive model available to help congregations develop leaders and structures that can meet the challenges presented by our changing world. Its success depends, he demonstrates, not on the views of select experts but on the collective wisdom of crowds.
Then, turning to the work of James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds, he explores the idea that the body of Christ itself--when it is intentionally diverse, encourages independence of thought, values decentralization, and effectively captures and aggregates the group's collective wisdom--is an open source church.
Together, these phenomena show us what an 'open source church' looks like. It is the body of Christ at its best.

Editorial Reviews

Review

God calls us together because of who God is. God is not a dry, detached singular being, but a holy community. We are made in God's image. So we are designed to be together. The church needs to hear, believe, and live this reality in every facet of its life. Together we are smarter, better, even more faithful, than any one of us can possibly be individually. Any attempt to limit the openness, the variety and innovation of the whole in the name of the few (or the one) inevitably undercuts the life of faith. In part, this is the message of Landon Whitsitt's Open Source Church. But there's much more here. What we need today is churchly thinking for 'what's next.' And, as Landon knows, 'what's next' will certainly not be a single model of church. Of course, there has never been just one single way of being the church any way never! In this book, Landon provides a vivid and compelling picture of 'what's next.' Welcome to the future! --Michael Jinkins, president and professor of theology, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and author of Louisville Seminary's Thinking Out Loud blog

Whitsett offers a model for changing church structures that could work. He translates the principles of open source technology to imagine a new framework for fluid and faithful mission. If you are searching for more responsive, agile, and inclusive-of-all-generations ways to organize church life, read this book. --Melissa Wiginton, Vice President for Education Beyond the Walls, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Whitsitt envisions a church where openness and inclusion don't just affect what happens at the front door but become the cornerstone upon which the entire structure is built --Eric Elnes, Host, Darkwood Brew and author of The Phoenix Affirmations

God calls us together because of who God is. God is not a dry, detached singular being, but a holy community. We are made in God's image. So we are designed to be together. The church needs to hear, believe, and live this reality in every facet of its life. Together we are smarter, better, even more faithful, than any one of us can possibly be individually. Any attempt to limit the openness, the variety and innovation of the whole in the name of the few (or the one) inevitably undercuts the life of faith. In part, this is the message of Landon Whitsitt's Open Source Church. But there's much more here. What we need today is churchly thinking for 'what's next.' And, as Landon knows, 'what's next' will certainly not be a single model of church. Of course, there has never been just one single way of being the church any way never! In this book, Landon provides a vivid and compelling picture of 'what's next.' Welcome to the future! --Michael Jinkins, president and professor of theology, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and author of Louisville Seminary's Thinking Out Loud blog

Open Source Church is the most effective metaphor I've read in years for expressing the kinds of community that Jesus' followers are called to create and to live. For Christians under 40 or so, and for more seekers than you can imagine, the open-source world is everyday reality. People today connect through facebook and google, through social media and peer-to-peer networking. If the church is to be a vibrant social force in our day, it can only be an open source church. --Philip Clayton, author of Transforming Christian Theology

About the Author

Landon Whitsitt is pastor at First Presbyterian in Liberty, Missouri and the Vice-Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He can be found online as the co-host of God Complex Radio (godcomplexradio.com), and writes The Metanoia Project blog (landonwhitsitt.com).

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback
• Publisher: The Alban Institute (April 8, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566994128
• ISBN-13: 978-1566994125
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #540,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Open Source Church Is A Must Read for Church Leaders May 25, 2011

By Rocky Supinger

Format:Kindle Edition

Love it or hate it, Landon Whitsitt's thesis in "Open Source Church" will do serious work on your ecclesiology. The book goes where nobody's gone yet. It's not a book about how to grow the church, and it's not a work of techie non-fiction with a religious postscript. "Open Source Church" is a serious contribution to the doctrine of the church, one that wants to use honestly world-shaping innovations like Wikipedia as actual data for constructing what God wants the church to be like. That's different than saying that the church should go crowdsourcing to attract a new generation. It's arguing--and well--that crowdsourcing is more faithful than paying expert developers.

I'm not sure most church leaders are ready for this yet, and I'm not sure what those of us who are ready for it are going to do with it. But everyone leading a congregation or a denomination should read it. And if they don't buy it, they'd better be able to say why without simply quoting the Bible.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes you think. December 19, 2012

By Susan Rosenbaum

Format:Perfect Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

As a pastor, this book caused me to think outside the box when it comes to ministry in use century. No more doing things the way we always have in the past. It is time to embrace change and move on.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Meatier Than Your Average Church Book November 5, 2012

By Aric Clark

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Open Source Church belongs to that genre of popular Christian books talking about how everything is changing in the church. It could be compared to the work of Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Phyllis Tickle, or a variety of other folks trying to describe something similar.

I have an odd relationship with these books (and I've read a lot of them). On the one hand, I basically agree with the vision for Christianity they are attempting to describe. On the other hand I'm a deep skeptic when it comes to attempts to write grand meta-narratives about history we're still in the midst of. I think it's about as reliable and as convincing as astrology. Everyone thinks the time they personally are living through is the MOST IMPORTANT TIME EVER. I don't think we're in the middle of some new reformation, or inventive age, or new great awakening bla bla bla. Or maybe we are, but if so we won't see it until centuries after the fact. The cynic in me says this is precisely why writing books proclaiming this period of time as pivotal is profitable no-risk business. If you're wrong no one will remember, and if you're right everyone will think you were some kind of visionary.

Landon completely overcomes this objection of mine by keeping it real. To illustrate I'll compare his book with one of the worst offenders in the vague meta-narrative category: Diana Butler Bass' book Christianity After Religion.

DBB cobbles together a very loose historiography in her book. She uses some quantitative data here, mortared together with some anecdotes over there, and a hefty dose of poetic license to call the entire period from the 1970′s till now one giant "Awakening" (still ongoing). Landon by contrast doesn't try to press diverse movements decades apart from each other into a single narrative. He starts with a specific movement (the open-source software movement) and pretty much stays there. It's significant that the open-source software movement self-identifies as a movement, and has some concrete principals that they have named. Landon takes these things at face value. He isn't reading tea-leaves here, he's talking about stuff that you could go look up yourself and applying it in concrete and logical ways to the church.

Furthermore, I think Landon's guiding metaphor of "open-source" has more legs and speaks more directly to the experience of my generation than the metaphors of "awakening" or "emerging". The friction I experience isn't really between different belief systems or worship styles - it's more to do with power. How is authority distributed in the system? Who holds expertise and wisdom? How are decisions made? How do we "function" together?

I'm not one to proclaim any particular sea-change in our society, but we can point to a clear division in philosophy of how information is exchanged between web 1.0 and web 2.0 for example. Increasingly, people of my generation expect all exchanges to be open and egalitarian. Why would I want to participate in any organization where I wasn't given access to the "source code" of the group? This is a change which isn't vague, but specific and the practical steps for engaging this trend are therefore equally specific.

It's refreshing to read a book that I feel like I can immediately apply to my ministry, and not because it's a curriculum or a how-to manual. It's a theological book rooted in the experience of communities which can be almost directly emulated - and probably should be. Before you pick up any other book purporting to explain "the nones", or postmodernism, or the end of Christendom, or the emerging church etc... etc... try Open Source Church. There's a lot more to sink you teeth into here.