Distributed church

Bill at faithcommons.org posted a comment on Andrew's post, which I posted on just before, and it just struck me:

As unix networking geek, church as a distributed, object oriented, networked, multi threaded, perhaps grid organism, makes perfectly good sense. The next question is: how to facilitate connections and connectivity?

In the late 1980s and early 90s networking PCs was not a done deal. Although servers (resources) were already long connected, few people could imagine the benefits of sharing a networked printer, file storage or even email. Until there was a critical mass of nodes on the network, growth was difficult. Yet I'm convinced that the connectivity we enjoy today over the Internet is as much a product of demand as it is of available technology. That is, civilization wanted distributed connectivity and so used available technology to build what was needed, and that drove more technological development.

Distributed church will struggle through a similar uphill run.

I'm going to begin looking at connecting folks in the Dallas/Fort Worth Texas area. There are many support networks already. Understanding them, bringing them around to thinking of themselves as church, and then connecting with individuals is one approach that comes to mind.

Any ideas?

Well, yes, Bill, actually ... I'll be in touch with you eventually, as your comment is just an amazing thing, for many reasons... but I'm posting about it here because, while not a Unix geek myself, my best and dearest friend is a Unix alpha and internet savant, and I know just enough about dot prompt programming myself to make me a very poor disciple of the B-, um, Micro- you know who.

And I absolutely see what you see about the "distributed" church model, and I'm serenely convinced it will happen. Fits and starts, progress and otherwise, but ultimately, it will happen. It is, already.