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Why is it that I can edit the world’s largest encyclopedia, but I can’t edit church?
Rev. Landon Whitsitt raised this question in The Alban Weekly. Did you know that every week 13% of all internet users in the world visit Wikopedia, the open-source online encyclopedia? It’s the seventh most-visited site on the internet. The word “Wikopedia” has become synonymous with “encyclopedia.” Growing up we went to the World Book, or Encyclopedia Brittanica, when we wanted full information on any subject. My parents spent good money to have both on the home shelves. But they became outdated. We took the old World Book set to our house for our kids to use. Bridget flunked a sixth grade science report because she wrote there were six phyla of fungi. By then there were seven. Now Wikopedia says scientists have identified one subkingdom, seven phyla, ten subphyla, and over 1.5 million species, only 5% of which have even been classified. Bridget learned her lesson. Now she consults Wikopedia instead. So do I.
Every day 135,000 Wikopedia users update at least one article. This is what is meant by “open-source.” Wikopedia is literally being re-written every day by its users. Staff reviewers work hard to check the facts, but reading you will notice those parenthetic notes: “source needed.” The work of scripture scholars over the last 150 years or so has been similar though not so rapid. But the pace is accelerating! Every day Bible scholars uncover new archeology, new ancient texts, new comparisons between writings set in new original contextual evidence. Our understanding of even basic tenets of faith are being challenged by new evidence every day. Part of the preacher’s task is to assist the congregation in assessing and assimilating, applying tools for learning. So, just as was true for the early Christians who adapted Jewish faith and teaching, we also are adapting the faith for a new time. Always have. But now the pace is astounding.
The church has never been known to change as quickly as some other institutions of society. That may be for the best. Isn’t the point of church to be a place where the Divine Truth is guarded and passed down from generation to generation? How can this be accomplished if we open the doors and allow anyone to contribute? But ponder, with Rev. Whitsitt, who it might look like to be a Wikicclesia, an ‘open-source church,’ in these rapidly changing times. Whittsitt asks, “How do we as the church expect to be the least bit appealing to people who increasingly go through their day knowing they can “wiki it’ on their cell phone?” Anyone anywhere can log on to the Internet and edit the world’s largest encyclopedia. They can contribute to the “sum of all human knowledge,” as Wikipedia describes it. They can offer their gifts of knowledge to the world and to generations to come. Yet we expect them to walk into our churches and simply take what’s handed to them and do it the way we say they should? I don’t think so.”
What if ‘wiki’ were the world as you know it, and you then walked through the door of almost any church, and it quickly became apparent that your job was to sit down and shut up—that your job was to listen and be spoon-fed what you needed to think and believe? To ask the obvious question again: Why is it that I can edit the world’s largest encyclopedia, but I can’t edit church? This is the experience now for young people growing up in a new learning reality. Even Saint Paul
Rev. Mark Harvey
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