One of the greatest insights of the Google-World is the freedom of Beta. A Beta is more than a product not-yet-ready-for-consumption, but a way of thinking, creating, and living. It owns being unfinished. It expects contribution, evolution, transparency. For a long time all of culture was under a spell. It believed in the myth of perfection. A closed process of creation. An established finality before completion. Before Beta, a mistake, glitch, virus, or crash was an embarrassment, a failure of the developers. Now these ‘bugs’ are opportunities for learning and we thank people for pointing them out as they join in to improve.
What does all this Beta talk have to do with the Church? Everything. One of the greatest insight that the Emerging church movement has shared with the Church is this love for the Beta. A call for honesty, transparency, innovation, creative participation, and inspired imagination. When we look at the Church we think Beta, not because we begrudge what is there, but because we know God is not done, the body of Christ is in the Beta and it is beautiful.
In this conversation Philip Clayton, Spencer Burke, Florin, and myself explore this Google-ly metaphor and ask this question, ‘How far does the Beta go down?’ Is our worship in the Beta? How about the church structures, or our theology? What about our own life of discipleship and our community? Maybe we could go one step further and say that the entire world is in the Beta? What if we even ask,Is God in the Beta?
While I am sure some will think we go too far in this conversation, it will also show how we plan on talking about a real God who was and is being revealed in Jesus Christ. Philip calls out some forms of progressive theology when he visited the Nick and Josh Podcast. Thanks to Spencer and the ooze viral blogger crew for sharing the conversation. If you blog and like free books you should join them!
For more info on ‘Theology After Google’
Ohhh and if you haven’t….you should order Philip and my book!
Ohhh let me remind you how awesome the Theology After Google line-up is….
Tony Jones, Spencer Burke, John Franke, Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Adam Walker Cleaveland, Bob Cornwall, Dwight Friesen , Jon Irvine, Monica Coleman, Glen Stassen, Philip Clayton, Ryan Parker, Bruce Epperly, Barry Taylor, Ryan Bolger, Jana Riess, Doug Pagitt, Phil Snider, Emily Bowen, Jeff Jarvis, Steve Knight, Jonathon Walton, Joshua Case
Hey now, did I just hear Clayton calling out some closet Feuerbachians, namely, that there’s something to God that we don’t simply create for ourselves? I (unfortunately) gotta go read some Feuerbach in about 2 minutes, so I just want to be sure I heard Clayton correctly and don’t associate the two
Tripp, I’m impressed that you’ve been Silva-ized (see your link above on “While I am sure some will think we go too far in this conversation”). But Ken has not yet added you or me to the “categories” section of his website, whereas Brian McLaren and Tony Jones qualify as categories…
It does appear Clayton is a realist. That is not very good for the PoMo cred.
Great conversation you guys! You’re excitement and enthusiasm is extremely contagious. Wish I could be at the TAG conference but I’ll be checking in on twitter for sure!
“Ken has not yet added you or me to the “categories” section of his website”
Guess you’ll just have to try harder.
It’s interesting to think of god and religion being as a beta. It allows us to engage in discussions and breath life into a subject that can quicly become stale and polarized. However, I’m worried that people will use the beta model as just a cop-out for trying to achieve something greater. We are always seeking to find something greater, but if we know we’ll never get there will people stop trying? I hope not.
Also if god and church is in the beta what does that say for the great history. to me it’s a constantly evolving machine. It has been presented to the people but it is always moving always changing to help the people with thier greatest needs. To me religion has become a searching for truth. If god is only in testing, what is the truth that we are searching for?