Relating Rushkoff to a Denomination?

One of the interesting things to see in denominations today is how they handle the rise of technology. I don’t mean technology in a specific sense but how technology has changed our world and what it allows us to do.

On the one hand we have the fragmentophobes who fear that unless we enforce a strong central leadership structure we will face disaster as the denomination fragments into small isolated groups who no longer desire any connection because they feel no need for it. These folks see technology as providing a centrifugal force that will hurl us apart. It won’t be long until we become disjointed and in the worst case develop extreme views that lead to fundamentalism or worse.

On the other hand we have the monoculturephobes who see great danger in the ability of individual parts of the whole being able to communicate with each other without having to go through official channels. This group will choose what is worst for them because they don’t know better. It is a view most common among the leadership elite who are afraid of “the masses” because they are likely to do something stupid and at the same time throw the elite out on their ears.

The result of these two extremes is a desire to continue with an organizational structure that has never been really effective. (We hear that it has worked for others when in reality it is not the structure that produced the goods for others but a mix of known and unknown factors. This is often illustrated when the “savior” CEO from one company cannot produce the similar result in his next company.) In spite of this we continue because at least it is safe.

The reality is that the capacity technology gives us actually prevents both scenarios from happening. Networking provides the exposure that prevents the former from happening while the rapidity of change prevents the latter (Too much, too fast to ever really build denomination wide consensus.). Instead we should create an environment that understands that we do not direct, only God does. That means creating an environment that not only deals with the issues we face today but also with the unknown issues we will face tomorrow.

In my opinion this is done by minimizing the backbone to basic essentials and allowing structures to form and dissolve within the organism as the need arises. These temporary structures will form naturally and will not necessarily affect the entire organism. The difficulty has to do with power as some fear too much while others fear not enough.