Review: Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business

Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Being a technogeek is kind of a relative thing. I have many friends who are far more tech savvy than I am, but in my world, I’m considered a computer whiz. I read (or listen to) books like this because I’m interested in what’s going on in the world. I believe that technology is not just adding convenience (or complicating things, depending on your perspective), but that is fundamentally changing how we live, work, and relate to one another.

The industrial revolution changed the economy in that it made more goods available more efficiently, but it also changed business strategies and processes. The assembly line became the model for business, not just for manufacturing, as processes were evaluated for their efficiency at producing the most work with the least effort and the least cost.

Since I’m a pastor, I tend to look at what this means for the churches I work with. Like workers on the assembly line, church volunteers became specialists to the point in my own denomination that there were so many specialized posts and committees that small membership congregations didn’t have enough people to fill them.

So what do the changes described in Crowdsourcing mean for the church? We probably won’t know until about 20 years after things have changed for everyone else, but it gives me hope. Crowdsourcing is all about the community, where even the least experienced and least knowledgeable can have a tremendous impact. It seems a much closer model to what I believe faith communities could and should be. While learned experts have their place, a crowdsourcing model encourages a newbie to add a sliver of their own creativity with frequently dramatic breakthroughs that come from fresh views. The model encourages mentoring and connection where contributions are made simply because people love what they’re doing.

A crowdsourced worship might begin with a basic outline and some thoughts on a scripture passage posted to a shared site where contributors could add their thoughts, links to images and music, or even post files or videos of their own music and images. A crowdsourced Bible commentary (wiki-Bible?) could begin with a scripture passage, links to original languages, translations, historic commentaries, with new comments filtered and ranked by the community. We’d be challenged to think beyond the arguments that divide us, which would be difficult since we’re still stuck in the fundamentalist/liberal controversy of the 19th century. That’s probably why we’re still a ways from this.

Obviously, I found the book interesting, and Kirby Heyborne did a competent job with the reading. Nonfiction books are pretty straightforward, but Mr. Heyborne reads with consistent energy to maintain interest.

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Review: A Touch of Dead

A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reading Charlaine Harris is one of my guilty pleasures, mostly because it’s clear she doesn’t take herself too seriously. Sure there’s a lot of action in the Sookieverse, including wars between supernatural species and, er, other kinds of action, but it’s Sookie’s first person narrative that makes it all so fun.

Johanna Parker does a great job with Sookie on the audio version, adding a sinister touch to the voices of the vampires and a softness to the voices of the fairies so that you’re hearing the story rather than the performance.

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Review: V is for Vengeance

V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve loved Kinsey Milhone since the days of her Wonder Woman sheets, but Sue Grafton has made a shift in the last couple of books to flesh out other characters in the story, to give her readers a backstory that Kinsey doesn’t know. It keeps the series interesting because as I wait for the next book, I’m less concerned about what Kinsey is going to do next and anticipating more what subject Ms. Grafton will choose to explore.

Judy Kaye gives a believable performance on the audio version. I like when I hear a performance and think, “yes, that’s exactly how Kinsey should sound”. Ms. Kaye is subtle in her shifts to other voices, adding a little tremor for aged characters or smoothing her voice for more sophisticated ones, giving an effective reading that doesn’t try too hard.

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Review: The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach by Elaine A. Heath
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I started out in ministry on staff at a large church as the part-time Director of Communications. It was cutting edge at the time for a church to think about how it uses communication and marketing tools to reach a wider audience. Since then, I’ve been through phases of trying to read about and implement current church growth models that ultimately felt untrue to the faith I was trying to proclaim. They were all about getting people to come to church, about boosting attendance, but, as one of the leaders of the movement discovered a few years ago, they didn’t do much to promote a deep faith based on relationship with Jesus Christ expressed as perfect love of God and neighbor.

Elaine Heath is one of several to offer an alternative based on the depth of the Church’s spiritual tradition. In The Mystic Way of Evangelism Dr. Heath calls for believers to embrace the “dark night of the soul” where we currently live as a Church:

Contrary to being a disaster, the exilic experiences of loss and marginalization are what are needed to restore the church to its evangelistic place. On the margins of society the church will once again find its God-given voice to speak to the dominant culture in subversive ways, resisting the powers and principalities, standing against the seduction of the status quo. The church will once again become a prophetic, evangelistic, alternative community, offering to the world a model of life that is radically ‘other,’ life-giving, loving, healing, liberating. This kind of community is not possible for the church of Christendom.

Following a contemplative path of purgation, illumination, and union, Dr. Heath introduces her readers to spiritual saints as a role models for doing evangelism by being followers of Jesus. No marketing, no bait and switch, no lists of 10, rather an experience of the lives of the saints and a fictional character named Sam with whom we walk as he comes to know healing and acceptance in a community whose foundation is Christian love.

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What if it’s not about birth control?

Several of my friends and colleagues have been writing about the controversy about the requirement in the Affordable Care Act to provide women and men with contraception, including birth control pills, with no co-pays. Among them are Richard Heyduck and Frederick Schmidt. I’ve responded to both either in the comments following the article or on Facebook. I appreciate the opportunity to think through the challenges presented by the controversy and their thoughts about it.

In further discussion, Dr. Schmidt continues his thoughts about prejudice against Catholics in a personal way that includes some of his own family history. I had objected in his first post that calling Protestant failure to stand with the Catholic bishops prejudice went too far. I will not deny that prejudice against Catholics exists and much of the volatility of the rhetoric against the Roman Catholic Church and the US Council of Catholic Bishops has its roots in that prejudice. Equally, I think we have to own the misogyny in the rhetoric, typified by the infamous picture of the five men at the table to testify at the hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Chairman Darrell Issa’s refusal to let a woman speak in favor of the US HHS ruling. Each form of prejudice is painful to its victims and leads many of us to respond to the controversy from wounds that are chronic and deep.

Where do we go in the conversation if prejudice is where we start? It’s a little like the Christian guitar player who says, “God gave me this song” which everyone knows means “therefore you can’t criticize it”. Is there a way to offer arguments for or against the ruling that aren’t about prejudice, but really are arguments about religious freedom or birth control? Obviously, I think there is, or I wouldn’t be writing. I won’t go into the things I love about the Roman Catholic Church or offer assurances that “some of my best friends are Catholic” because I would only be digging myself deeper into the ditch of prejudice.

So what if we offer a similar argument that’s not about birth control or about Roman Catholics? What if there were a large, powerful denomination that had a moral objection to safety regulations on construction sites because it’s God’s will that accidents happen? What if they insisted that they shouldn’t have to pay for hard hats because it’s a violation of their religious freedom? What if it was a hardship for a worker to have to pay for his own hard hat, but he didn’t qualify for assistance through other organizations that supplied low cost or free hard hats? What if he did qualify for a free hard hat, but the organizations that provided the hard hats were in jeopardy because the large, powerful denomination was also lobbying to decrease their funding based on the aforementioned objection to safety regulations?  If the majority of Americans believe, and there’s research to prove, that the use of hard hats on construction sites save lives, should this denomination be given a waiver in their construction projects because of their religious objection to safety regulations? Churches aren’t excluded from building codes or labor laws on the basis of religious freedom. Why should the RC Church be excluded from providing medication and devices that are considered protective for women and men by the medical community?

Part of the problem is that many see women who use contraception as wanton floozies who deserve what they get. There are many statements I’ve read and heard that relate contraception to inappropriate sexual activity rather than considering it a normal supplement to health care that includes family planning, disease prevention, and alleviation of suffering caused by hormonal imbalances.The majority of women who use birth control are married, in committed relationships, or are among the 58% who take the Pill for medical reasons like relief of migraines & endometriosis. I think it helps to picture the average American housewife when talking about contraception.

I appreciate that Dr. Schmidt is trying to encourage us to think theologically and ecclesiologically about the issue and agree that we’re not getting there. But I wonder if it’s because this is one of those times when it’s really about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Was Jesus supporting the Erastian notion of the church being subordinate to the state when he suggested that there are things that belong to God and there are things belong to the empire? If this argument  is a matter of religious liberty, then it seems to me that there is a conflict between the liberty of the RCC and the liberty of non-Catholics in their employ. Catholics are entitled to believe, to teach, and to practice a theology of life that prohibits birth control, but the government has the responsibility of protecting all of its citizens. Many denominations employ thousands of people who do not adhere to their beliefs through organizations structured in such a way that they can receive billions of tax dollars without violating the establishment clause. In doing so, they put these affiliated organizations under the realm of Caesar. While they may be doing good works in the name of God, they’ve intentionally funded themselves through Caesar. It’s no wonder we’re having a difficult time thinking theologically and ecclesiologicaly about the controversy when the churches themselves have taken it out of that realm.

Review: Engaging the Word: The New Testament and the Christian Believer

Engaging the Word: The New Testament and the Christian Believer by Jaime Clark-Soles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jaime Clark-Soles loves studying the Bible. It’s clear in her writing, and it’s clear when she teaches.

In Engaging the Word JCS offers a knowledgeable and yes, engaging, guide through some of the major approaches and dilemmas in studying the Bible in these first decades of the 21st century. Not only does she walk her readers through strengths and weaknesses of more traditional study, she introduces readers to new conversation partners, stretching us to think about those who are considered “experts” and why. My favorite was an entertaining section that explores how the Bible is marketed.

This isn’t a book-by-book exploration of the New Testament, but an important introduction to how to study the texts and why.

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