The Participation Age

This morning I heard an intriguing interview on this week's NOW, a PBS weekly cultural interests program, with Jonathan Schwartz of SUN Microsystems in which they discussed his idea of the Participation Age as the new era in our development. This follows the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age, and Information Age.

As Schwartz sees it, the Participation Age is the opportunity offered through technology for people to participate in the accumulation and dissipation of knowledge, or, as he puts it, going from where "the center knows more than the edges" to where "the edges feed the center" (Schwartz, 'NOW', 12/08/06). He cites the way people with cell phones in the European subway explosions and tourists in the tsunami zone with video cameras gave us the first reports of these crises. His idea has taken off as a model for addressing technology and business in the upcoming century.

This participation trend seems to be affecting the Christian community too. George Barna is raising eyebrows within the community by projecting the decline of traditional churches as more people turn to more intimate alternatives like home churches, emerging church communities, and personal ministry in his book Revolution. In a recent interview on the Catalyst Podcast, Barna discussed this trend and the factors driving it. As people on the fringe are producing and directing the flow of information through technology, lay Christians (non-professionals) are taking the lead in interpreting and sharing the Word among their community (whatever form that takes).

Barna and those involved in this movement point to the benefits of a well-informed and personally-involved church body in these communities that are doing a darn good job reaching out to their non-Christian friends. These Participation Age Christians have reinterpreted church to be more relevant in their lives. In so doing they are becoming the ministers and desision makers in their communities working together as a body.

Links

http://www.pbs.org/now/...
wikipedia: Jonathan Schwartz
wikipedia: Participation Age
www.businessweek.com/
http://tim.oreilly.com/
http://www.barna.org/...
wikipedia: George Barna
http://www.ctlibrary.com/
http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/
http://www.pgpl.co.nz/bkchurchlessfaith.html
http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/
catalyst podcast