welcome

We’ve been discussing how we live like Jesus in the world we find ourselves. It’s been a great conversation. In an attempt to keep things rolling a few of us got together and prayed and talked about what we could do to extend relationships more. We spend a good deal of time on Sunday mornings…warming up. To help us out and following Jeremy’s lead (emailing plagiarized materials) we’re going to post information here. You can comment on anything (and read other comments. If you’d like to contribute content you can do that too. Just drop me an email.

I have worked in the computer industry for about 15 years now. One of the interesting developments has been the rise of the open source movement. Among other things, one of the tenents of this movement is that software should be free. One of the leaders in this area is Eric S. Raymond. He published an essay some time ago called The Cathedral and the Bazaar. This contrasted the different models of software development, a corporate model v. the open source model. Even though this is being dragged kicking and screaming out of context I think it applies to our situation:

…[The] style of development—release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity—came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here—rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches…out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.

It seems to me that we are in the era of the bazaar church with strange sights and smells and experiences. In the bazaar you mingle with the culture. It is in bazaar that we live and do our shopping, play in the parks, eat with friends. It’s in the “succession of miracles” that God grows our faith as God puts us in relationships with people that would not be interested in the cathedral, or perhaps they would not be welcome.