This week I was in Louisville for a reunion at my alma mater , and while I was there I sat down with the pastor who I interned with.
Jud and his then co-pastor Liz gathered people together to form Covenant Community Church as an intentional expression of what an “open source” church could look like. A lot of my thinking is influenced by what I and my family learned and experienced in that community, so I decide to interview Jud for the book (natch). I really hope to set up an interview with Liz soon because talking through the “idea” of CCC with Jud really reminded me that an open source model of leadership is a viable one.
Then, at a dinner at the reunion, I sat with a classmate of mine as she shared about her work in the Emglish language Korean-Taiwaneese church she’s serving and – again – I was struck by the pervasiveness of this model.
Do you know of people or ministries that you think exemplify an “open source” approach to being church? Please tell me about them. I would like to populate this text with a lot of examples of the ways in which we (the Church) are already living this idea.
Leave ideas here in comments or send me an email at landon (at) landonville (dot) com.
landon whitsitt 
Not sure what you mean by “Open Source”, but I’ll tell you about our group. My friend and I started up this group about 7 years ago trying to share how God can be relevant in people’s lives. This group is for young families and we typically go through marriage and or parenting materials with an emphasis on biblical principles. Half of the group doesn’t attend church of any kind, and most of the ones that do go to church are young in their faith.
As people have seen how God’s Word is relevant in their marriages and in their parenting, I have seen God working in the group – lives transformed, marriages saved, parents become more loving. We have about 7 couples and 17 kids at one point. We were talking about church and one of the husbands who doesn’t attend church was sharing what the group meant to him. And this normally stoic guy was choking up and sharing how he didn’t have friends like the ones that he has in this group and he said, “This is my church where I come to meet God.”
That’s a great story, Darryl. Thank you.
landon – I have a story that may be helpful. I have used it in several places as an example of leaders finding clues of God’s call upon the congregational life. (That premise is part of my DMin thesis). Anyway –
In any church on Sunday mornings, outside the sanctuary, there are informal conversations that are more than idle – they seem infact to be essential. Leaders in the Osawatomie church began to notice that teachers from their schoold district would talk with some distress about their weeks. When they did that they often referenced how many ‘white sack lunches’ their children had. As the deacons inquired about this they learned that ‘white sack lunches’ are what children receive when their parents stop paying on their account. The white sack carries and element of shame in the lunch room (this we believe unintended by the school district) that throws kids into distress and thus teachers who scramble to find cool snacks or money for a hot lunch. With this information the board of deacons approached the school district with an offer to pay for hot lunches so that learning could be facilitated rather than interrupted. Open source mission?