Your Community Conversation

“People of Earth … A powerful global conversation has begun.”

That is the preamble to “The ClueTrain Manifesto: The end of business as usual” (Perseus Books), written by four irreverent business writers who mock the established business community. In its first few pages, “The ClueTrain Manifesto” lays down 95 theses. Here are several:

Thesis 1: Markets are conversations. Thesis 7: Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. Thesis 20: Companies need to realize the markets are laughing. At them. Thesis 25: Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships. Thesis 67: As markets, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language. Thesis 77: You’re too busy “doing business” to answer our e-mail? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe. Thesis 95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

The big idea of “The ClueTrain Manifesto” is that most companies still don’t “get it” about the Web revolution and that it is subverting the traditional organizational chart and customer relationships. The global conversation, in essence, is grassroots. It bypasses the power structures and gives power to the workers.

The “Chicago Tribune” (“Medical Web sites alter relationships between patients, doctors,” Monday, March 6, 1999) reported that now when patients arrive for a doctor’s visit, many are armed with information from the Web about their disease. No longer do some patients rely solely on the doctor as the best source of medical knowledge. My brother, a hematology and oncology fellow at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, often complains about the partial information people receive from the Web.

No doubt the Web revolution, which has affected the business community and the medical community, touches the church. I’ve seen this already. Often lay people know more about church leadership than do their pastors. Why has Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Church” sold more than a million copies (according to public relations notices)? I guarantee you its buyers are not all pastors. A lot are frustrated lay people. They don’t want church as usual. At the church I attend, a key lay leader gave “The Purpose Driven Church” to our pastor to read. Doesn’t that seem a little whacked? The traffic now moves both ways on the ministry-information bridge.

Whether you like “The Purpose Driven Church” or church leadership literature in general is irrelevant; Warren has not paid me to pump his book. And no doubt “The ClueTrain Manifesto” is one gigantic overstatement. But the people of the Web revolution want to join the conversation at your church. Can they? Are you listening?

—Dave Goetz is executive editor of PreachingToday.com and editor of LeadershipJournal.com and executive editor of PreachingToday.com. To comment on this devotional, e-mail Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.