Evangelistic Serendipty

Question: What kinds of collaboration would be possible if major Christian ministry leaders and well-positioned Christian business people and a few focused programmers decided to do something major with data and ministry?

Answer: Evangelistic Serendipity.

Question: How do you get a direct line to Josh McDowell, Chuck Colson, Joni Eareckson Tada, James Dobson, and others to share a plan like this?

Answer: you blog about it. Someone reads, blogs about it, etc., etc. Someone says (maybe) to one of the important folks, "Hey, some crackpot is yacking about everybody working together. He doesn't know what's happened every other time the body of Christ has tried to act united. Ecumenical movements just don't work." But at least they listen. At least they consider it.

Ah, but I say, let's not attempt to unite by seeking agreement on every jot and every tittle of manmade doctrine. Let's come together logistically on the basis of a few key tennets explicit in the Bible, and the rest will be a community work product that benefits all. The reason I mention folks like the ones earlier is because they all have the kind of vision, drive, resources, and soapbox to get it rolling.

I have this theory about data and ministry. It goes back to the cliché, "Only six degrees separate any two people on the planet." Or something like that.  I think that the gap between the average everyday Christian in the Western world and feeding someone in Africa is very small.  We just don't know how to look at it yet.

I think that a major initiative should be launched to unify (in various forms) church organizations, businesses, and people for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of the kingdom. We're talking about people coming out of the woodwork with talents they really hadn't thought about, united in purpose.

OK, let me back up. As a programmer I work with data. I'm back to the question of how to use programming ministry. But what kind of data is important to ministry? What kind of data feeds and clothes someone in Africa? None. You don't eat data. You eat food. But someone gives the food to the person in need, right? So the key is people. People need data to handle all of the transactions from here to yonder.

What kinds of accelerations (thus the serendipity) could we see if the Church body figured out what key software applications could be created and widely distributed for nominal fees or for free that would help us spend more time on feeding and clothing people and telling them about Jesus?  What if ministries and denominations combined efforts and licensed electronic data services to each other for greater efficiency in the final outcome?

Call it a "Techumenical Movement."