I've been reading Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin today. Right away this book grabbed my attention. On page 5, Godin writes a short section he titled, "In Search of a Movement."
Some tribes are stuck. They embrace the status quo and drown out any tribe member who dares to question authority and the accepted order. Big charities, tiny clubs, struggling corporations - they're tribes and they're stuck. I'm not so interested in those tribes. They create little of value and they're sort of boring. Every one of those tribes, though, is a movement waiting to happen, a group of people just waiting to be energized and transformed.
A movement is thrilling. It's the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better. The new highly leveraged tools of the Net make it easier than ever to create a movement, to make things happen, to get things done.
All that's missing is leadership.
There's something deep inside me that resonates with these words by Godin. Christianity, when it is working as it's founder intended, is always a movement. Only when Christianity becomes about the "accepted order" does it get stuck. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to get stuck. Actually I take that back. I do know about others - just about everyone I know also doesn't want to get stuck.
We are living in one of the most exciting and changing times in the history of mankind. There are more people alive today than at any other time. And more of these people are connected with other people, sometimes across the nation, sometimes across the globe. What would the Apostle Paul have done with the Internet tools that we so nonchalantly take for granted? I believe that the man who risked shipwreck and imprisonment to reach others with the good news of Christ, who wrote most of the New Testament with only a scribe and papyrus as his tools, would have made the most of the Internet. He would have had websites, blogs, laptops and Blackberries.
Coming back to Godin's point though: it's not the websites, blogs, laptops and Blackberries that make the movement thrilling. What Paul brought to the tools of his day is what we need to bring to the tools of ours: leadership. All that's missing to make this a movement is leadership.
I want to be such a leader. What about you?
