G.I. Joe was right: “Knowing is half the battle…” Our globe is filled with knowledgeable, talented, undiscovered theologians who have amazing wisdom to speak into the life of the church. The problem is the other ‘half’ of the battle. They don’t have those precious letters following their name: Ph.D. A Ph.D. gives you the academic street cred, the power to be heard.

Until recently, the problem has seemed insurmountable. That is, until technology came to save the day.

Today’s technological feast is truly, wonderfully, scarily gluttonous. Tivo, DVD’s, iPods, allow information to be at our beckon call. We can download everything from music, movies, lectures, and TV shows…you name it; it’s yours (so to speak). Such a technological paradigm shift has had profound implications on our faith. And I’m not talking about the switch from hymnals to PowerPoint (that was soooo 90’s). Technology is not only changing the way we DO church, its’ changing the way formulate our belief systems and our worldview.

Consider the way we learned about God in the past. A select few individuals would groom their academic pedigrees, earning their Ph.D. in theology or biblical studies. They would become professors at prominent seminaries or divinity schools, where they would be afforded the luxury to study and write for publication. These individuals were (and still are, in many ways) middle to upper class, white, and from North America or Europe. These theologians would write for publication through a few publishing companies, who would sell the books to those who could afford them (usually pastors). If you haven’t noticed, the unofficially educated, minority groups, and the 1/3 world at large were left out of the process. In addition, much of the systematic theology produced from such ‘ivory towers’ lacked the street cred, the horse sense that was (and still is) desperately needed by those attempting to live out their belief systems in the real world: at the marketplace, in the public schools, in the streets of the urban neighborhood, or in the local church. The stuff simply didn’t translate. It’s not that the ideas were bad, so to speak. The application was simply lacking.

But all that is changing. The balance of power in theological formulation is shifting. And it’s shifting on the shoulders of two technological advances. The first is weblogging, or blogging. These online journals are available to anyone who has access to a computer and the internet. Blogger and TypePad are 2 of the most popular blogging services, and make creating a blog and maintaining it relatively inexpensive and easy. With the potential to reach a global audience (anyone who surfs the internet), blogs have had a profound impact on theological education. Anyone can have their theological musings ‘published’ for anyone to see. There’s no higher educational ladder to climb, no editors to filter your work. You write, you publish, the people read. It’s that simple. It’s that raw. Blogging is becoming a staple resource among young adult, emerging church leaders. Dan Kimball, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and Mark Driscoll all have blogs, to name a few of the biggies. Blogging offers young church leaders yet another avenue to communicate to their community, and anyone else who wants to join the discussion.

What’s wonderful about blogs is that they aren’t written in a vacuum. Many blog entries are interactions with pop culture, media, and politics. People all over the WWW are exercising their skills of theological formulation to interact with the real world. What does pneumatology have to do with the recent box office smash? You can write about it, or read Scot McKnight’s take on it…or you can post a comment on a particular bloggers perspective, and you don’t have to wait 12 months for a book to come out by on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

This new wave of theological musing isn’t limited to one person and a keyboard. Open Source Theology is a second technological advance in theological formulation. Open Source Theology is an attempt to utilize the method of open source content management computer software. If you’ve ever been to Wikipedia, you know what I mean. It’s a space that allows for “developing collaboratively an applied theology appropriate to a particular missional purpose” (from the OST website). The community forms the theology and applies it, whether it’s on the web or in the sanctuary. It’s an attempt to contextualize the truths of Scripture to a particular culture and ministry setting, involving the whole community of faith in the process. It’s a highly participatory method, which fosters ownership.

Now, these recent trends in theological formulation don’t render the old way useless. Bloggers and participants of Open Source Theology are typically very well read in classic and contemporary theological works, and yet they also have a profound sense of the pulse of the culture in which they live. The difference is that they don’t necessarily have to jump through the academic and publishing hoops to be heard, nor do they have to figure out how to apply systematic theology to the street by themselves. They harness the freedom of technology and the ‘wisdom of crowds’ (tip of the hat to James Surowiecki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds) to increase community, unity, and effectiveness in ministry.

Are blogging and open source theology without their pitfalls? Of course not. It still doesn’t provide an adequate solution to those in the 1/3 world who have no access to computers, or the internet. But it’s a step in the right direction. And, let’s be honest: giving a voice to anyone is a dangerous enterprise. But so is giving it to a select few who don’t have a clue of the unique aspects of your particular ministry context. Praise God we can have both. We can learn from the brilliant theologians of past and present, whom the publishing world makes readily available in print. But we can also learn from the single mother in the pew, the divorcee, the homeless man… We can learn from one another how to best reach our neighborhoods with the Good News.

“This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power.” (Herodotus, 30 B.C.)

I blog. I read blogs. I also read books. I can have my cake and eat it too. I encourage you to do the same. Read. Read a lot. But also write. Exercise your right to write, and encourage others to do the same.

Drew Moser