Flat World - Bright Hope

I am grateful to Alvin Reid for posting a book review of Friedman's The World is Flat. I would like to see more conversation about this "brief history of the twenty-first century". I think that the book's implications are huge for authentic Christianity. There are two issues that touch all our ministries now.

1. Collaborative Leadership
I have been watching the YearlyKos Blogger Convention on C-Span 2. The speakers were all from the political left so I did not agree with all of the content. I am more purple than red or blue. However, the discussion of linguistics and technology was amazing. One of the participants said, "This is a bottoms up phenomenon." This reminded me of a point Miroslav Volf made in his wonderful book, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Volf said that the church was constituted from "below". Authentic Christianity has always been a collaborative reality. The flattening of the world serves this important part of Baptist polity. We have already seen this fleshed out at the SBC.

2. Open Doors
Globalism, with all its negatives, has made the world smaller. This will serve the cause of missions. It always has. In section four of the Enquiry William Carey credited the invention of the mariner's compass with opening up doors for missions. He also pointed to the role of commerce. Carey quoted Isaiah 60:9 and commented, "This seems to imply that in the time of the glorious increase of the church in the latter days, of which the whole chapter is undoubtedly a prophecy, commerce shall subserve the spread of the gospel." We must exploit these open doors for Christ without baptizing the morality of McWorld.

I think these two realities are here and are already impacting ministry. I would love to know what others have say.