I was recently asked by a fellow pastor, “Wes, are you going to show something new every time we get together?”  When I responded what this pastor meant they replied, “Well, I still haven’t figured out the last tool you showed off.” I get this pastor’s point, the problem is it springs from a mentality that no longer works.  A mentality, I might add, many churches still work from.

My friend still thinks of the trends I show in technology as a series of tools to be learned, mastered, and leveraged.  As such, the rapid development of these tools – e-mail, personal web-sites, blogs,myspace/facebook, texting, IM, linkedIN, youTube, and twitter – seems overwhelming.  After all, no sooner do you master one tool, that seven more are developed!  It’s no wonder that people and churches which are working from the mentality of “tools to be learned, mastered, and leveraged” retreat into their shell.  The rapidity of change and development is enough to drive anyone mad.

Here’s the problem.  The above mentality springs from the old industrial revolution mind-set of specialization.  People learned to do one thing, and do it well – that’s all they needed to master.  That was revolutionary in it’s day, and created a lot of displacement when it happened, but over time it became the accepted norm.  It was simply how things got done – and that mentality migrated off of the manufacturing floor and into every facet of industrialized society.  Heck there’s even a seminary out there that boldly proclaims how they train “specialists in the Bible.”

The Industrial Revolution, however, is over.  We are in the midst of the Communications Revolution and the old mentality of “learn, master, leverage” no longer functions.  The tools expand, adapt, and migrate away from the specialists to rapidly to keep up.  Every vocation needs to accept this paradigm shift, even pastors.  We can no longer simply hope to teach people a tool to master so they can Communicate with others in this shifting environment – people will feel discouraged and overwhelmed near-instantly.  Rather, we need to train people into embracing a mentality which can migrate with the shifting tool-set along with those who are native to the Revolution.  This mentality would help people to first focus on the nature of the Communications Revolution, rather than it’s tools – a mentality which helps people to understand that it is act of networking and strengthening connections that matters more than the tools that are used to make the connections.  From this mentality,  an intuition can be learned that assists people as the tools shift.  Instead of wondering what buttons to press in order to master the tool, people will learn to watch and see how any given tool is helping people to connect.

The irony is that the mentality central to the Communications Revolution is actually closer to the heart of the Church than the specialist model of the Industrial Revolution – churches have been in that model so long, however, that specialization is viewed as the way things have “always been done.”  It’s my hope that the Holy Spirit will continue to make believers aware of the possibilities for ministry in this revolutionary time as we move forward.

Getting started, however, is the trick.  Many people feel as though they’ve been forcibly migrated into the Communications Revolution – exiled from their home in the Industrial mentality.  Resentment among these people high, as is sorrow for what has been lost and bitterness towards those who have managed to adjust.  Perhaps in this the prophetic message with call upon the exiles in Babylon to embrace life in the foreign realm, along with the Biblical tradition of healthy lamentation, may help move us forward.  Time will tell, but we must make a start.