C. Scott Andreas on the Kingdom of God
February 18, 2008
This post is part of an ongoing guest blogger series on the kingdom of God.
Today, we will hear from C. Scott Andreas:
Like Adam, I work in web design and development, looking for ways to wield (subvert?) the black arts of marketing and IT for the Kingdom. I’m one of those guys pounding away on a Mac, sipping hair bender, and mouthing curses at Internet Explorer while listening to Moby at the coffee shop.
But most of the work’s not sexy, and I rarely see the fruits of my labor. Between design reviews, coding, creative impasses, and bugs, I often wonder where the Kingdom is in all of it.
I don’t have a concrete answer, but I do have some questions.
What if our web sites were as imbued with a missional ethos as our blogs and podcasts? What if “church management software” did more than keep people in line? What if a thousand conversations spawned a thousand clicks, and then somehow a well got built in a community without access to clean water?
Questions like this depend on us having the freedom to trash tired paradigms of what web sites and applications “are” and “should be.” Only then are we liberated to imagine what they could actually accomplish. Finding the Kingdom of God in software is about sewing core values deep into its fabric – and tithe tracking is not one of them.
So what does it mean to embed the “values” of the Kingdom of God in an application? How do you translate justice and mercy into “features?” How do you debug compassion?
I’m imagining churches with mobilization tools that empower their members to tackle 30 urban renewal projects in 30 days. I’m dreaming of web apps that connect congregations with people and organizations in need – both within the church and in the broader community. We’ve got the tools to inspire generative conversations. We need something that takes them one step further.
I don’t mean to spout fantasies of a digital utopia or to suggest that a machine will somehow immanentize the eschaton (at least not like this one). But I do think that the Kingdom of God could use some great software.
Design and development for the Kingdom has very little to do with sexing up a church’s dot-org. It’s about creating sites and applications soaked in the missio dei. Only once our paradigms have shifted from those of aimless self-presentation toward meaningful action can we be on the right track.
Tags: Kingdom of God, Scott Andreas, Software, Theology, Web Applications, Web-DesignScott Andreasis a globe-trotting web developer straddling eight time zones at Phoreo.com. Currently finishing an Indiana University B.A. in Communication and Culture and Religious Studies in England, he is preparing to return to a life of coding, biking, and dodging rain drops in Portland, Oregon. Scott has recently served with [AC] Advent Conspiracy, Imago Dei Community, and the Belmont Foundation, and is always in search of people interested in using the web to make great things happen.
At the moment, Scott is developing an open source missional community networking app called Sunago and is looking for other PHP rock stars to jam with. He can be contacted via e-mail at scott [at] phoreo [dawt] com, through Facebook or through his blog.
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Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
February 19th, 2008 at 10:57 am
As much as I appreciate and admire those that can do great web designs and come up with creative ways to communicate both truth and ideas, I am reluctant about this sort of view of the Kingdom of God. One thing that keeps coming to mind as I read this post was how is this viewpoint different than those of the Moderns, which today’s younger crowd abhors, who placed so much reliance on technology?
In the past we did the same thing, just didn’t articulate in such words, when we said that technology would radically revolutionize and solve all our problems. We dreamed of using technology to mobilize and infuse our people with an ethos of justice but yet we have seen the results of this after 50 years.
As much as I commend Scott for wanting to infuse what does into the Kingdom of God we must remember that technology, no matter how wonderful it may be, cannot be the end all for the Kingdom of God. Web sites and fancy ethos statements of infusing justice into web pages does not solve the problems facing our world. Most people are not concerned about whether a web page was created justly or not and soon we will be so jaded by the contemporary technology that even the views we hold today will be seen as outdated and traditional.
Instead we need to regain a heart for the Kingdom of God where technology is used to proclaim the timeless absolute truths of God and His work among us. If we do not use this medium to simply proclaim the Truth which ought to be accepted by all people than technology becomes our master and ultimately means nothing. Use it wisely, but use to proclaim the Kingdom by spreading the Good New of Christ’s love, death, and resurrection.
Great post to get the juices going this morning. Good job!
Blessings,
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:57 am
This is a great post Scott. I was just reading some similar questions in a sermon by a rabbinical intern. It seems like our generation is really wondering if God can be present in technology, especially as more and more of our relationships with one another are mediated by technology. This seminarian came to the conclusion that God is present when we gather together with right intention, even if it is on the web.
I really like the questions you pose. Good stuff.
Peace, Jon
February 27th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Good, thought-provoking stuff.
What I wonder is how we can engage new media as not simply a means for “pitching” the church that is, but to help facilitate the church that will be. The radically transformative potential of a massively distributed medium hasn’t yet made itself felt.