Open Source Sermon Retrospective
First thing: thank you! It was a blast working with all of you to create something new. Reaction on Sunday morning was very good and I’m still getting comments from people. I am convinced that it was a stronger, more compelling sermon because of your involvement, and I’m very happy to pronounce the experiment a success. (Here’s the text and video in case you missed it)
How did it go? As I said above, response from the congregation was strong and positive. As for how it went from my perspective in the pulpit, it was fun and a little scary. I found myself a little more tied to my manuscript than usual because I wanted to honor everyones contributions. I also spoke more quickly than is normal for me because it was longer than my usual sermons. On the other hand, there was a sense of comfort or community because I felt like I was speaking for all of us. It felt like you were up there with me. (Yeah, cheesy, whatever. It’s true)
What did you do right? We took the time to lay the groundwork. In fact, we spent much more time on groundwork than we did on the actual sermon. We took our time picking a topic, picking texts, aligning principles and purpose. All those discussions and agreements meant that the sermon itself came together much more quickly and smoothly than I had expected. I can’t emphasize enough how important this was. From the very start I feared our experiment would result in a chaotic mishmash of conflicting ideas and spam. The fact that we wound up with a coherent and compelling sermon testifies to the integrity of the contributors and the hard work we did coming to consensus before we started writing the sermon.
What would you change?
- I wouldn’t use PBwiki again. Their customer support is great and they gave me excellent administrative controls, but a number of people complained about the interface. People had a hard time signing up, and once they signed up they had a hard time making edits. I think I’d try Wikia next time. Their interface is very clean and simple.
- I’d make the whole thing simpler. There was way too much “Click here, check there, sign up here, wait for confirmation, blah blah blah” when the whole reason people got involved was because it was a cool idea. People wanted to contribute! It was my job to make it as easy as possible for them to do so, and in my excitement I left way too many stumbling blocks laying around between them and their goal
- I would try to open it up to more involvement. A truly open source project would be less controlled and have many more contributors. I wasn’t brave enough for that on the first go, but I’d definitely take a step in that direction if we tried it again.
What did you learn? The Pareto principle is your friend. I spent a long time lamenting the 80/20 rule as it applied to church life, but this experiment renewed my perspective. A small, committed group did most of the heavy lifting. The members of that group shifted during each stage of the project, but there was always a core keeping things on track and pushing the project forward. Then there was a cloud of of interested observers, some were too busy, some were too shy, but whatever their reason they didn’t contribute in large ways. The crazy thing was, they contributed in their own little ways and all those tiny contributions made a big difference. Even if your only contribution was an idea that never made it into the final draft, your presence in the conversation made the whole thing stronger. Thank you.
Will you do it again? I honestly don’t know. Certainly I benefited from the experience, and the sermon was better for it, but I still have some real questions. Part of the reason the sermon worked was because it was about technology. Would a similar format work with a more traditional subject? Also, we spent almost two months on this thing! Most preachers I know spend a week on theirs. Would it still work in a shorter time window? Those aren’t deal-breakers. I hear some responses knocking around in the back of my head already, but I’d have to mull it over a bit before I said yes. For sure I wouldn’t do it the same way, but a second experiment is not out of the question.
What do you think? What did we do right? What could we do better? What did you learn? Should we try again?
P.S. – Thank you to everyone who linked to the project!
Emergent Village
Think Christian
The Church Geek
Gemeindearbeit
Ranges Community Church
Glad you felt things went well for you. I would have liked to have been more part of the process but time….
Comment by scott | October 9, 2008 |
If you decide to do a wiki for anything in the future, check out wikispaces.org. That’s what I’ve been using for most of the classes I develop; it works well for small group projects. It’s also open source and has a WYSIWYG editor. I’ve used Wetpaint for several sites in the past too, with mixed results. Several facilitators have commented that they prefer Wikispaces.
This was an interesting project. Glad I was able to make my little contribution and that it turned out so well.
Comment by Christy Tucker | October 10, 2008 |
I would recommend trying it again, especially since some of the bugs could be worked out and more folks easily participate. It would be interesting to see if it can be done in a shorter timespan, too.
I mentioned this project in Sunday school last week and the group thought it was a cool idea, though I mostly talked about the subject matter, not the process. We’re currently studying 1 Cor, so I had emailed the leader with the final sermon.
Comment by ruhama | October 13, 2008 |
I say do it again, although you could do it somewhat differently.
Rather than having it a full-blown sermon, you could do something for your Youth Group. From what I saw there, your ‘Senior’ group would probably like to help plan one of their own sessions, and you could have other people’s views in there as well. It wouldn’t even have to be a sermon, it could be a simple, short lesson or the whole youth group time – Planning what to do, when to do it, etc.
Comment by Andon | October 27, 2008 |
[...] a short retrospective on the open source sermon project, which I’ve always thought was a [...]
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Pingback by The Blog: new medium, new vocation, new gospel? | Male Voice Over Artist, Marty Daniels 866-935-7539 | November 20, 2008 |
Nick – Nov. 22, 2008
As a practicing christian, Im fascinated by the obvious attempt of mainline organized religions, specifically liturgical branches, to grapple with embracing the new media to “transform” those people who have a “church memory” but have retreated from traditional services.
Here in the Dallas Fort-Worth area of Texas, we have a champion dealing with METAPHOR as the link between expectations for the delivery of a Sunday sermon to visual literates, (expecting nothing less than a polished delivery, just short of a professional theatrical performance), and the pastor who wants those with vested intersts in the delivery to “contribute”…His website is Midnight Oil Productions.
My personal response is to write movies that encompass many of the themes the Church would spread, and do so in a movie as “entertainment”,when in fact, the theme has been spread. Nic, give your gift of time and effort for as long as you can. It is my heartfelt prayer that all who are reaching for a tool to share our experiences will find it. – God’s Peace be with you! – Larry R.
Comment by Larry Rathbun | November 23, 2008 |