This weekend, we start a new series in Victory all over the Metro entitled, “Wikichurch.”
Wiki in Hawaii means ‘quick.’ In 2000, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger started an online encyclopedia called Nupedia. The goal was for it to include contributions written only by experts. Before an article could be posted on Nupedia, it had to go through an extensive scholarly review process. The strategy proved to be painstakingly slow. When Nupedia unplugged its servers in 2003, only 24 articles had been posted, and 74 were in the review process. There were not very many articles, but they were scholarly and professionally written!
In 2001, one year after Nupedia launched, Wales and Sanger started Wikipedia as a feeder system for Nupedia. The idea was to allow non-scholars and non experts to write articles that the Nupedia scholars would review. By the end of 2001, volunteers had submitted more than 20,000 wiki articles.
The experts took three years to create 24 articles and the non experts on year to create 20,000 articles. Now there are at least 17 million articles, most are as accurate as traditional encyclopedia entries written by experts.
Jesus will build His church and He does it through people, imperfect and flawed. The goal of the ministers is to get ministry out of the hands of the ‘experts’ and hand it over to ‘non-professionals’.
“We are called to empower imperfect people to spread the most important message around the world.” (Steve Murrell)
Here’s a 700 Club interview with Pastor Steve that explains what a WikiChurch is.