On January 15, 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched the free, web-based encyclopedia known as Wikipedia. Wikipedia is collaborative and open-source, meaning that anyone can add and edit material on the site. Since this launch, there have been 20 million articles written by volunteers around the world. These volunteers are not paid. Nonetheless there are an estimated 100,000 people who regularly contribute to this “community” whether it be adding content, retooling visual presentation, or even removing inappropriate entries. In ten years, Wikipedia has going from being a fringe project to the 6th most visited website in the world.

It’s worth noting that I wrote the above paragraph entirely with information that I found on Wikipedia. I have absolutely no idea who wrote the entry I used, who edited it, or who documented the source material at the bottom of the page. I have no idea whether or not it is true. And yet, despite the anonymity of the contributors, I trust that they collectively have produced an accurate description of themselves and their history. I trust that if I type in a random term (“American Civil War” or “dog breeds“), there will be an accurate and thorough article on that subject.

Part of this trust is born out of repeated success in using Wikipedia for quick research. But an even larger part is the knowledge that people have devoted innumerable hours of their lives to producing quality work, all despite not making a penny. These contributors may not be “experts” in an area (although there are certainly contributors who would qualify as such) but they know how to access the experts and they have self-assigned roles based on their individual gifts. They demonstrate the power of community and human beings’ innate desire to contribute, and through that demonstration they offer an intriguing picture of what faith communities could and should be doing to thrive.

Although there are certainly exceptions (such as Quakers), most faith communities today operate in varying degrees of centralization. Some have rigid and defined hierarchies such as the Catholic Church. Some have a defined faith leader (an Imam, Rabbi, or Pastor) who handles specific functions while overseeing the entire community. Regardless of the degree of centralization there is an implicit understanding that there are certain functions that are best left to a “professional” rather than a random member of the community. But what if this wasn’t the case? What if a 21st century faith community’s ability to thrive had far less to do with the professional religious leadership and far more to do with empowering its members?

5 years ago, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom wrote a fantastic book entitled The Starfish and The Spider which explored the success of “leaderless” organizations like Wikipedia, craigslist, and (formerly) Skype. In the book, Brafman and Beckstrom write about how the flexibility of these decentralized organizations allowed them to quickly and successfully respond to needs. Unlike the centralized spider organization (a head that controlled many legs), these companies were instead acting more like starfish (an organism where each “arm” was in fact a sum of whole). These decentralized organizations have no one in charge but are instead united around a particular set of values. Knowledge and power are distributed throughout these organizations. People within these organizations communicate amongst themselves if something needs to be done rather than asking permission from someone.

I don’t know what each of your faith communities are like, but a decentralized system seems like a pipedream for me. Religious leadership seems stuck on a centralized model – one in which the leaders are presumed to be the final word on all things religious. Yet I know for a fact that there are members of my church that know more about classical theology than I do. There are members of my church who are better at business than me, better at managing people, better at creative arts. Rather than fight these and maintain my authority, I believe that I, as a religious leader, am meant to call these gifts out of people – to ask members to teach, to explore, to create.

There are many people who doubt the validity of such a system. After all, won’t this lack of professional experience lead to a diluting of knowledge about my faith tradition? Wikipedia may be a popular and easily accessible site but it can’t replace the value of encyclopedias for their accuracy – at least, so the argument goes. But, believe it or not, one study showed that Wikipedia entries (thanks to their community of editors and re-editors) are almost accurate as those encyclopedia entries written by professors. If given an opportunity, people not only want to contribute, they want to contribute well.

We’ve seen the fruits of organizations where anyone can edit, create, and participate. Perhaps it is time that we as faith communities do the same.