As the Church continues its slow and laborious downward-turned death spiral, geek culture continues to boom! After just a little thought, it’s not hard to see why.
For the sake of transparency, I have a true confessions to make: This minister dabbles in geek culture. “Dabble” may be an understatement. It’s more like I bathe in the geeky goodness of the culture — much like Harry Potter’s face in a pensieve. While there’s plenty to denounce about geek culture (like sexism, just to name one), there’s also plenty the Church can learn from it.
I won’t actually go as far as to say that there was a misquote in the Bible, and it should have read, “The geek shall inherit the Earth,” but maybe it’s something worth looking into? In that same tongue planted firmly in cheek kind of spirit, for your consideration, I give you “10 Things Church Can Learn From Geeks.”
1. Include. Don’t exclude.
Community matters and the more inclusive the community is the more resourceful and broader reaching it can be. Geeks get this intrinsically. The Church? Not so much. You are sometimes more likely to hear church folk quoting Jesus saying, “I am the way,” in order to exclude someone, than you are to hear them quote him saying, “Judge not,” in order to include them. We should take a cue from my geek brethren on this one.