On the insight:

Online Markets…Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, markets are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations.

The “target group” of the Church,  is really unknown.  It’s something known by the process of discerning call.  The ones who respond are the ones who decide to join,  and become part of the community.  A monkey wrench thrown into this “marketing” approach is that the diversity of call is not limited to an existing set of calls;  in other words, just because a given community has a particular set of ministries/missions/calls received,  doesn’t mean that this is their “personality” and thus they should only seek people who “fit that profile”.  The call process cannot be “focused down” as in marketing.  The call comes and with it comes the resources to fulfill it.  New structures and new strategies and “new blood” are always called for,  since the world does not await the Church’s organization of itself around certain missions before it generates a social/spiritual situation which requires intervention and aid.  The world continues to generate new forms of cultural captivity and personal greed,  which spawn refugees who suffer, in one form or another.  So the “market” changes,  and we in the Church can never rest on our laurels.  Our task as Church is to provide a place of discernment,  for “calls yet to come”,  for “calls being sounded but not yet heard”,  and for “calls that are ending in order to lead us to another — perhaps a new focus in a more detailed area of the former;  perhaps something entirely different”.

IN the Church as I see it,  the “self-organizing” is the nature of call even without computer networks,  or the Internet,  or even the Cluetrain Manifesto.  The self-organizing comes from the ongoing activity of God,  who will push recipients of call to use whatever operating structure-building ,  strategizing tools at their disposal,  and build a mission with a supporting structure.  The existence and growth and evolution of Computer Networking,  in form of the Web,  can certainly leverage the “self-organizing” tendencies of networked operants.  The activity of God and the Calls put forth can reach beyond geography now.  Ideas,  convictions,  dreams,  envisionings;  all can be “put on the table” before a group and explored.  

It is my experience that participants will seek each other out.   Some may be unable to go as far as to relocate or make frequent visits,  but some will.  Maybe only a few will.  But people and their sense of call and their “contributions” in an online setting will add to the mix of a mission,  and provide a variety of means of support.  And the “reports”;  the “storytelling” that can be presented online,  can provide a means of support for the mission as online seekers find the stories via searches and links from others,  and “word spreads”.

“more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations” This attribute signals to me the need for the Church to seek out the qualities of self-organization

Story :  “Utilize the Viral Nature of Lay Renewal”