The final section of The Great Emergence culminates in the question of authority.  The ingredients of the culture we now live in seem to have been building toward this shift in the way we determine or experience authority.  As the authority of TEXT wanes,  in no small measure due to ease with which we can send it,  exchange it,  modify it,  and “react” to the communications of others,  so too does the unquestioned authority of the “keepers of the keys”  (in this case,  to Biblical interpretation).  The increased accessibility to the writings of theologians,  the frequency and widespread availability of reactions and agreements or  disagreements ,  has entered into the pastoral realm.  The division between education and access to educational resources is much more of a level playing field.  The Reformation and the Press broke down some of this ,  but the exponential growth of information technology has impinged upon previous authorities in overwhelming numbers.

So the Internet is that tool which has thrown wide open the  doors of exploration.  The Emergent experience or sensibilities have been “turned loose” upon theological dogmas and heretofore unquestioned assumptions,  hosted by the widespread networks of blogs, Social Media apps,  and the shifts in the way our minds are slowly being pried loose from their previous resistances  to usurping or questioning certain authorities.  Tickle posits that there is a replacement authority in “networked” authority.

The duty, the challenge, and the joy and excitement of the Church and for Christians who compose her,  then,  is the discovering what it means to believe that the Kingdom of God is within one and in understanding that one is thereby a pulsating, vibrating bit in a much grander network.  Neither  established authority nor scholarly or  priestly discernment alone can lead, because , being human,  both are trapped in space/time and thereby prevented from a perspective of total understanding.  Rather,  it is how the message runs back and forth,  over and about,  the hubs of the network that it is tried and amended and tempered into the wisdom and right action for effecting the Father’s will.
-p. 152-153  The Great Emergence  by Phyllis Tickle

In those “hubs”;  in the “journey” so to speak,  across the “spaces” that contai the swirling of God’s children seeking understanding and insight and belonging,  I believe we experience something that is  of the essence  of church.  Of course,  this “understanding” does not (or must not)  remain just a “conversation” or only on the level if ideas,  but is catalyst to mission and to the work of co-forming one another in the work of the church. (And here,  the “network” also finds aid in ways to organize and collectively act and provide). 

This idea of “networked” authority intrigues me.  It seems very close to being joined with the idea of consensus,  as different from “democratic”,  and also seems to have room there for activity of the Spirit.  This “body” that we are,  seems to have a fitting interface to the “network”  so that the activity and content on the  network Is not only “accessible to us”,  but we are “accessible” to IT in that the process of “open source-ing” it opens  for us an avenue of being open to the Spirit in our midst.

That may seem very abstract,  and also very NERDY,  but I think there’s something  in that.  I think something very significantly linked to exponential growth in “networked” behavior and thought is happening here.