Israeli orchestral conductor Itay Talgam tells the story of Italy’s La Scala opera, a 700-person creative community who felt smothered by artistic director Ricardo Muti’s strong top-down leadership style. In a letter to Muti, the community complained “you are not letting us develop as musicians. You are using us as instruments, not as partners. We need a leader who leads without controlling us.”

Creatives are wired to contribute. Creatives aspire to have their voices play a constructive role in community formation and direction, including (especially) religious community. Great orchestra conductors become conduits for this individual creativity to flourish. An intentional virtual network is like a well-led orchestra with every player listening carefully to the ensemble while contributing their individual part.

Religious / clergy-based leadership (or, for that matter, any vertical leadership model) can often behave like an overbearing conductor, not partnering with the orchestra but managing and controlling the musical conversation. Talgam concludes, “The worst damage I can inflict on my orchestra is to give them a clear instruction, for it prevents the sectional ensembles from listening to each other.”

The Internet is not simply an incremental enhancement to religious community. It is — like La Scala’s creative community — a confrontation, a protest, a demand, an awakening. Global networking facilitates an entirely new form of engaged ecclesia. When a radical new technology appears, things that were previously impossible start occurring (Jenkins, Kelly, Shirky, etc.). If enough of those impossible things happen with increasing frequency — as is happening today with the meteoric rise of human connectivity — the change becomes a revolution.

The global-virtual ecclesia is listening to each other – moving their focus away from the podium, towards a harmonious priesthood of the commons.

added:  Chris Ridgeway’s review of Dwight Friesen’s new book on connected ecclesia.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Art & Creativity, Aspire, Culture, Microclesia, Science & Technology, TED, Transition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.