The inmates are running the asylum

"People are now making their culture instead of consuming it. All these new devices and venues have been nothing but empowering, liberating. We’re our own and one another’s pundits and publishers, storytellers and networks. The audience has rebelled, risen up, and thrown off its chains of passivity. The inmates are running the asylum. And the resultant anarchy is creating a rich, deep layer of life, as fertile and self-organizing as soil."

This post by Annie Gottlieb, at her new group blog, Ambiance, generated lots of comments about whether or not we are losing a common culture. It made me think about how churches have in some ways lost a common culture - or maybe they never had one, really? What I mean is, sometimes the differences between churches are so great that it's as though folks are speaking a different language - most of the references, the assumptions, the catch-phrases, the practices of one group are unknown to the other group.