'Wiki Encyclopedia of CityReaching' is sponsored by the  'Center For Urban Innovation'... "Training Innovative Multicultural CityReachers."

"Getting Our Act Together"....

   Why build a cityreaching wiki encyclopedia?

   by Neil Cox, 'Center For Urban Innovation'

Drafting this paper's objectives...

• [also see 'Why Wiki?'... which we'll use as our primary lead-sheet for the class as we teach wiki skills.]
• low barrier to entry...
• for such reasons as exchanging info from participating ministries...
• notably, about "what does a 21st Century Urban Christian Leader need to know... and be able to do?"
• how it will aid us in developing our urban development degree.
• Beg the big questions... e.g.... What is the Model Church of a community?  And other 'Big Questions'... including re our Learning System... model curriculum, model faculty, etc.).
• Let's us link-to or describe some key 'models'...
• Eg... Walt Willett's example... Grace Baptist Church of Indy Neighborhood House, and white-paper philosophy... interacting with map... southside 'Special Forces' conversation with CW.
• Eg... Near Eastside Christian Revitalization Group... pastors, NESCO, etc.
• Eg... Midwest Gospel Quartet Conference ... timeline-scheduling using this wiki.
• Eg... Indy Timeline... collaborative scheduling.
• Eg... Operation Timothy... collaboratively optimizing a basic series of discipleship booklets.
• Wikis tend to distill & sharpen a collaborative set of inputs... ie, adding 'order' to a certain amount of 'chaos' (inputs by many ministries).  So a wiki to grow-yet-distill-down a large body of knowledge... say about cityreaching.... seems like an idea whose time has come.
• And after all, what the American Church has been doing for 200 years... apparently isn't working.  We need to shake things up, revisit assumptions... and more closely attune our Great Commission efforts to the Bible.
• And the very nature of wikis -- as a collaborative someting --  describes The Church... a collaborative body... demonstrating unity/harmony.
• Almost unrelated... but related really... Even if an urban leader doesn't even surf or contribute to the wiki question re model leader (for instance), by being asked he now knows that truly we want inputs from him and others.  That is, even in the asking and tangibly, visibly launching the collaborative wiki, it says loudly... the issue is bigger than us -- we need each other.
•  

just playing/testing here for a moment...