It’s a truly amazing thing.

This past week, following my father’s death, I have been so touched and inspired and supported by you, the members of this church.  Your gifts of flowers and food, your calls and your cards, your emails and your prayers have really upheld me through a difficult and emotional time.  And to see so many of you at the memorial service in Maryland, on a snowy, icy day – I was truly moved.

You are an amazing congregation.

But there’s another crowd that impressed me this week – the congregation of my home church, Christian Community Presbyterian.  The childhood friends that gathered for my father’s service reminded me of the power of a congregation to shape the lives of a whole generation of young people.  I saw friends that I hadn’t seen for years, and they all spoke so gratefully about how my father had been a role model for them.  As they were speaking, I looked around and realized that their parents had been great role models for me as well.  My friends and I had been shaped by a wise and faithful group of Christians.

This may sound odd, because so often we look down on crowds – dismissing them as mindless mobs.  But there can be real wisdom in a crowd, as I discovered this past week.

My interest in this topic has led me to a book called The Wisdom of Crowds, which explores why large groups of people are often smarter than isolated individuals.  The author suggests that a crowd of people can be surprisingly smart and effective -- even when many members of the group are lacking intelligence or experience.  Because diversity of opinion allows new types of information to be introduced, it is almost always a good idea to allow a large number of people to have a role in decision-making.

Here’s an example:  At an English farm exhibition back in 1906, a scientist became interested in a contest in which people were challenged to guess the weight of a slaughtered ox.  This was kind of like the “guess-the-number-of-jelly-beans-in-the-jar” competition that we see at carnivals today.

As you might imagine, it was very difficult -- if not impossible -- for an isolated individual to guess the weight of the ox correctly.  But much smarter than any individual is the wisdom of a crowd.  The scientist studied the estimates of 800 people at the exhibition – people who were smart, dumb, old, young, and representing all types of professions.  Their collective estimate was 1,198 pounds.

The actual weight of the ox: 1,197 pounds.  The crowd was off by only one pound, which proves that many heads are better than one.

This is not to say, however, that every crowd is a wise crowd.  Consider the congregation of the Israelites, wandering in the wilderness.  They have escaped the Egyptians, crossed the Red Sea, and received meat and manna from heaven – signs that God loves them and wants to provide for them.  But now they are camping in the desert, and much to their dismay they discover that there is no water for them to drink.  They become a quarreling crowd, a complaining crowd, a doubting crowd – anything but a wise crowd – and their despair feeds on itself.  

“What shall I do with this people?” cries Moses, feeling vulnerable to their violence.  “They are almost ready to stone me” (v. 4).  Moses is now anxious for some crowd control – for a miracle that will bring this unruly mob to its senses.  Enough, already, replies the Lord.  “Go on ahead of the people” … take your staff and I’ll meet you at the rock of Horeb … “Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink” (vv. 5-6).

Sure enough, the rock produces water – just as God promised it would.  And Moses calls the place Massah and Meribah, meaning Test and Quarrel, because the people had quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (v. 7).

These Israelites were a quarreling crowd, a testing crowd, a disrespectful crowd, a frustrated and potentially violent crowd.  Anything but a wise crowd.  The story ends not with a celebration of a miracle, but with a reminder of unfaithfulness – Massah and Meribah, Test and Quarrel.  They got in trouble because they did not trust God to save them – instead, they put all their energy into quarreling with one another.

So how can we avoid the trap that the Israelites fell into, and become a much wiser and more faithful congregation?

We can start by taking some lessons from The Wisdom of Crowds.  This book suggests that there are four conditions that define a wise crowd, four characteristics that prevent a group from becoming a mindless mob.

First, there should always be a place for diversity of opinion.  In the life of the church, we can become a wise crowd by embracing diversity.  This means that as new people come into our congregation, we jump at the opportunity to learn something new.  We should ask our new members – including those who joined in February -- about problems we can’t seem to solve, and then we should listen to and act on their ideas.  New people bring a diversity of ideas about ministry and mission that we aren’t going to find anywhere else!  (Rev. Magazine, May-June 2004)

Second, a wise crowd always allows for independence -- it does not force people to conform to the mentality of the mob.  This means surrounding ourselves with people who don’t really care about how things are “supposed to be done.”  It means seeking out folks who don’t understand how things have “always been done.”  Add to the mix a group of people who understand how to promote creative ideas in organizations, and suddenly -- like water from a rock -- we’ve got independent thinking!

Third, smart mobs develop techniques for aggregation – mechanisms for turning private judgments into a collective decision.  We are actually pretty good at this as Presbyterians, because we don’t put decision-making in the hands of single individual, whether it is a pastor, a bishop, or a pope.  Instead, our elders come together as the session and discover together where God wants this church to go.  I have often been amazed at the decisions our elders make, and surprised when they have gone in a direction that I haven’t thought about myself.  More often than not, I come to realize that their collective decision is very much in line with the will of God.

Fourth, and finally, wisdom comes when crowds allow for decentralization.  This means that we take the time to ask children and youths what they think the church is all about.  We expand our knowledge by inviting a cross-section of members to describe what is essential to Christian life.  We allow small groups to be formed around a wide variety of interests and ideas.  We put together committees to deal with the associate pastor job description, or the sheltering of local homeless people on freezing nights, and through this we gain new and valuable perspectives that might not come to us in any other way.

The key to collective intelligence is keeping these four characteristics in mind: Diversity, Independence, Aggregation, and Decentralization.  This is an approach that can help us to find our way through the wilderness – together – instead of quarreling among ourselves and putting God to the test.  It is an example of powerful and positive Crowd Control – control by the entire community here at FPC, as we discover together where we need to be going.

Let me close by simply saying that I am learning a great deal from you, as we move forward together.  Serving you over the past four years, I have benefited from your collective wisdom about the ministry and mission of this church, and I am excited about where we are going together.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that we are a Mission-Minded Church, one that looks first to the needs of others, and one that grows inwardly as it looks outwardly.  Whether our focus is on the work of the Lamb Center in Fairfax, or an AIDS orphanage in Africa, or a church camp in Honduras, our energy is being directed more and more to performing God’s work in the world around us.

At the same time, I sense that we are becoming a church that is Small-Group-Centered.  I am seeing excitement, enthusiasm and effectiveness in groups such as Godly Play, Midlife Men on a Mission, Companions in Christ, and our circles of Presbyterian Women -- groups that contain the diversity, independence, aggregation and decentralization that are key characteristics of wise crowds.  I am so pleased that the redesign of our church staff will support this kind of small group ministry, because I am convinced that it will make us an even more vital congregation.

We are becoming a Small-Group-Centered, Mission-Minded Church.  This identity is coming out of your collective wisdom as a congregation, and I’m convinced that it is very much in line with the will of God for our church.

You are a wise crowd, and an amazing congregation.  By trusting God and working together, we’ll move through the wilderness and ever closer to the Promised Land.  Amen.