I read a fascinating article the other day in Fast Company entitled “The Sharing Economy.”

The article defined the “Sharing Economy” as a…

“global trend to make sharing something far more economically significant than a primitive behavior taught in preschool. Spawned by a confluence of the economic crisis, environmental concerns, and the maturation of the social web, an entirely new generation of businesses is popping up. They enable the sharing of cars, clothes, couches, apartments, tools, meals, and even skills. The basic characteristic of these you-name-it sharing marketplaces is that they extract value out of the stuff we already have. Many of these sites depend on millennials disenchanted by the housing bubble and the banking crisis, or uninterested in traditional icons of success such as house or auto ownership.”

As I was reading this article I immediately started thinking about the implications for the church. I know the current economy has motivated us to collaborate with other ministries and churches to save money, but in the process we’ve built some sweet partnerships.

Here’s two examples just from this week:

-On Sunday all five of our campuses did baptisms during their Sunday services. We were short a portable baptistery. Instead of dropping several thousand dollars on one, our North campus borrowed a portable baptistery from Cross Roads Church where my friend, Randy Cook, pastors. A church, that in the past, we’ve shared our videos with.

-Yesterday we were shooting a video for a new series and we needed a bus. In the past we may have just rented a bus but in our new reality we called a local ministry called Lighthouse who gladly allowed us to borrow their bus for the video shoot.

On the flip side of this I’ve seen the church miss some huge opportunities to share. Currently four out of five of our campuses meet in shared spaces. One of our campuses shares a space that is shared with several organizations including another church. When we first moved into the space we offered to rent the chairs this church had and stored on site (they use it in the morning and we use it at night) but they said “No.” We then offered to buy the chairs from them at original cost and allow them to use them for free (this was still cheaper for us because we wouldn’t have to buy a trailer for storage) but they still said “No.” I guess they really love those chairs.

The article goes on to state:

“The central conceit of collaborative consumption is simple: Access to goods and skills is more important than ownership of them.  The benefits are hard to argue — lower costs, less waste, and the creation of global communities with neighborly values.”

I don’t know about you but I’m fired up to continue to find ways for the Church to grow and innovate inside of this new “shared economy.” In fact, I think the church, above all organizations, should be paving the way in this endeavor.

On a scale of 1 to 10 how do you think the Church is doing at sharing?

What other ways do you think this “sharing economy” could benefit the local church?