From a netfriend:

Walter Wink has said quite a lot about “Corporate Spirit” – particularly in relation to the concept of “Powers and Principalities” (see the “Powers” trilogy and subsequent book entitled, “The Powers that be”).

He raises questions about… – what kind of spirit are corporate bodies driven by? (businesses, charities, churches, etc) – what is the nature of corporate identity and responsibility, as opposed to individual identity and responsibility? – how is the Holy Spirit distinct and desirable by comparison to other concepts of spirit?

Now Wink is not a “radical pente”, but more of a conservative Christian educator with a few radical discipleship tendancies… pretty standard reading in Christian Education circles. He is really seeking to develop the idea that a group is more than the sum of its individuals – and should be! i.e. there is a group dynamic borne of a group spirit.

So – some questions for us… – how much of an e-discussion-list is corporate, group-stuff and how much is collective individualism? – what group dynamics are at work? – how much involvement do we expect the Holy Spirit to have in our discussions? (for me that sometimes may mean when does the server go down?- 😉 ) – how responsibile are we about the relationships developed in this setting?

These are intended as open-ended questions without right or wrong answers. Rather, I am suggesting that the discussion about corporations might provoke us into thinking about how we express corporate responsibility and a spirit of cooperation and understanding. If we model it, maybe we have started on the journey to sharing it more widely…