The University of California at Berkley took on an impossible assignment. It agreed to coordinate an international effort to locate extra-terrestrial life.

That is a daunting project. We live in a large galaxy, and the multi-million dollar radio telescopes looking at it suck in a lot of data. In fact, so much data is collected and forwarded to Berkley that no computer on earth is powerful enough to process it all. To accomplish this impossible task Berkley asked home computer users around the world to contact them over the Internet and download a program called "SETI @ Home." The SETI software makes a connection over the Internet to a computer in California and downloads a "work unit"—that is, a set of measurements from a particular part of the sky. The work unit is not large, but it takes the computer a while to crunch the numbers.

When the work is done, the computer makes another Internet call to Berkeley, uploads its results, and downloads a new work unit. What today's largest supercomputer could never do alone, over a million ordinary home computers do easily. Sometimes the best way to accomplish the impossible is to harness the help of the ordinary.

That is how the church works.

God didn't intend any one person to do all the work. No one can do it alone, but if we all do what we can, the unattainable becomes attainable; the church can be all that God intended it to be.