Leadership editor Skye Jethani is visiting over 20 blogs today to talk about his book The Divine Commodity. In it, Skye interacts with both consumerism’s grip on American culture as well as the artwork and life of Vincent van Gogh and connects the two. In the end, he offers a way to break free of the grip of consumerism by practicing several spiritual disciplines.
As part of today’s blog tour, Skye answered a question from us related to his new book:
What do you say to the Christian leader who favors applying consumer-driven principles to ministry because they “work?”
I’ve heard this argument before–both in ministry books and in discussion with church leaders. I usually have to follow up by asking, “Define what you mean by ‘works’?” The response is typically something related to increasing church attendance. “We started offering coffee and flexible worship venues and it worked. Our attendance is up 38 percent.” Or, “We did a sermon series about having great sex and we had to start a third worship service because it was so popular. It worked!”
It’s hard to disagree. Yes, using consumer-driven principles works if your mission is getting butts in seats. There is no more effective tool to build institutions than those devised by consumerism. But that is not the mission that Christ has given us. He’s commanded us to “go and make disciples.” (One of the great problems the church faces, which reveals our captivity to consumerism, is the popular belief that disciples can only be made by getting butts in seats and through the construction of large program-driven institutions. This is one falsehood tackled in my book.) Consumerism can build institutions, but it cannot build disciples of Jesus Christ. This is because the fundamental values of consumerism are utterly at odds with the values of Christ’s kingdom.
Consumerism advocates the sanctity of personal desires. Christ calls us to surrender our desires, take up our cross, and follow him. Consumerism says a person’s value is determined by his/her productivity or usefulness to me. Christ says all people are inherently valuable–even those the world kicks to the curb. Consumerism puts the consumer at the center of the cosmos and sees God as a divine butler or spiritual therapist we employ to make our lives better. Christ calls us to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength–to put him at the center of the cosmos and organize our lives around his will, not our own.
We have a tendency to celebrate church leaders who have managed to draw a large crowd to their church. But this is hardly an accomplishment in a culture where a few bottles of Diet Coke and a pack of Mentos mints can draw a crowd. The fact that a few thousand people might show up on Sunday to hear you talk seems less impressive when you consider that we live in a society in which millions of people will tune in to watch Sanjaya sing on American Idol.
Aggregating an audience isn’t successful ministry. Fostering women, men, and children toward deep, internal, and unyielding communion with Christ that transforms their lives and produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control–that is ministry worth celebrating. To do this work we don’t need the self-centered methodologies of consumerism, but the counter-intuitive and foolish ways of God’s kingdom. And this is exactly why I wrote The Divine Commodity–to show the weaknesses of employing consumer models in ministry, and inspire us all in a new direction.
Skye will be watching your comments and responding, so fire away with your follow-up questions and observations. Also, check out his Q&A’s on the other blogs participating in today’s tour:
