When I was younger, my family would take trips to Jacksonville to visit my great-grandma Alice, or Mama. I remember the small profile of Mama’s swollen ankles against the lilac hem of her duster. She was happy to see us. Her sweet, senescent cheekbone touched against the chubbiness of mine as we hugged. The house smelled like my mother’s cooking but somehow better. Mama was always cooking before anyone called, cutting her sweet potatoes as if the stillness of day meant that somebody, somewhere, might be hungry.
The reason Mama knew how to love this way so well was the same reason she prepared a table in an empty house. Mama fed people before she knew who was coming. I didn’t know then that what she was doing was discipleship: she was showing me hospitality without hierarchy.
Mama went on to be with Jesus some time ago, but what she embodied never departed from me. As I grew older, this picture of access made me wrestle with parts of my life where my faith intersected with market realities. As an adult, I have spent a massive amount of my time writing, performing, and traveling as a spoken-word artist. I’ve been in different spaces that magnify God’s presence: youth conferences, Christian poetry events, workshops, and festivals. I’ve also earned my income there.
To gather Christians in large numbers for art, inspiration, and spiritual enrichment, we create events that require a financial structure (i.e., tickets, tiers, passes, and exclusive access) and make the gathering viable. It’s a system shaped partly by calling, partly by creativity, and partly by raw economics. We consider ticket sales, budgeting, travel costs, artist and speaker fees, and overall production value. The gatherings are indeed ministries, but financial imperatives remain at play. How else, after all, would I be able to cover my school’s tuition, groceries, and gas?
At the same time, I have grown to feel uneasy about some things, namely VIP passes and more expensive tickets offering a small number of attendees backstage access, meet and greets, and a host of benefits other attendees don’t get to experience. Christian musicians have received some criticisms for offering a VIP experience. But these tickets are also sold at conferences and other non-musical events, which are my wheelhouse and primary concern here.
While it’s true high-access experiences can subsidize costs for attendees across the board, our quest to generate revenue through these measures is reinforcing existing economic hierarchies and deserves critical thought.
Conferences and sporadic Christian events are not the local church, and I’m not suggesting they should be treated as so. They don’t carry the same covenantal weight, elders, pastoral responsibility, or scriptural mandate of a gathered body. They are not mandatory for Chrisitan formation, nor are they meant to replace the means of grace that shape the everyday lives of believers.
But even while conferences are not church, they are important. Gatherings shape the Christian imagination and our discipleship. And when the spaces that shape us become financially stratified, they risk discipling us into a hierarchy Jesus never modeled (James 2:1-9). My concern is not that conferences cost money; it’s what happens when the cost subtly separates us from each other and determines who can afford to be in some rooms and who can’t (and I know some can’t because they have told me so).
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For a couple of years in my life, I traveled with the Poets in Autumn (PIA), a group of Christian poets who toured city to city for more than two months.
People came to see us do something creative and faithful. We performed poetry mostly in churches, where people gathered not just to hear poetry but to be inspired, challenged, entertained, and in some ways discipled—even if they weren’t aware of it yet. I saw firsthand the beauty of those spaces. Attendees who wouldn’t normally be among one another were worshiping together while communities formed in church foyers.
Our tour schedule included a long list of cities where we sold tickets for regular admissions as well as VIP passes. But when the tour reached my hometown of Philadelphia, my senior pastor at the time did something special – he volunteered to cover the entire show. Every seat we had to offer that day would be free. He only had one caveat: Let everybody come in and experience the same thing.
People came out in droves, not just from Philly but from New York City, Delaware, Virginia, even Florida. That night, the building was full. Many were added to the church and found community and a language for what they had been carrying up until this point. It wasn’t perfect, nor was it meant to be a permanent model. But it’s a wonderful glimpse of what took place in Philly for one night, all a result of one person’s generosity.
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Some churches might be able to partner with conferences and replicate these types of experiences. However, I’m aware that will be a rare occurrence, so here’s a more sustainable option: “VIP” access doesn’t need to disappear; it just needs to be reframed.
Instead of offering proximity to speakers, teachers, poets and the like, these higher-priced tickets can provide a service. One idea is to honor patrons who chose to spend more, instead of simply rewarding wealth. When Christian gatherings advertise higher-priced VIP tickets, they can tell people those tickets will subsidize costs for other attendees or simply help sustain the ministry. People who purchase VIP tickets wouldn’t get any exclusive access or benefits, but as with charity donations, they can receive thank-you cards expressing gratitude.
There are tradeoffs, of course. Some people pay more only if they know they will get something extra in return. But on the other hand, if attendees who pay a (subsidized) ticket are informed that VIP ticket holders are lowering the cost of admission or sustaining the ministry out of pure liberality, it would spur more appreciation and perhaps a sense of community in the overall attendance.
If tiered tickets remain, let them serve as Mama would, with those who buy them knowing the fullest plate feeds others well. The highest tier will invest the most financially in the body. This type of new model would expand the work of the conferences and ministries instead of the distance between attendees. In other words, the VIP label exists for a good reason—it’s more generous.
Jazer Willis is a poet, writer, and creative theologian studying at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. His work explores spirituality, memory, and culture.
