Blog Tour: The Divine Commodity

Skye Jethani has authored a new book The Divine Commodity. It's a top rate examination of the forces that are unintentionally (and in many cases, intentionally and by design) shaping the church in the west along the lines of consumerism. 

One of the biggest arguments in this whole discussion is the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" line of reasoning. It's difficult when 2,000 or 3,000 or 10,000 people are showing up to watch you preach to hear any suggestion that maybe what you are doing is less-than-healthy in the long-term. 

So here's the question for Skye: 

Bob: So, what do you say to the pastor or Christian leader who decides to embrace consumer-driven ideas and principles for ministry because they “work?”

(Please- feel free to make comments or ask follow up questions in the comments! Skye should be checking in periodically with the conversation) 

Skye: 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 point in a new direction.

Comments

[Aaron Smith]

I'm really excited to read this book (Bob, maybe I could borrow your copy sometime?)

Skye, I do have a thought/question: Many consumer driven churches seem to point out the various programs they have through out the week as the method they are using to make disciples. It feels as if some churches are saying, "we use the consumer-driven ideas because it works to get people in the door, where we can then try and funnel them into programs we have to train them to be disciples."

Any thoughts on this method of making disciples? Can it be effective? Is it a legitimate defense of consumer-driven methods, using what "works" to get people into a disciplined method of discipleship? How would you respond to a pastor telling you this over coffee?