On Consumerism
For the last few days I’ve written about how we invite existing believers into our house churches: we invite them into relationships, we invite them to lay their lives down, and we invite them into mutual discipleship. As I wrote, I found myself tip-toeing around the concept of consumerism in the church so I wanted to take a minute and explain the problem with consumerism.
Consumerism is a lifestyle built around the consumption of a product. It drives many economies, and in particular ours in the West. Car companies, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and countless other companies thrive, not because you need another car, phone, or computer, but because they’ve taught us to want the newest model. They’ve trained the masses to want the next best thing. Many people throughout the cultural West find their identity not in who they are, but based on what they have.
This is a problem by itself–We should find our identity in Jesus Christ and Him alone. With this shift in mindset, the church has increasingly adapted the methods of the world in order to “reach” society. I’ve known churches to offer iPads or similar electronic devices as a prize for the child who invites the most unchurched friends to Sunday School. All of this is in the name of the Gospel, but what it teaches us is to be motivated by stuff and not Jesus.
At a higher level, this infects churches and cripples ministry. The pursuit of many churches is growth. This means they have to continually move to the edges of a city where young families tend to live in order to attract new attenders with the money to sustain a ministry. Big buildings with crippling debt are the means to this end. And woe to the church or ministry who makes the wrong bet on a ministry direction and offends the wrong people. They are left with a building and debt that no one is around to pay for. This frequently hinders the proclamation of the gospel. I’ve literally seen churches (and by this I don’t just mean the building, I mean the ministry, the people, everything) sold to another minister. I refuse to listen to another church talk about their brand. I’ve watched viable churches closed because there wasn’t enough money. The list can go on and on.
Consumerism attempts to turn everything that we do into a transaction. It cheapens love. It never calls people sacrifice or to suffer. In everything, it encourages people to look for a reward in relationship to whatever they participate in, whether it’s physical reward or an ideological one (being part of the cool crowd/church/people). As you can probably see by this point, these attitudes are opposed to God’s Kingdom which is built on sacrificial love.
Don’t misunderstand me–there is a reward that we are offered in this age and the age to come for following Christ, but these are different than iPads or being part of the in-crowd. Our reward, first and foremost, is fellowship with the indwelling Christ. We get God! And then God gives us the reward of His Kingdom, spiritual family, and even possibly material gain for obedience. But these come from His hand and are attained through following Him in adverse circumstances (see Mark 10:29-30).
Friends, we serve Jesus. God the Father has poured His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. He was raised from the dead and promised to raise us with Him. We have access to the authority and power of God’s Kingship. We don’t need to be motivated by the things of this world: success, fame, power, money. But it’s not enough that we ourselves aren’t motivated by these things. As a church, we have to repent of building systems that motivate individuals by anything other than faithfulness to Jesus. At the end of the day, at the end of the age, those are the things that will keep us faithful, not our stuff.
So would you join me, church, regardless of what type of church you are part of, from building God’s Kingdom with the straw of this world? Can we say “no” to motivating people in the flesh to follow God? Can we together disciple a coming generation to follow Christ because He is good?
It may mean a decrease in your crowd, but the disciples you’ll have left will change the world.
…We Invite Existing Christians Into Mutual Discipleship…
A few years ago we started inviting existing believers to meet with us and develop relationship before we just thrust them into a meeting and along the way we started to invite them to consider the cost of meeting as an organic house church. But there is another facet of our lifestyle that we also invite them into intentionally and that is the process of mutual discipleship.
Most of you are probably familiar with the idea of discipleship. It’s the process of becoming more like Jesus through regular interaction and encouragement of other believers. While it’s possible for a person to become a disciple of Jesus from a direct relationship with Christ, God’s design is that we learn from the strengths and weaknesses of each other and help each other see beyond our blind spots.
Mutual discipleship is where people gather together to learn to follow Jesus together without having a top-down structure. For many of my friends in the evangelical church, top-down discipleship is the only form of discipleship that is ever known. Paul actually asked believers to follow him as he followed Christ, so I do believe that there is a place to learn from people further down the path of following Jesus than you. Mutual discipleship is important, though, because without it, we will never multiply at the speed needed to sustain the harvest.* The only way to have everyone being discipled and discipling at the same time is mutual discipleship.
This process of everyone becoming a disciple and making disciples of others is crucial towards Jesus’ goal of discipling the nations. But I find in many of the places existing believers come from, Christianity with discipleship is for the committed…not the ground floor of believing in Christ. So we encourage (but do not require) people who are joining our house churches to consider joining two or three other believers in our midst for reading the Bible, accountability, and prayer for the lost.*
While this is may seem artificial, I think it’s helped us set the tone for the kind of people we want to be. Not everyone has joined one of these groups and some who have joined have continued to remain a part of our fellowships but not a part of our groups of 2&3. But everyone knows they are welcome and the groups are important. Everyone gets the opportunity to be a disciple and a disciple-maker. These groups have built relationships and helped us learn how to love and serve each other without control.
Believers, living together, digging into the Bible together, confessing sins to each other, and praying for the lost together is such a beautiful reality. I don’t want believers to miss out on the opportunity to be a part of that process. So when we meet with existing believers and discuss joining our house churches, we share the beauty of discipleship and ask if they are interested in participating.
And I believe we are better for it.
Are you inviting people who are new to your church into a lifestyle of discipleship?
How do you help believers understand discipleship as the lifestyle of every believer and not just the committed few?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
*I will write more about this process of mutual discipleship more in an upcoming series. See? I told you the footnotes are often a springboard for more blogs in the future.
He is Near
“And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Part of following Jesus means you go where He goes and Jesus goes to some out of the way places. We like to think Jesus makes us many promises that He hasn’t made. He hasn’t promised ease. He hasn’t promised a lack of trouble. But He has promised, no matter where we are our where our journey for the Gospel takes us, He would be there.
Quick story: My third mission trip was the first mission trip I ever took without my mentor. He had introduced me to missions, introduced me to people in several countries, and introduced me to people who had gone with me. But this third trip couldn’t go, and asked me to go in my place.
So I’m in Africa with a team of people who have never been to Africa, supposedly acting like I knew what I was doing. But I was all the way on the other side of the planet and not very sure of myself. That first night, I woke up in the middle of the night incredibly afraid.
And there, in a little hut in Uganda, I started to sing, quietly, under my breath so I wouldn’t wake up my team. And after a minute or two His presence showed up. And I sat there for an hour or more singing and enjoying the presence of God. And it was that encounter with Jesus that strengthened me for the entire rest of the trip. I knew that God was with me and that was enough.
You may not be half way around the world right now. But wherever you are, God is there with you. You’re not alone. There’s nowhere you can go that is too hard for Him to find you. He is with you…even to the ends of the world. Be sure of this.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 