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Here is a genuine good prank – one that everyone benefits from. I want to try an figure out how to do this …
My wife is the greatest. She is also going to celebrate Mother’s Day tomorrow for the first time on the receiving end of things. In honor of my wife’s first Mom’s Day I post something that she discovered, is excited about, and I will benefit from (in the form of boxer shorts).
Thread Banger is a site for those who want try to avoid shopping the corporate stores but still not be naked. The how-to videos seem a little like something you might find on a cable channel for pre-teens, but the designs are fairly great (like I said new boxers out of old Goodwill stuff, or turn a sweater into a beanie). If you want a Mother’s Day gift idea, I would go with, let’s see … ninja mittens!!!
Also, she intends to sign a pledge here at Wardrobe Refashion, which is a blog for people committed to buying and refashioning only previously loved clothing items. Like I said, she is a great wife and person.
New favorite song. Warning: You’ll be singing it all day.
I especially was struck by part where the people where trying to capture the love in nets to drag back in the church. Hmmmm.
Like I said in my last post, Christian commodification has been on my radar. I blogged about “The Divine Commodity”, a book by Skye Jethani. I wrote how I’ve been seeing this book show up, but that was like saying I think it’s about to rain when I hurricane is moving in.
After I wrote that last post I went to the PNW C&MA District Conference where Skye was the main speaker. This startled me. Sense then I have seen Skye’s book being reviewed all over the place. At the conference I sat in on a session he taught, amazed that I had just blogged about him (embarrassed at the thought of him finding out). At one point he asked if anyone of us in the room knew where our shirts were made. At this point, I may have gotten a bit to excited as my hand shot up like a kid in elementary school. I was practically chanting “I DO! I DO! PICK ME!” Not that I wanted to negate his point about us as citizens of the US being disconnected from what we consume, I think I was just feeling proud that my tee shirt is a sweat shop free AmericaApparel shirt that tag reads “Made in the USA”. I felt silly after.
But Skye said some pretty cool stuff and now I really want to read the book. Another thing that is cool about Skye is that he is incredibly fun to draw.
Here he is for real:
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Here he is in MS Paint:
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The reason I wanted to render Skye here is that I want to interview Skye. We’ll see how it goes.
Pete: Hey Skye
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Skye: Hi
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Pete: Skye, I must confess to you that I am a terrible interviewer.
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Skye: It’s ok. This one is fake. It will be great because you can control what we both say.
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Pete: Right on. I like that. I promise I won’t make you swear or something. Let’s do this!
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Skye: !!
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Pete: You talked at the conference abut how Jesus has a dream so big we can’t get our minds around it and what we are doing instead. Could you get into that?
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Skye: Yeah. The founder of the church, Jesus, left us with a dream for how to live – how to be the church – a dream that is so big that we can’t wrap our minds around it, so we just create our own model, not really on purpose, but we do and we base it on whatever our culture is doing, because that is all we know, it is what we are familiar with. It just so happens that the current model is the institution, it is consumerism. This can create some problems. Remember definition of consumerism that I had for you? Do you have that?
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Pete: Um, yes. Right here, conveniently.
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Skye: Could you post that too?
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Pete: I’m on it. Here:
Consumerism: A worldview that places the consumer at the center of the cosmos, and affirms that the goal of life is to satisfy one’s unmet desires, and avoid discomfort, by consuming goods, experiences, and other people.
But I have a question: this is … bad?
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Skye: Well, I want to be clear here Pete – I am not saying that consumption is bad. It’s normal. We must do it. But consumerism is a way of seeing oneself in the world and then presents problems for the gospel.
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Pete: How’s that?
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Skye: When an individual sees them self as a consumer they will approach God that way. Jesus becomes a commodity and we as Christians who are presenting the gospel feed that system as well. If we see that our consumer friend has a need, well then we tell them about how Jesus meets all their needs. The problem is, we never challenge the assumption that, “I am the center of the universe.” The need must be rethought. The need must be for Jesus.
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Pete: Skye, that’s huge.
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Skye: !!
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So, while that is some of what Skye talked about, I am going to post part of an actual interview between Skye and Bob (serious, this one is real) and now Skye can actually be himself and maybe we can redeem this whole interview thing. It’s from here.
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?”
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.
