Heard the latest disorder? Something called TiVo Tyranny. It’s the burden of having recorded too many TV shows and now finding there’s no way you’re going to be able to watch them all. Though TiVo® is supposed to be a convenience that frees us up, it has produced its own overstuffed feeling. When people gorge on entertainment, can they attune themselves to sermons containing words of life?
That’s our challenge. We preach in the world, but not of the world. How do we preach the Kingdom of God, a countercultural message, to people steeped in consumerism?
We gathered a panel to discuss this at the recent National Pastors Convention in San Diego. The panelists:
John Ortberg, teaching pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Northern California, and author of many books, including The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Zondervan, 2002).
Doug Pagitt, pastor of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, and author of Preaching Reimagined (Zondervan, 2005).
Efrem Smith, pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, and author of The Hip-Hop Church (IVP, 2006).
Will Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, and the author of several books, including Pastor: A Reader for Ordained Ministry (Abingdon, 2002).
How has consumerism touched your ministry?
Pagitt: In the last few days, I’ve been both a supplier and a consumer.
First, I was preparing my seminars for the National Pastors Convention and thinking, I’d better come up with material that people are going to want to hear. I found myself a supplier of information, part of an economic system exchanging ideas for registration fees. I’m not bemoaning that. I don’t see a total separation between materialism and spirituality.
Jesus doesn’t meet our needs; he rearranges them. He cares very little about most things that I assume are my needs, and he gives me needs that I would’ve never had if I hadn’t met Jesus. —Will Willimon
Second, my wife and I own some rental properties. On Friday night at 11 p.m. one of our tenants called to say a pipe had burst and water was running all over the place. So I opened the phone book and went for the largest ad in the Yellow Pages. This company seemed reputable because they had a hotline, and they guaranteed 24-hour service. So I called and purchased plumbing services. Problem solved. Lots of money spent, but the problem was solved.
Smith: In the inner city of north Minneapolis, I see gang violence stemming from young people who think they’re being left behind in the consumeristic culture. There’s a disparity along racial lines.
Our church is 60 percent white, 30 percent black, and 10 percent Latino and Asian. A number of the whites in our church are downsizing. They come to the church because they’re leaving the suburbs and that materialistic life. They want to shop at thrift stores and buy a house in the inner city. Then I have African-Americans who were raised in the inner city, and they’re wanting out: “Look, my parents worked hard so I could get out of the inner city.”
These dynamics complicate our efforts to do reconciliation.
Ortberg: I serve a church in the Menlo Park/Atherton area south of San Francisco. Forbes recently named Atherton as the single most expensive Zip code in the country in which to buy a house.
Last week the newspapers reported the story of Larry Ellison, the high profile CEO of Oracle. He’s worth billions, but his accountant released a memo publicly chiding him because he is spending to the point where he is going to have to borrow money to cover his personal expenses.
One of the ironies of consumerism is that, unlike, say, sexual sin or stealing, where you can determine a violation has taken place, materialism is relative. You can always point to somebody else who is spending more money than you are. So it’s harder to actually ever say, “I have sinned.” That’s one of the games people play.
I don’t want to feel like I’m repeating myself, but the reality is that repetition is one of the most powerful tools a preacher has. —John Ortberg
So the Larry Ellison story means everybody who lives around here can say, “See? There’s somebody who’s more materialistic than me. So I’m okay.”
Some would say there’s nothing wrong with consumerism, that it’s morally neutral, simply a reality of options, convenience, and choices. How do you respond to that? What are the spiritual issues at stake?
Ortberg: It’s not a difficult question, and there really is a clear answer to it. Will? (Laughter.)
Willimon: I love the statement by G.K. Chesterton who said that we could have a really good argument over whether or not Jesus believed in fairies. But we cannot have any debate over whether or not Jesus believed rich people were in big trouble. There’s just too much evidence that he did.
Jesus invites the rich young ruler: “Go sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow me.” The young man walks away depressed. And Jesus said, “You just can’t save rich people. It’s impossible. But of course with God anything’s possible.”
Jesus invites him to be a disciple, and he refuses. And let the Western church note carefully the reason was money. That sends chills down my spine.
Smith: I’d say the culture is not neutral, because consumerism is not neutral across racial lines; it’s not neutral across urban and suburban lines. We can’t make it neutral when we’re trying to talk about kingdom values.
So one spiritual issue at stake is partiality or inequality?
Smith: Definitely. There’s an imbalance. Some racial groups benefit more from consumerism.
Ortberg: No matter who we are, one of the things we battle at the core is the assumption that the satisfaction of desire is the key to fulfillment in life. And any time people feel they lack something, the more they focus on that desire. It becomes a cycle, a treadmill that you never get off of.
When my kids were little, they used to watch Sesame Street, and I often think of “the Cookie Monster theory” of human nature. It was very simple: see cookie, want cookie, eat cookie. A lot of the brightest people in our society spend their time trying to convince us all that we are just Cookie Monster, a collection of appetites.
How does that impact a person’s capacity for a living faith in Jesus?
Ortberg: It diminishes it, because it keeps my focus on Are my desires being satisfied?
And the answer is always no.
Ortberg: Because no desire stays satisfied for long.
Willimon: Jesus doesn’t meet our needs; he rearranges them. He cares very little about most things that I assume are my needs, and he gives me needs that I would’ve never had if I hadn’t met Jesus. He reorders them.
I used to ask seminarians, “Why are you in seminary?” They’d say, “I like meeting people’s needs.” And I’d say, “Whoa. Really? If you try that with the people I know, they’ll eat you alive.”
Now, if you’re a pastor in Honduras, it might be okay to define your ministry as meeting needs, because more people in Honduras have interesting biblical needs—food, clothing, housing. But most people in the churches I know get those needs met without prayer. So they’ve moved on to “needs” like orgasm, a satisfying career, an enjoyable love life, a positive outlook on life, and stuff the Bible has absolutely no interest in.
Smith: If somebody comes to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, but they don’t have healthcare or shelter or can’t graduate from school, what difference does it make? And if somebody graduates from school and they have a job and they own their own home and they have healthcare, but they don’t have Jesus, what difference does that make?
So that’s something I preach a lot. I tell our congregation, “If somebody comes to the altar and accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but we don’t know their essential needs and we let them walk out the door, we’ve done an injustice.”
Pagitt: It’s interesting that in the last hundred years, this thing called healthcare is now seen as a need. Even a right. People’s expectations are expanding. Everyone’s going to die. But now people expect to live to 100, and anything less is a failure of society. What level of healthcare is a genuine need?
Or housing. Usually we mean you don’t have to live 15 in a room. Right? But not long ago, housing was shared. Now people expect “their own.” Or how about air conditioning—if you don’t have it, is that a “need” the church should meet?
What’s considered a need is constantly changing.
Willimon: Healthcare is unarguably a good thing. But let’s be honest. We live in a society where we may give a new kidney to a 70-year-old, and yet there may be 250,000 children in Alabama who are not vaccinated against measles. Why? Well, they don’t vote.
As a preacher, on Ash Wednesday, I get to stand up in front of people and I say, “Now remember, this is straight from the Lord, you’re dirt. You came from dirt, and you’re headed right back to dirt.” And much more significant than your healthcare plan is the fact that you’re dirt. That’s not an injustice. That’s the way God set up the world. You’re not a god.
I think in the minds of some that healthcare has become some kind of immortality management, the illusion that I can live my life free of pain, without having to pay for my bad choices. Without having to face death.
Pagitt: With a low deductible.
What’s the wrong way to preach about felt needs?
Willimon: I think of a sermon I heard recently. The preacher had identified a felt need, I think it was for meaning or happiness or something like that. Then he said, “Let’s go to the Scriptures and find the biblical means of meeting this need.” He urged the congregation to consider how the good advice in the Scriptures could meet these needs. He concluded, “I guarantee your life will be better if you follow these biblical principles.”
That sermon made a number of interesting assumptions.
One assumption is that the gospel has anything to do with “my needs.” As I read the Gospels, Jesus seems oblivious to most of my needs. Was Jesus about fulfilling people’s desires? What a curious image of Jesus.
Another assumption is that I have needs worth having. A consumer culture is not about the fulfillment of real need; it’s about the creation of need that I wouldn’t have without the advertising. So when I say “I need this,” I shouldn’t be trusted.
My point: I have tremendous respect for the power of the market to own everything, including preachers. If my sermon becomes another product that makes you feel a little less miserable this week, then that, it seems to me, is a little less than the gospel.
So how do you preach about personal needs and desires?
Smith: In a multi-cultural church, I have to preach that following personal desires goes against the work of reconciliation.
I’ve had European Americans tell me, “Well, that was a nice service, but I wish you would have had more songs for my people.” And then an African American say, “Yeah that was nice, but I sure wish Sister Sherry would have sung that song.”
So we have to fight against that and say, “For this ministry to work, it’s not about coming to get your songs, or your sermon; it’s coming to digest someone else’s story, to share in someone else’s joy, pain, journey. Here you have to be the server and not the customer.”
Pagitt: I don’t think you can get there with generic messages. You can’t break a person’s addiction with just a sermon. If the church’s preaching is pulpit to pew, it’s easier to ignore, as contrasted with consistent person-to-person communication. Perhaps the antidote to consumerism is personal connection.
So the role of preaching, then, is to point people to those relationships?
Pagitt: To empower our people to be able to preach into one another’s lives on these topics.
To borrow a concept from Alcoholics Anonymous, when you’re getting into AA and breaking an addiction, you do 90 and 90—90 meetings in 90 days. You don’t simply hear a really good sermon every seven days.
If misplaced desires are consuming someone’s life, maybe that steady, daily connection is what’s required.
Ortberg: I’d say yes and no to that. Dallas Willard says the will is transformed by experience, not information. For any preacher, there’s always a temptation to think, Well, I talked about materialism last week, so our church is all on the same page now. That’s a delusion. It’s through experience, relationships, conversations that God changes a person’s will.
At the same time, people in a church, over time, learn what’s important by what gets talked about repeatedly. One of the challenges for preachers like me, who want to be creative, is that I don’t want to feel like I’m repeating myself. But the reality is that repetition is one of the most powerful tools a preacher has. It’s not sufficient; repetition alone won’t create change. But if I’m not talking about it on a regular basis, there’s a real good chance that people will dismiss the occasional reference as not really important.
It’s one thing to preach about consumerism in general; it’s another to speak directly to your congregation’s tendencies. How specific do you get?
Ortberg: I was at a men’s retreat a couple years ago. And one speaker said that everybody has not only a mission in life but a “shadow mission,” a default mode that we revert to if we’re not on the right mission. He said (I’ll clean up his language a bit), “My shadow mission is to watch TV and pleasure myself while the world goes to hell.”
Everybody kind of laughed nervously when he said that. Then he said, “Now I want to say that one more time, only this time don’t laugh.” And he did. Around the room you could feel people say “Whoa.” That’s the trivia into which human life can descend. And we all know about that temptation.
For churches or for individuals, just to name the shadow mission is a good thing. Because when it gets named, people have to ask, Is that who I want to be?
Smith: One way we get specific is talking about ways in which you give.
We found out, for instance, that 40 kids are bused from a homeless shelter to an elementary school in our neighborhood. So I said, “Look, we’re going to make sure that these 40 kids, even though they’re coming from a homeless shelter, don’t need to look like they’re worse off than everybody else. Let’s get them brand new school supplies, coats, and mittens.”
Then I asked the uncomfortable question: “Why are these 40 elementary kids homeless? Why have our homes become so closed, so like country clubs that homeless kids can’t find residence in our houses?”
Then I step back and am amazed that middle class people keep coming back to my church even though I keep saying these kinds of things. It’s almost as if people want me to be a spiritual irritant behind the podium.
Pagitt: Sometimes we assume that middle class people are more consumeristic than poorer people. I don’t mean to sound accusatory. But we tend to presume that if you have a lot, then it must mean a lot to you; and if you don’t have a lot, then we need to get you a lot so you look like you have a lot, but it won’t mean a lot to you.
Smith: You make a great point, Doug. What I’m emphasizing is that when poor people try to pursue material success, damaging things are often involved. There might be major drug issues. There might be jail time. The poor often deal with such consequences of their consumerism, where wealthier people can be consumeristic without those kinds of consequences.
Okay. But didn’t Jesus say that people who have a lot are in greater spiritual peril than people who have very little?
Pagitt: I think Jesus spoke within a culture that believed if you are wealthy, you are blessed by God, and poor people are cursed by God. Jesus was saying the poor are not cursed by God. I think he was saying neither of you are cursed by God. God is with both sides.
Willimon: Well, actually, in the sermon on the plain (Luke 6), Jesus did say “Blessed are you poor” and then “To hell with the rich and damn you who are full.” I like to preach the first part of that sermon; I don’t ever get around to the second part.
I guess I’m more pastorally sensitive than Jesus.
Ortberg: In the Baptist church where I grew up, the language was just slightly different. (Laughter.)
Willimon: As Efrem was talking, I recalled hearing that in London in the eighteenth century, during John Wesley’s day, there was a higher percentage of rich people in the Wesleyan societies than in the general population. And I thought, Wait a minute. Wesley didn’t build any meetinghouses in the richer boroughs of London. But it was true. There were ministries among the destitute that attracted a higher percentage of rich people. Preachers make a big mistake to act like rich people don’t know the vacuousness of their lives.
And I thought about that. We had a funeral for a homeless man that had been beaten to death near one of our churches in Birmingham that ministers to the homeless. I attended the funeral, and a lot of homeless people participated. But I was stunned at all the suburban people that showed up, because they met this guy in their work here. I asked one woman, a member of one of our most affluent churches, why she comes to this church filled with homeless people. She said, “Well, the purpose of church is to get as close to Jesus as you can get; I just feel closer to him here than I do at my home church.”
How through preaching do you help people sort out the right kind of needs?
Ortberg: We’ve got to distinguish needs and desires. There’s a really interesting book by philosopher Alain de Botton called Status Anxiety. In a nutshell it’s about how we are driven by the desire to look good in other people’s eyes. Most of consumerism is driven by that. If nobody else existed, you’d wear sweatpants all the time. The reason we want stuff all the time is because it says to other people, I am successful. This explains why yesterday’s luxury is a “need” today.
So as preachers, we must help people get real clear that needs are a really small list, but desires are infinitely expandable.
On the positive side, we can also help people experience the joy of generosity. One of the coolest messages I ever heard on giving was by Shane Claiborne, who is part of a community that advocates for poor and homeless folks in Philadelphia.
When I was in Chicago, he spoke to one of our services. And at the end he said, “When I’m done here tonight, I’m going to go be with some homeless folks in Chicago, and a lot of them don’t have shoes. And they need shoes. So I’m just asking anybody who’s willing, take your shoes off, bring them up here, and I’ll take them into the city.”
There ended up being 1,500 pairs of shoes left after the service, and people went home in their socks.
Smith: Generosity is one antidote to consumerism. And instead of just talking about money, I try to talk about it in the context of a bigger issue, which is stewardship. We cheapen stewardship by making stewardship just about money. It’s time, talent, treasure and temple. In that context, I try to talk about stewardship as much as I possibly can.
Some preachers say it’s easier to preach about money than about entertainment. How do you speak to the spiritual issues related to amusing ourselves?
Ortberg: If Jesus was preaching today, one of the forms of fasting he might talk about would be fasting from media. So about once a year or so, I’ll challenge people to go for a week without watching TV or DVDs and just see what happens. Because a really good way to find out the role that something plays in your life is to abstain from it for a while.
The word boredom has come into common usage only in the last 150 years. Ancient Greeks had no word for boredom. Ironically, when people didn’t have all the sources of stimulation that we have become dependent on, they didn’t have the experience of boredom. It’s like we have these internal mental muscles, the ability to focus attention, which has just gotten enormously weak.
So sometimes I talk about how good it is to not be dependent on outside stimulation to have a rich inner life. People want that.
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