Worship as Counter-Cultural Narrative (3): Consumerism (Part 1)
Fuelled by an ever-increasing accessibility through social media it is not hard to see how consumerism, and the gospel it preaches, has swept to prominence in our contemporary culture.
And this is that gospel: what I own and consume is increasingly the way I assess my own worth and identity; my wellbeing is improved ad infinitum through more consumption; the solution to my problems is to consume (depressed — buy something; lonely — watch something; anxious — drink something; lost out in love — go on a holiday in the sun); everything of value can be purchased, including my own freedom; my decisions and values in life are determined by my own personal preferences and my own personal desires; there is an ever-increasing choice, and an ever-increasing speed of acquisition for the things I want to consume; marketing is dominant, branding is king and protecting market share is the way I survive.
Happiness, identity, problem-fixes, freedom and satisfaction are all quickly in reach to those with the buying power.
Consumerism may be a modern-day gospel, but it’s not hard to see how the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ challenges it to the core: identity is in our chosen-ness, not because we have more choice; wellbeing is determined through seeking the kingdom, not seeking possessions; the truth sets us free not our spending power; love of neighbour is equally important as love of self; my challenges in life are met through the lens of faith not possessions; and not all goodness comes quickly.
Our concern here, though, is our gathered worship and the contemporary worship culture that has sprung up in the last 40 years or so. How dothose things counter the gospel of consumerism and propagate a different, more holy, way of living?
We value process in spiritual formation.
Although gathered worship is a crucial part of it, spiritual formation involves far more than the hour or so when we gather on a Sunday. A Pastor recently said that he asks himself the following question: “Does the Sunday worship of my church have sufficient substance in order for my people survive as disciples?” Another saying on church leadership goes something like this: “It’s all about the weekends, stupid”.
I disagree. Our gatherings are important for so many reasons, but gatherings alone will not engender spiritual formation. Gatherings have their own unique and vital place in the health and life of the church. Yet Spiritual formation requires process: day-by-day, step-by-step obedience, rhythms of life and prayer and practices and care for the other.
Of course, process of any kind challenges the immediacy that consumerism builds its empire upon. In particular, a poor appreciation of process can encourage people to travel from one worship experience to the next in search of spiritual formation and maturity, only to find such an approach lets them down. Is this something that is happening more and more these days? It certainly looks like it.
I am currently involved in The Kingdom Come initiative. It is truly inspiring to be part of what the Spirit is doing in re-igniting a passion for prayer in the nations, and equally inspiring to be part of something that recognises that the real fruit grows when people leave the building. For me, the momentary explosion of Pentecost did not undermine process in spiritual formation. It may have been exciting, exhilarating and powerful, but it resulted in the Church it birthed establishing rhythms of prayer, and fasting and teaching and sharing possessions that would ultimately engender their discipleship.
As church leaderships we all to easily define success by the size of our gatherings rather than the mature formation of disciples? In one sense this is understandable. It’s quite easy to measure the size of gatherings. It is very hard to measure spiritual formation. Yet we shouldn’t think ourselves successful as leaderships just because we have found a way of feeding consumers what they want. Defining success in such a way (and to be honest, we’ve all done that, haven’t we?) will almost certainly ultimately propagate consumerism, not counter it.
And I want to zoom in on one aspect of our language, and expectations of our gatherings, that I think we could do well to re-visit. I have mentioned this elsewhere on this blog, but I just wonder whether in our charismatic churches we need to have a broader, wider understanding of ‘encounter’ than that provided by worship gatherings. In our desire to value our gatherings, and to value our experience of God’s presence in our worship, have we equated ‘encounter’ almost entirely with ‘gathered worship’ or even more specifically ‘singing’?
In the Old Testament, in some ways this was true: you journeyed to the temple to experience the presence of God in the temple. ‘One Day’ (Psalm 84) was literally ‘One day’. But surely in the NT, the presence of God is in his new temple (us) and so the ‘One Day’ can now be our ‘everyday’? We need not undervalue the importance of ‘encounter’ in worship to extend the idea of ‘encounter’ to be a way of life. Not by necessarily by having more gathered worship, but seeing and meeting Jesus in the everyday things of our whole lives.
NT Wright says this:
There are obvious exceptions, such as 1 Corinthians 14. But when we look at the great references to worship, or the great examples of worship, such as the hymns in Revelation 4 and 5 or the poems in Philippians 2 or Colossians 1, the Spirit seems conspicuously absent.
Why is this? Well, for me, the reason is this: The New Testament does not explain to ‘how we get to the presence, or usher in the presence’ — but how we live everyday increasingly surrendered to, and responsive to, His presence. It is is a narrative of what life in and with the Spirit looks like — everyday and every moment. As Glen Packiam says ‘the Holy Spirit is a companion, not a destination’.
For me, then, valuing process in spiritual formation is one way in which the contemporary worship movement can counter consumerism. But the gospel of consumerism is a big challenge. And it will take more than one post to deal with.
