Further to our ‘What is Hip’ discussion, I thought I would look at where we get our input, from whom and why they do what they do.
Ever noticed that most of the advice, preaching and education we get is from professional sources? This means that most of the key influences of our lives, the stuff that effects our soul, mind and hearts, comes to us by way of people who are paid to ‘minister’ to us. A professional is: def: [engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as a pastime]. Hmmm. I wonder if that effects what they tell us and why?
Now, I’m not paranoid or anything, but when I look seriously at the “conventional wisdom” being tossed our way by the most popular Christian sources of our time, and I look at the results in terms of committed and equipped people (or the lack thereof), something is seriously out of sync.
Cause and Effect:
Cause: So we start out in school, our teachers are paid by the state (via taxes) to train us. There is usually an economic agenda at the root of this education which is sponsored by and promoting the professions. This means that the goal of your education is not necessarily to learn, but to get a job. Most modern ed systems were designed around the industrial revolution (thus the rows, bells, bosses and rewards) and so the agenda was to get you into the factory.
The key word here is AGENDA. Education was meant to be explorative, creative and on-going. The agenda of getting a job relegated it down to formulaic curriculum to which you had to fit in with, or lose out. In a professional education system, money, not learning rules.
Cause: Next we go to church to learn. Nice people and all, but these people are also professionals. They are paid by the parishioners to fulfill their office as teacher, pastor, worship leader etc. For the most part, these people have huge hearts and an amazing capacity to serve the body of Christ with their gifts. But there is a limitation.
Let’s take divorce. It’s a big issue in the Church but kinda embarrassing to talk about in front of the people who are paying your bills. I sat in on a relationship workshop at a hip church in San Francisco earlier this year. After the speaker cruised through the fact that his first marriage ended in divorce (apparently, it wasn’t his fault), he went on to wow us with his conventional wisdom on getting and staying married. Everyone paid for the workshop and seemed pleased with the nights entertainment. On a scale of substance vs. crap, I gave him and wife No 2 a solid three. No boat rocking and no one got hurt.
If you take any difficult or controversial issue, a pastor could potentially get ‘moved on’ from the church. This is a lot less likely than people moving on from the pastor but in any case, a lot of people are moving from one place to another. Hardly the kinda ‘house to house’, ‘share everything’ fellowship that Acts spoke about. When money is involved, it’s really hard to have God’s agenda or to face the tough issues when your job is on the line.
Cause: So as you grow up, you decide to learn a little on your own from the thousands of Christian books on the market (yes, it’s a market). You look over the top ten books and start to absorb their Christianny goodness. If you’re a guy, you read Wild at Heart so you can learn what a real man should be. If you’re a girl, you read Captivating to understand your real needs as a women of God. The writers sound like the kinda people you’d want to have next door. And you could too, if you had the kinda money they made selling you their pop psychology.
On all three lists of the top 10 best sellers (from Relevant Books, Christianity Today and the Christian Booksellers Association), 22 of the top 30 books in the US are about you or “Christian” fiction (the life you dream of having, still about you). Now I think the Eldredge’s (two of the top 10 on the CBA list) seem like good people. Kinda light on exegesis, but hey, these books are not about God, they are the conventional wisdom about you. Your heart and your need to be loved. Frank Peretti is still trying to scare the hell out of everyone (No. one on the CBA list) and Gary Chapman is still talking about love languages. Man, do people still not know how to LOVE YOU!?
In the 80’s, major Christian publishers found that they could take $11 books that weren’t selling and bump the price to $21 and viola, they WOULD sell. So guess what they did? They also found that if a writer was popular, they could sell another book or two simply on their rep. This is called line extension. So the Prayer of Jabez for Whoever, or Captivating, or another Peretti novel will keep coming, not because these are important works (for that, read Chesterton), but because they will sell.
Cause: So after seeing what a crap job your parents and everyone else did loving you, and being bored to moving cities by the pastor who keeps talking about the same thing, and frustrated by a wasted four years in college, you decide to see a psychologist. One or two hours a week for say, six months at X$ per hour. They start the difficult process of unwinding your life and try to help you make sense of it all. It’s kinda hard though because you just get started and the times up. It’s a bummer, but yes, you’re on the clock and time is money. This person probably does care for you and can help you, you and the other 50 clients they ‘manage’. So again, time is money and to a degree, so is your soul.
Of all the causes mentioned so far, I think this is the most difficult. Psychology is the study of your psyche or soul. When you put money on the issues of the soul, like in spiritual matters, it ads an agenda that compromises the goal of healing and growth. At a psychologists best, they will have to deal with the real tension of paying their own bills and your need for time, care and your own financial situation. So for instance, something has to be sold (your need for an analyst perhaps) and something has to be bought (your diagnosis). I don’t know, just seems weird to me when we are talking about abuse, or depression…
Wait a minute!
At this point, you may be wondering if I think it’s wrong to pay people to help us. When it comes to buying an iPod to extend my listening pleasure, no prob. When it comes to hiring a business consultant to help me start a company, again, no prob. But when it comes to issues of the mind and heart and spirit, I wonder if God wanted these things to be dealt with differently. Or at least, for us to be more aware of the professional angles involved so we don’t ‘buy’ everything we’re told.
There are certain dynamics attached to business. Godly and good dynamics. For instance, multiplication. We have business because God is a provider and our job is to manage and steward that provision into multiplication. In effect, to be a blessing with all our resources. In order to do this, you gotta have a valuable service, a super Godly attitude towards giving and receiving and you must have greed in check. This is not easy. At our best, we struggle with greed and materialism. But, God has given us the grace and the wisdom to deal with this in the domain of business.
So which domain is the church in? Or psychology? Or Christian books and media? It’s an important question because it helps us put these influences in our lives in the right perspective.
For instance, Church is in the ecclesiastical domain. Buying and selling does not apply here as it’s the vehicle of God to represent Himself (and His free grace) to the people. So the paying of pastors and charging for “relationship workshops” will taint the service given. It’s still cool to give as you feel led as the financial principle in play is giving and receiving. But to put 78% (Barna – Time Mag 2006) of the American church’s tithe income towards salaries and buildings is going to effect the church’s outcome. And from where I sit, it’s not a healthy outcome in terms of people being solidly equipped to effect their community. It’s become too insular and club-like.
Books and other media or in another domain. They are an influence within a marketplace that is vying for your attention and income. Nothing wrong with buying or selling a book, but it’s a product, not a direct word from God. Much like this blog. Words to be taken with a huge grain of salt and tested against the other stuff God gives you through His word, His people and His world…
Psychology is a hard one. I appreciate that these people have spent years of study and effort to build a profession. They have one of the hardest jobs in the world, and the field is still in it’s infancy. But I think this field is in the domain of science, technology and health care. It’s an influence domain and a developing one at that. I would advise people to see a counsellor or psychologist or psychiatrist if they think they need one (and a lot of us do). But just keep in mind that it’s a relatively young field and it needs to mature. I think practitioners need to reconsider the time slots allocated. A Godly world view of discipleship would go a long way in an otherwise secularized code of practice.
Effect:
A friend of mine (thanks Noe) lent me a book recently called Freakonomics. In it, Steven Levitt discussed the concept of conventional wisdom. The term was coined by John Kenneth Galbraith. He said “We associate truth with convenience, with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life.” I think a lot of the stuff we get from these professional sources is the same kind of convenient, self serving wisdom that is more about the money trail, than the real issue of growth, life and change. Money is a powerful influence, and when it comes to the issues of the heart, mind and soul, the buyer should be very aware.
So all in all, if you follow the money, there is a cause and effect. In school, it’s about getting a job. In church, it’s about sustainability of the club. In media, it’s about line extension. In counseling, it’s about long term care on issues most people don’t truly understand. Just remember, it’s your money and your time, use it wisely. Go digging for yourself a little more. Seek God daily for the core of your wisdom and needs and let the other stuff augment this, or not. There is a Godly place for education, church, media and health care, we just have to figure out the money side.
Thanks Patrick. Great post, I love that you help me think. I look forward to hanging when you get to Seattle.
— Phil Cunningham Aug 30, 08:52 AM #
i have always disliked the fact that there is a Christian “market” in existence that apparently needs to be pandered to. i have a hard time going into Christian bookstores, because Christian merchandise puts me out of temper—the prayer of jabez slapped onto bumper stickers and key rings, WWJD bracelets, your pick of cool-looking Bible covers, sanitized music, sanitized fiction, and all sorts of how-to books for the helpless Christian. it drives me crazy.
i do have to wonder, though, just WHY it puts me out of temper. is there anything wrong with any of this stuff? i may think a Bible verse keychain is cheesy, but what if it really does serve as a helpful reminder to the person who buys it?
i think at the root of my issues with the Christian market is that faith has become a commodity to be bought and sold, and along with it, in some measure, our souls (as you point out). the largest church in america is headed up by a man who has been interviewed by businessweek and forbes, whose bestselling book is entitled, “Your Best Life Now,” and whose televised sermons sound like corporate motivational speeches with the names “God” and (rarer) “Jesus” thrown in to make it sound religious. what is he selling? faith that will make YOU a successful person, if only you can tap into it just right.because ultimately, that is what loving God is all about—loving YOURSELF.
ugh.
anyway, thanks for writing these posts. it’s good to think about all these things that we often take for granted in the little subculture, the little bubble, that we’ve created for ourselves.
— grackyfrogg Sep 2, 07:17 AM #
Hey Patrick,
Good post. Some of us (because the others are buying it all) do really have our stomachs turn or get “put out of temper” as grackfrogg says. Val and I do cringe at going to a Christian bookstore, or a new Thomas Kinkade gallery.
Is the church really being led Top Down. Is a preacher or pastor with the courage and heart to say what he wants to say in control of his church? We seem to be getting Bottom Up government style and Committee style business in our churches today. That seems to water or control the message. Probably has to do with just how pragmatic we are as American Christians. Since coming back to the U.S. 2 months ago I’ve really learned what pragmatism is. Americans! Has it’s good, but man can it be short sighted.
Also, the consistent opinon seems to be quantity over quality. Big Book (sales), Big Church (numbers), Big Ministry (numbers). This is our goal. It’s the only measure we have of effectiveness. Kinda pragmatic again. And yes, we really need to change our message sometime to keep those numbers up.
I love what you say about the “middle”. Loving your hard to love neighbor. Something just hits me everytime when I hear this. I think it’s called the truth. Isn’t this the example of Jesus so clearly. In my life already I think I have preached to more people than Jesus. That’s no knock on Jesus of course, I really got to think about the quality of my relationships.
Ryan
— Ryan Wiens - Burtigny Sep 11, 07:00 PM #
Seems like the professional approach to discipleship is what gets results in the short term, and the shortest term is often measure by numbers+sales=good.
On the other hand, Godly discipleship seems to take years and sometimes only bears fruit in the next generation. Maybe it’s our quarterly returns mindset that makes it hard to branch out and be involved in something that will change our environment (family, neighbors, city) over decades.
I often hear pastors talk about how they started out. In their homes, with a few eager and ready people… Then, they grew (I think because of the organic and family nature that these start-ups usually entail) and found they could turn it into a job. Quality declines, intimacy declines and pretty soon your back in a passive learning environment.
Mark Driscoll recently said that 50% of US pastors in a recent survey said they would leave the ministry if they could find another JOB.
— Patrick Sep 13, 06:18 PM #