Riffing a little further on the impact of Consumerism and the Church - and how we often do not see it's tentacles wrapped around ourselves - a new meme is beginning around Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change. Or more accurately. The marketing thereof. Triple D link blogged to this post. I read the original post [via Bene D] that post linked to, from Today at the Mission. The blog writer, rhymes with kerouac says
Brian Mclaren's Christmas message begins with four bullet points, the first two of which are a pitch for his new book, and the CD that accompanies it with helpful links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the CD project website.He then goes on to say this:
Consumerism is the notion that the more we consume the better off we will be. As I explain in the book..
In order to reach Brian's Christmas themed informercial, one must pass through the storefront for the book that is entitled, um... ah... oh yes - "Everything Must Change". On that page one can also access the site for the conference series (tickets $109 a pop) complete with links to the corporate sponsors.
When will we get it? When? And when we do, what will we have to do to get our integrity back? Or our dignity? Everything Jesus did had "self-sacrificial love" written all over it and, here we are, writing Christmas messages that are faintly disguised product pitches while bravely taking a stand against consumerism.
LT from theheresy.com says,
The deception of consumerism runs deep. I see it all over the place as the church drifts towards fee-for-service ministry. Increasingly we have adopted the marketplace as tool to further our objectives somewhat blind to the reality that the marketplace changes us. In this era of ecclesial relativism people buy in to whatever works to bring people in to the building or provide anecdotal success stories.
McLaren has an "everything must change" tour…I don’t know if everything must change but one area to start would be our reliance on profit oriented publishing and distribution. We should be the ones pioneering open source resources and low-cost electronic distribution. We should be taking a different stance than the world on intellectual property and copyright.
In other places of the world where church has almost no "resources" and it thrives. We are inundated with stuff….Jesus junk. We have libraries and libraries of it and has it really made a difference? I don’t think so.
I'm not sure I'm prepared to suggest that writers aren't worthy of their wages, which is where you go when you want everything open source - but I do believe we need more low-cost electronic distribution - and more open source resources. Please note that Brian makes his living as a writer today - and as a speaker. (And no one is putting a gun to your head to buy the book or go to the event(s).)
Check out what my good friend, Brother Maynard is doing with his new book. Also check out all the free resources that are made available at Allelon, but note that we are updating our store in the hope that the store can help us become self-supporting - and that new store will be up next week.
