#152: The Impact of Consumerism on Disciple Making: Satisfaction Can be Purchased
I wanted to share an episode of the Practitioners Podcast with all of you because I think there is a ton of value in this conversation! Disciple making is an important part to our faith walk, and we have to be careful not to let it be consumed by consumerism.
Takeaway: Consumerism has fooled the church into believing that "success" is more important than righteousness.
Action Step: Reflect on your own consumerism, and repent in areas where you may lack.
Show Notes:
2 Peter 1:3-4
John 10:10
https://www.justingravitt.com/blog/consumerism-satisfactionforsale
EP. 152
Tony: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation Podcast, where our goal is to help you reclaim good practices for faith and life. I'm Tony. And today is episode 152 of the podcast. I'm so thankful for each and every one. Listen, subscribe and share the podcast. I just appreciate you guys so much, and I know that God is doing big things through his platform today on the podcast, we're going to talk about consumerism in discipling.
Consumerism in disciple-making today. I sit down with my dear friend, Justin Gravitt. We recorded this episode originally on my other podcasts, the practitioner's podcasts, but it felt like there were so many things that applied to what God does in our lives on a regular basis. And the reality that so many of us face this idea of consumerism [00:01:00] in the church, in our relationship with Jesus, what does it look like?
So. This is actually the beginning of a four-part series on the practitioners podcast. I'm not going to share all four parts here on the reclamation podcast, but I will link to it in the show notes so that if you want to listen to it, you can. And here's the big takeaway. Consumerism has fooled the church into believing that success is more important than righteousness.
Let me say that again, consumers. Has fooled the church into believing that success is more important than righteousness. So if you're anything like me and you struggle with consumerism about getting what you want, when you want AKA control freaks, like me, this episode is going to be perfect for you. And as a reminder, if it is helpful, if it's meaningful, we'd love to hear about that.
Follow me on all the social medias at TW Milts. You can [00:02:00] always. All the information you need on the reclamation podcast.com. Share this episode with a friend, leave a rating and review. We are so thankful for each and every one of you also don't forget. We're part of the spirit and truth podcast network to learn more information or to support the ministry, go to spirit and truth.
Now without any further ado, here is my dialogue with Justin it, as we talk about the impact of consumerism on disciple-making. Hey everybody, welcome back to the practitioners podcast, where we're applying Jesus style disciple-making to everyday life, this episode, and all of our episodes are powered by navigators church ministry.
Which focuses on helping churches make disciples who can make disciples for more information, or to get connected. Check out navigators, church, ministries.org, Justin random question of the day. Are you ready? I'm ready for it. Are you a spender or a saver?
Justin: Oh, I'm a saver [00:03:00] for sure. Always been that way. Yeah, it's, it's not easy for me to spend money.
I liked I'd rather. Rather save it unless I really need something. Is your wife a saver as well? She is. So that works out really well. So you guys have lots
Tony: of money, the gravity, that would be a wrong conclusion.
Justin: How about you bender?
Tony: We don't even have to ask, do we? Right. Like, I, I knew that if I have it, I want to spend it.
And actually my wife is a spender too. And so the real challenge there is that sometime. We. I spend lots of money, so the numbers are broken, but we have a good theology around money and that helps a ton. And that's actually a little bit about what we're going to talk about today is this idea of consumerism.
And this is a multi week. Series that we're doing on consumerism. And so today, unlike what we normally do, we're going to do [00:04:00] a little bit of a long intro to make sure that everyone has a similar language because we know common language creates common movement, a similar language around consumerism. So I'm hoping that you can introduce the idea for us and share a little bit about why.
This is such an important topic for us to talk about on the podcast.
Justin: Yes, absolutely. So I'm going to, I'm going to share a little bit set up, not only this episode, but the next few episodes with where we're going, because we think this is a really important topic and it really impacts us in deep ways and the church and disciple-making in deep ways.
And we often don't think about it or talk about it. I'm going to set us up here. So we are recording this and Tony's office right now. We're in downtown Dayton, not far from where a national cash register began NCR. And if you're anyone that's been around date and you know, that that started here and has a deep history in.
It was around the turn of the century 1900 where that began. And there [00:05:00] was a guy that worked there and his name was Charles Kettering. You've probably heard that Kettering Sloan foundation that goes back to him, but he was a famous American inventor. And every day that he walked in to NCR from 1904 to 1909, he saw this sign on the wall.
The sign said we can not afford. To have a single dissatisfied customer. And so that was part of the ethos, not only of NCR, but also of businesses all over the country at this time that they were trying to satisfy their customers. Now, it wasn't long after that, that the us was drawn into world war one and the U S hired a man named Edward Bernays.
And Edward Bernays was hired by the government to build up support for the war so that, you know, your everyday citizen would be supportive of what the U S was trying to do in world war one. Now, Edward Bernays, a lot of us probably haven't heard that name[00:06:00] was the nephew of a man named Sigmund Freud.
And we do know that name right then that's a big name in our culture and throughout history and. The work that Bernays started to do Sigmund Freud, a termed at psychological warfare. And so Bernays, he worked for the government, the committee on public information, and his goal was to drive attitudes towards the war effort in support of it.
And he described it this way in his book, Edward Bernays did, and the book was called propaganda. And he says this. He says what he did was the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the [00:07:00] true, true ruling power of the.
And he said, that's a mouthful. Right? And I get that. That's a mouthful. But what Bernays is talking about here is culture. How, how is he going to build culture and infiltrate the culture with ideas and psychological warfare as a Sigmund Freud talked about it, how is he going to do that in such a way to move people in certain directions where they will support certain things?
Okay. So that chain, there was a change in strategy and Bernays is often called the father of modern day con consumption or consumerism. And consumerism really is. It is this movement away from keeping the sadness, the customer satisfied to keeping the customer dissatisfied. It's moving people from being citizens.
Where they have enough and they're happy and pleased to moving them to where [00:08:00] they can never have enough. And that is perhaps the most common Or the, the best way to sum up what Bernays did. Okay. So we're talking about all of this, of what, what did that do to our culture to move it from where it was to where we are today and where we are today is probably the biggest, most consumption, oriented culture in the history of the world.
Is a way that we could sum up American culture right now. Now I referenced that sign that Charles Kettering walked in and saw from 1904 to 1909. We can't afford to have even a single dissatisfied CA customer in 1929. That same man, Charles cat Kettering. He wrote an article called keep the customer dissatisfied.
And one quote from that article said, this has said the only reason for research is to keep your customers reasonably [00:09:00] dissatisfied with what they already have. And later on it says, if everyone were satisfied, no one would buy the new things because no one would want it. And so there is a conscious shift again, I'm I hope I'm painting this well for you guys that there's a conscious shift in America.
To this idea of consumerism and of keeping us dissatisfied so that we will buy more, want more, need more. And there's a shift for us from becoming citizens, responsible stewards, caretakers of what we have to consumers of needing more, always looking for the next thing. And I wanted to find consumer for us for this year.
As this a consumer is someone who has surrendered to other people or to institutions that power to provide what is essential for a satisfied life. I'm going to say that again, a consumer is someone who has surrendered to [00:10:00] other people or to institutions, the power to provide what is essential for a satisfied.
And so with that definition, consumers really implicitly or explicitly believe that their satisfaction is for sale, that they need something outside themselves and they can find it within the culture to become satisfied. With that they have to believe in two lies. And when I say lies, I mean, it contradicts what scripture teaches the first lie is that they believe that they don't have, or we don't have as consumers to belief that we don't have what we need for life.
You see, God tells us in second Peter one, three and four, that he has given us everything we need for life and godliness. But a consumer doesn't really believe that at a heart level or in the way that they. Instead, they're looking around for that next thing to provide a hit of dopamine or whatever that they need [00:11:00] to buy.
That makes him feel better. That brings happiness or fullness of life to their existence here on new years. So that's the first lie they believe they don't have what they need for life. The second lie is the belief that consumers can get full life from what man can provide to them. Not from Jesus. And so the belief that full life comes from what man can provide, not from Christ.
And so one of the most dangerous results in what we're honing in on today in our episode is this belief that satisfaction can be purchased. And what it does for consumers is it elevates money to the top. And so instead of Jesus being at the top it is per the pursuit of money because money can solve your problems because in a consumeristic society, whatever your problem is, if you have enough money, you can buy [00:12:00] some, buy some product or some person to come and solve that problem for you.
Right? So another way of saying that is if you only had more money than you could have more time, you could have more education, you could have more products. And so if you realize, oh, I just have too much time and I don't have time to clean my house. And it's a wreck all the time and it's causing problems in my family.
Well, if you had enough money and you chose to spend it that way, you could hire a maid to come in and clean your house. And so if you think about the problems and stresses that, that you carry around, there's probably a way that if you had the money, you could get somebody to solve that problem for you.
But consumers think that way, but what the scriptures tell us is that we already have enough. We have what we need for life and godliness. And so maybe those problems are coming from within and not from without. And so [00:13:00] satisfaction can be purchased is what consumerism teaches us. And it's what it drives us to believe in hammers and into us.
So, Tony, at this point, I'm going to, I'm going to stop kind of the intro and let's just dialogue over that. And maybe what are the problems that might, might come up for churches or pastors or disciple makers? If we believe that we, that consumerism is true. Right. Satisfaction can be purchased. What are the implications let's just begin to interact.
Tony: Yeah. As I was listening to kind of the intro, one of the things that that really struck me is that if, if consumerism is true, right, if we can purchase satisfaction, then what it does is it leaves. Us as leaders to believe that the next program, the next thing can do whatever we need it to do [00:14:00] in order to fix whatever ails the problems in our, our church culture.
Right. And I think we saw this in the nineties and the early two thousands. This is the attractional church model. And while there, there are certainly God has redeemed a ton of things in the model, and there's some benefits that happened along the way. We can't say that what we've done is created generations of Christ followers.
Instead, what we can say is, you know, and this is the problem with consumerism is that you get exactly what you consume. Yeah. And so if you're teaching people to consume. Church. Then what we have is a bunch of people who go to church, but don't know how to follow Jesus.
Justin: Yeah. They're there at the church. A lot of people are at church to consume, right.
They have a need, they have something and they think, well, I just need to go here because these people will help me solve. And yeah, I had to put some money in the plate or whatever. There they're compelled to do [00:15:00] that because there's an exchange of goods. A lot of people feel, and I like what you said, Tony, about the curriculum and programs and you and I have been in enough churches and help him, pastors, we have seen over and over again that when there's a problem in the church, one of the first responses from church leaders and others, because they don't know where to turn is well, is there a critical.
Is there a program? Is there something I can buy?
Tony: Or what book do I need to buy? What book do I need to buy to fix this problem?
Justin: Yeah. And so then they try to get that and they employ it into the church and they roll it out. And then there's some initial momentum and it hit, and then over the period of months, or sometimes years, then that momentum begins to wane and they're right back in that same place.
And then they turn around again and say, well, I, that one didn't. What's the next one.
Tony: Yeah. And I think that that many of us have, have become. Kind of a knee jerk [00:16:00] reaction and, and, and almost trained by consumerism in many regards, I want to, one of the difficult things is, is that in disciple-making we can really begin to think about consumerism because we want to serve, you know, we, we want to be the person.
That serves the person that we're discipling. And yet what we see in Jesus is not consumeristic disciple-making, but it's a, it's a messy kind of long relational, intentional process that brings someone in. And it's not about satisfaction the way that, that you want it. It's about the fullness of life with Christ, the way God designed it.
Justin: Yeah. I like how you said that. There's this idea that we should be satisfied. And for us being, living in this culture, nobody's immune, right. It's culture is immerses us the way that water immerses fish. Right. And we're often just as aware of it as [00:17:00] fish are in the water, but we are all impacted by. And so this idea of satisfaction, like we all mean, I know I do.
I naturally think of like comfort, right? Cause being comfortable and things being easy, et cetera, et cetera. When you look at the life of Jesus and the life of his disciples, that was not what characterized their lives. Right. And so Jesus even said, the son of man has no place to lay his head. And so there's these ideas of, well, what is satisfaction really?
What does a full life really look like? Are we buying into our culture's view of a full, satisfied life, or are we wrestling with what Jesus offers and you know, more of the internal satisfaction, the fullness, the joy but yet externally, still lots of problems. Lots of problems. So Tony, as you think about disciple makers how have you seen consumerism impact disciple makers or maybe they're discipled.
That they're working with.
Tony: Yeah. I, I, I would [00:18:00] think I think one of the things that I see it happen the most in is it impacts the depth of the relationship. Hey, I'm coming to a meeting, I'm showing up for the meeting. I expect you to give me something in the meeting. And when I walk away, I want to feel like the meeting has been completed.
Right. And it's, it's almost like a checklist approach to disciple-making, but it's also like. Hey, your, and this was happened quite a bit when I was the pastor. Right. You're my pastor. I'm your sheep. Tell me what to do to be closer to Jesus. And I want you to give it to me on terms that I'm okay with.
Right? And so when, you know, when, when you tell somebody to give up their politics or to give up their. You know, and, and Nate insert idle here. Right? We all have them. Then that becomes kind of like, well, I don't know if I want to do that. And that's where consumerism really has infiltrated disciple-making I think on a, on a pretty regular basis.
[00:19:00] And, and it, it makes it feel transactional rather than relational. Yeah.
Justin: And if it's not relational, it doesn't penetrate. Right. It becomes just that transactional thing that sometimes you know, I have seen and been on both sides of where if you know, I remember one time I was being discipled and I just didn't feel like I was getting anything out of it.
And I was ready to throw the whole thing. 'cause to me. I, I was there to get something right. It wasn't like I had to purchase it in this case, but what I was giving in exchange for it was my time and my effort. And if I wasn't getting something back, I was really ready to just throw it out. And that comes, I mean, that way of thinking, you know, I think has been deeply influenced in me by the throwaway culture that we live in, of being dissatisfied.
Well, if this thing doesn't work for me, I'll go find something that does. And there's just that consumeristic mindset instead of the relational, right. Where Jesus tells us [00:20:00] to love one another. All right. I wasn't seeking to love that person that was loving me. I mean, really giving of himself and trying to invest in me.
I just wanted what I wanted from it, you know?
Tony: And we're going to get into this. For the next several weeks. So we're not going to cover it all today, but the truth is, is that it really does affect our ability to receive the gifts that God has for us. Right. The gifts of the spirit, the gift of grace, right.
And in a consumer set culture, grace is not a real thing, you know? And, and so the fullness of life, if we're going to call Jesus, Lord is almost. The opposite of consumerism. And so I'm really excited to jump into all of that as we dive a little bit more into this topic. As we begin to wrap this up, any closing thoughts on this topic, Justin?
Justin: Yeah. I just think it's, it's important. If you are interested [00:21:00] in a deeper dive. Into consumerism and disciple-making come back next time. Obviously the next few episodes, we're going to be into this, but there's a lot of history out there. And so just a little bit of Google searching, but put your antenna up, especially coming out of the Christmas season, the holiday season, you might start to feel, you know, a low sense or, you know the high that you got from all those new things might start to wear off.
Tony: Or when you get that first credit card bill.
Justin: Exactly. And so, you know, pay attention to what's going on in your heart and interact with God over that, because he has something to say to you. And to me about where is satisfaction found and do we already have what we need, or is there more out there that we got to go buy or discover or purchase you?
God has told us again, he's given us everything we need for life and godliness, Tony. What's our takeaway. What's our action step this week.
Tony: The takeaway this [00:22:00] week, consumerism has fooled the church into believing that success is more important than righteousness. Consumerism has folded the church into believing that success is more important than righteousness.
The action step reflect on your own consumers. And repent in the areas where you may lack, reflect on your own consumerism and repent in the areas where you may lack friends. We're so excited to be on this journey with you to talk about consumerism, to get convicted together, to make sure you don't miss any future episodes.
Hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts. Also leave a rating or review on iTunes and. Share this episode with a friend, maybe an accountability partner who can walk with you through the journey of consumerism. I told you guys what a great conversation is. Super convicting, super inspiring.
It's a good reminder to all of us. That we have to be mindful, right? That we don't want to be fooled by the culture and let that influence what it means to follow Jesus. So thank you guys so much for [00:23:00] listening again. If you want to follow the rest of the other parts, it's a four-part series. If you want to catch the other parts, check those out on the practitioners podcast.
There's a link in the show notes, subscribe, wherever you listen to podcasts. I appreciate each and every one of you so much. And remember, if you want to follow Jesus, you must be willing to move.
