"Consumerism" and the Church

I am currently reading James K.A. Smith's new book, The Devil Reads Derrida. It is an excellent little book, and I highly recommend it.

I have found one of the essays in the book especially interesting; it is called "Are Students 'Consumers'?" In it Smith identifies three reasons that Christian Universities should not refer to their students as consumers. I will briefly summarize them and then add what I see as an application for the church.

First, Smith says that while humans have to acquire certain goods to live, consumerism is a manner of acquisition that only concerns itself with getting commodities that fulfill "my interests and happiness." He summarizes this point by saying, "consumption is a way of relating to the resources of the world that runs counter to shalom" (40).

Second, Smith says that if students are treated as consumers, then they become customers. And as customers, they must always be right. Thus, since the university loses its ability to challenge students when it views them as consumers, it also loses its ability to form students. Smith says that as a professor, instead of giving his students what they want, his job is to challenge them, asking "Why would you be looking for that?" instead of "Can I help you find what you're looking for?" Formation, then, runs counter to the expectations of a consumerist model. He summarizes this point by saying:

A distinctively Christian libral arts education is about the fomation of people as a way of resisting consumerism (as a misdirected, fallen way of being "acquiring animals"). Our model here is the medieval university, not the contemporary corporation. We should be looking to monastic Oxford, not corporate Target (43).

Third, Smith says that Christian universities should be guided by their "leading function" and not by their secondary functions. Drawing on the work of Reformed philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, Smith says that the leading function of a Christian university must be "education, formation, and research." The university must a place of education, not profit or idolatrous consumerism. He summarizes this point by saying, "If [the Christian university] is going to be defined by its leading function, this should find expression in its own governance and direction, which should mean that other divisions are governed by this primarily academic calling" (45).

Smith concludes this essay by saying, "[T]he task of a distinctively Christian liberal arts education is to create a community of people formed to resist and challenge the reductionism of a market-driven culture" (45).

I think these three things apply to the church as well because too often we try to market our churches to would-be consumers. Missiologists call this model of church that tends to market church an "attractional church model." When we try to "sell" our churches attractionally to those around us, we inevitably turn the good news of Jesus into a commodity, and, as Smith has demonstrated, our call to be the witnessing community of God's people is compromised. So Smith's three points about university students are also important for the church to hear. When we view our neighbors as consumers, we make the church an object of (idolatrous) consumerism, a body that loses its ability to form others, and a people who are guided by their "secondary functions" instead of by their Lord.

Instead, the church must be about witnessing the good news of Jesus in a way that shows the world that the good news is actually good -- that it, in fact, is life the way it is meant to be lived. The church must affirm that the gospel is not a commodity, but rather, it is the story of Life.