Landfill Repentance
As Janet and I work through the application process to become church planters we continue to transition our lifestyle, mainly by throwing or giving things away. Our goal is to downsize radically in preparation for spending a lot of time on the road raising support (that’s how our system works) and for moving to Berkeley, where the housing makes Ikea stuff look too big…
The process of changing your life in this way is about choices. In our case, the first choice is whether an item has value, and, if so, exactly what kind of value. The junk (like dozens of old CD cases) will head to the landfill. And the good stuff (like some rocking chairs) will end up with our friends.
That’s the easy part. Clearly, I don’t need the 4 ounces of maple syrup I was given in Vermont ten years ago, and I’m also not about to put our intermittently functional CD player into the trash. But what about all the things that are in-between, things like clothes, and broken iPods, and the stuffed alligator in my office?
Discerning degrees of value and utility is agonizing work.
Part of the agony is the realization that the ministry can be just another way to accumulate the icons of the middle class. The fact that I have all this stuff is, in one sense, just an artifact of the culture in which I was raised (suburban Boomer), but this fact only amplifies my disquiet.
It’s not that I can point to a car, or a house, or a DVD and say, “there it is…that’s where I went wrong…if I only hadn’t bought that, I would not have fallen into the trap of consumerism!” As appealing as that sort of exercise would be (especially considering that it would really preach!) I don’t think that culture always infiltrates us or our ministries (what missionaries call “syncretism”) in such overt ways.
As I haul loads of stuff to our three destinations of choice: curbside rubbish collection, Goodwill, and friends’ homes, I sometimes feel as if I am involved in a cycle of repentance. How did I end up with five white shirts, anyway, especially when I virtually never wear them? Why did I bring home dozens of tiny bottles of shampoo from hotels? Am I keeping score?
My lifestyle is medium by American standards. But if I really needed five computer bags, why am I planning on giving away at least three of them?
I fear the answer is simple. There is something inside me that tends to discontent, a level of need fostered by self-absorption and cultivated by media for decades to want just one thing out of life: more. This is the difference between consumption and consumerism. The “ism” indicates that this way of living is both an ideology and a spiritual stronghold with little regard for how God’s presence in my life should condition what I have.
I am aware that the New Testament does not recommend a vow of poverty, and that God often blesses people in material terms (something I hope to encounter). Also, I don’t appreciate the self-righteous edge of those who always claim to know what’s best for my planet and me.
But all that being said, I still have to make hundreds of tough calls about what stays and what goes. The decisions are hard because all this stuff has somehow come to matter so much to me. So each trip to Good Will is a journey of repentance in which I am being freed, in which I am prospering in a very different way.
I wonder if those we lead seem like consumers, because that’s how we seem to them?
Welcome to the Reader Forum
Bookmark this article using Remarkable!
Off-Road Disciplines
In Off-Road Disciplines, Earl Creps reveals that the on-road practices of prayer and Bible reading should be bolstered by the other kinds of encounters with God that occur unexpectedly—complete with the bumps and bruises that happen when you go “off-road.”
See Earl on Google Video:
Earl Creps—a popular speaker and leader—is director of the Doctor of Ministry program and associate professor at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (AGTS) in Springfield, Missouri. He has been a pastor, ministries consultant, and university professor. Along the way, Creps earned a Ph.D. in communication at Northwestern University and a doctor of ministry degree in leadership at AGTS.
What is Earl doing? View or subscribe to Earl Creps' Google calendar. Or learn how to contact him directly.
Add Earl's Journal to
Join The Leading Edge email list:
A free monthly e-newsletter from the Doctor of Ministry Director, Earl Creps. Offers articles, training opportunities, tools, as well as recommended books, websites and other resources. To receive The Leading Edge enter your email address in the form below or request your subscription by emailing dmin@agts.edu. You can download past issues of The Leading Edge as small PDF files from Resources.
Earl Creps,
You have written about the “Trap of Consumerism”. In this context I want to post a part from my article which examines the impact of Speed, Overstimulation, Consumerism and Industrialization on our Minds and environment. Please read.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.
The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.
The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.
Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.
Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion.
Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.
People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.
Emotion ends.
Man becomes machine.
A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.
Fast visuals/ words make slow emotions extinct.
Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys emotional circuits.
A fast (large) society cannot feel pain / remorse / empathy.
A fast (large) society will always be cruel to Animals/ Trees/ Air/ Water/ Land and to Itself.
To read the complete article please follow any of these links :
http://www.planetsave.com/ps_mambo/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,75/func,view/id,68/catid,6
http://www.freeinfosociety.com/wforum/viewtopic.php?t=3649
http://www.ephilosopher.com/bb-topic-244.html
http://www.corrupt.org/transcendence/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1167537083
sushil_yadav
You are leaving AGTS? As a California transplanted to Wisconsin, I love that you are going to Berkely. I’m interested in what kind of plant you will be doing…you must have posted about this somewhere? But I am sad that you are leaving AGTS, because there you had influence over the next generation of pastors/ministers…etc. What a change for both of you.
I wonder when you turn 60 if you will revise the last chapter of “offroads?”
:)
Your friend and colleague
Warren
Hi Earl!
This blog totally speaks to me!! I find myself accumulating things in hopes of being the prototype or ideal _____ (pastor, pastor’s wife, youth minister, speaker, musician) in ministry someday. I think that somehow my “stuff” will speak that I’m culturally relevant, a good candidate for a wife, a good homemaker. None of those ambitions is wrong, but they can’t make me become anything. My becoming is rooted in Christ, but I usually want a shortcut. I think that if I look like and display “the part” that I’ll fill the role more quickly or easily. This hasn’t proven to be the case, but it doesn’t seem to stop me from pining for what’s not eternal, with a deeper longing for something much more substantial and lasting. I guess it’s human, but I, too am in the process of being transformed, convicted, shaped, and I want to be (but it can sure be uncomfortable