I recently had an article published in the Newfrontiers magazine. I thought I’d share it here. It’s much longer than most blog posts so I’ve broken it up into three sections: (parts 1, 2 & 3)

The Gospel is not a product

The challenge for the church, as always, remains to demonstrate through its life how the kingdom of heaven gives something far greater than anything the world can offer. Martin Robinson in his book, Planting Mission-shaped Churches Today says, “Christianity packaged as a consumer message can’t compete. There will always be a more seductive package awaiting the consumer than a faith that makes some demands on the consumer’s time, concentration and allegiance.”

Instead the church (especially in the West) needs to rediscover the antidote to consumerism – generous giving, joyful sharing and simple living as an essential part of our discipleship. Every time we give away to care for the poor or to plant churches we win a victory. We win when we choose to share what we have with others and when we sacrifice our comfort for the joy of bringing love to the broken, safety to the vulnerable and delight to the downcast.

By choosing to live more simply we can also live more generously, releasing time, energy and financial resources into the kingdom of God. By cultivating generosity instead of consuming church we cultivate Christ-likeness (2 Corinthians 8:7-9).

A church that becomes a consumer product, full of consumers will inevitably slow down in its nation-reaching, church-planting, leadership-raising, money-giving and poor-embracing mission because we will only give what time, money and energy we can spare after our comfort has been maintained.

The church of Christ needs disciples whose identity is in Christ and not in the logos they wear, whose treasures are in heaven and whose home is wherever God calls them. The church of Christ needs people who value eternal security more than financial security and spiritual gifts more than Christmas gifts who have discovered that it is truly more blessed to give than it is to receive (Acts 20:35) and so take hold of the life that is truly life (1 Tim 6:16).