Sample No. 3: Personal Motivations

This is a third sample for my final doctor of ministry project, "Cultivating Spiritual Disciplines in a Consumer Culture." This sample highlights my personal motivations for conducting this project. 

            Guess blue jeans. Swatch watches. Nike basketball shoes. These are just a few of the brands of clothing and accessories that were popular when I was a sixth-grade boy. I envisioned myself walking the crowded middle school hallways in those faded, $40 blue jeans. The inverted, triangular Guess emblem on the back pocket, I told myself, would make me an instant hit with classmates. I envisioned how owning a colorful Swiss watch would perhaps turn a girl’s head. And somehow I convinced myself that owning a pair of Air Jordan sneakers would elevate my skill level and athletic ability on the basketball court. 

Owning these brand-name products was a burning desire for me as an adolescent, and I can remember haranguing my mother to purchase these items on back-to-school shopping trips. Now that I have children of my own, the same script plays out, only in this scenario my children plead with me to buy iPhones, Beats headphones, and $180 Rock Revival designer blue jeans. And as for me, my consumer desires have now graduated to larger-ticket items like vehicles, home-improvement projects, and flat-screen televisions.

            Consumerism is as powerful today as it was in the 1980s. When under the spell of consumerism, nothing else seems to matter for individuals but pursuing and consuming stuff we typically do not need, or consuming in quantities and ways that are wasteful and luxuriant. When captivated by the consumer spirit, we do not think conscientiously about how things are made, who makes them, and under what circumstances they are made. We do not think about the effects of things like packaging or fuel costs, and how our everyday consumer choices impact God’s creation and The Least of These. We do not think about the negative spiritual impact upon us personally, or reflect upon the reasons why we feel we have to have certain products. Consumerism is an unbridled force today, particularly in our western culture, and it presents significant challenges to the western Church as we seek to live out our calling to care for God’s creation and provide for the needs of the world’s poor.

            I am drawn to this project for personal reasons. I realize how pervasive a force consumerism has exerted and continues to exert on me. When I look at my city trash receptacle each week on trash day and I see four plastic bags full of Styrofoam cups, plastic bags, and other household waste, something does not seem right. When I taxi back-and-forth across town every night of the week to my children’s athletics practices and other activities, something seems off. When I see a television commercial for a new F-150 pickup truck and spend the next week fantasizing about how I might acquire one someday, I realize there is something other than the Holy Spirit vying for my deepest spiritual and emotional affections. And as I look beyond myself, I see the same force is at work in my family, my neighbors, my community, and my world. 

            The impetus for my final project is an internal nudging that has pursued me since I was a child; I have wrestled for many years with the tension between my consumer desires and the deeper, spiritual desires of my heart. I have longed for many years to identify a way of being in this consumer context – an ordering of everyday life – that can become a means of personal, Christian formation. I hope that through this project, my family and I, and others in my ministry context, can learn how to maximize our talents and contribute more to the work of mission, specifically in the areas of Creation Care and The Least of These. There is much we can do as Christ’s Church to participate in these mission themes if we can just learn to consume in more responsible and thoughtful ways.