Practicing What We Preach - Join the Conspiracy

We as leaders talk about how consumerism is killing our culture.  We preach about how consumerism is the biggest obstacle in Western Christianity.  But, what are we doing about it?  If you want to challenge yourself and your faith community to live out Jesus in a missional way during the season of Christmas, you might be interested in knowing about Advent Conspiracy.  Read on about this conspiracy (from the Advent Conspiracy website)....

Advent Conspiracy is an international movement restoring the scandal of Christmas by substituting compassion for consumption.  Christ tends to get overlooked at Christmas. Let’s be honest. December comes and you think, 'Ok, this is the year.'  This time you’ll swear you’ll slow down and take it all in. Make the most with family. Help the needy. Zero in on what it really means to be a Christ follower during this holy season. 

Here is just one person's story, as written by Kristen Mira:

Cindy Ives had been attending Imago Dei for almost a month when Pastor Rick McKinley’s sermon on Advent challenged her to enter the story of Christ during the Christmas season. It was then she decided to make some changes to the way she and her husband, Gary, would celebrate Christmas.

“I just felt like Jesus became much more meaningful to me,” says Cindy, who was inspired by the idea of entering the story of Christmas. “I don’t know how to explain it. I think I was just ripening for this after the years of wanting it to be more meaningful.”

In his sermon Rick described the ruling kingdom of Herod at the time of Jesus’ birth—how the predominating values of this kingdom were greed, self-gain and self-glory, similar values promoted in our American celebrations of Christmas. During King Herod’s reign Jesus came to establish his kingdom with a spirit of humility, poverty and self-sacrifice for the purpose of establishing relationships. This contrast of kingdoms in the Christmas story struck Cindy in a new way and motivated her to enter the story by changing her Christmas gift giving habits from a more conventional checklist approach to relational giving.

Cindy took on the challenge to give less expensive, relational gifts for the purpose of giving the money saved towards Imago Dei’s Advent offering. The next challenge for her was figuring out what she would give.

“I wanted to do something that wouldn’t get thrown away afterwards,” she says, “something that was meaningful and yet still fulfilled the idea of not being consumed with giving large gifts.” She combined her love for cooking with her interest in creating her own cards out of inexpensive materials to create a family recipe book for her two sons and their wives, including her son’s favorite dishes from childhood, Japanese dishes from their time as missionaries in Japan and family recipes she thought her sons’ wives should have. “Since then we’ve had some great conversations about the book,” she says.

Then, asking God for help on some other ideas, she saw a German choir concert advertised and knew that her German speaking dad would really enjoy it. At Christmas she and Gary handed her parents a “Save the Date” card for a surprise night out. “My dad has Parkinson’s,” she says, “and doesn’t go out much.” So when her dad joined them for a night of German singing, topped off with an assortment of German desserts, he ended up having a great time.

For their seventeen-year-old son, Nathan, Cindy and Gary decided to set aside a “Nathan Day,” where they both spent the whole day focused on him—shopping, watching movies and going out to dinner with gift cards they received. "We hadn’t done a whole day, both Gary and I,” she says when asked if this was typical for their family. “At first it was no big deal but by the time we got to dinner he was real talkative and really interacting with us. So I think it was a good gift.”

Cindy and her family have never spent a lot of money on Christmas. They live on a modest budget and stopped exchanging gifts with their extended family years ago. With the money they saved they were able to make a small contribution to Imago Dei’s Advent offering, but the larger benefit for Cindy was the opportunity to challenge the cultural norms of Christmas by giving gifts that gave of herself—her time, her creativity and her talents, which in fact relieved her from the stress of finding gifts on a standard list that would fit into their budget.

Cindy’s immediate family understood the reason for the change in her gift giving, however as she explained it to many of her friends and family, some commented how their families "would never understand" such a change in their Christmas traditions. For Cindy taking the risk of appearing strange through these small steps was worth it in exchange for the opportunity to enter the story with Christ, who with humble means battled the evils of greed and selfishness that were normative in his own culture. Next year Cindy hopes her whole family will join in the practice of relational giving at Christmas and prays that God will provide for them to be able to give even more to the Advent offering in order to bless others in need around the world.

Do you want to join the conspiracy?  You can be a part of it on your own, or bring it to your entire faith community.  To find out more about it, and find out about how to worship more, spend less and give more go to www.adventconspiracy.org.