Developing Self-Feeders in a Spoon-Fed World

 Consumerism, in the context of relationships, is when you are trying to extract happiness from one another or an organization.  That mentality will kill a marriage, a friendship, a small group, and even a church. Our goal, stated or not, hopefully is not to extract happiness from one another. Rather Matt. 5:3 says, “Blessed (happy) are those who realize their need for Him (God), for the Kingdom of Heaven is given to them.” How can you help your group or church overcome the consumerism mindset?  By training them to have a desperate need for God and to be others focused!

 Discipleship has all sorts of components:  knowledge, disciplines, obedience; but at its core, regardless of the methods, discipleship needs to have an others-focused undertone with the constant mentality of a desperate need for God.  Otherwise, we are strongly tempted to think its all about me.  And, when it’s about us, we instinctively are looking and expecting people to feed us, rather than feeding ourselves.

 The route to others-focused ministry is not about more church programs. As Bakke Graduate University President Brad Smith concludes: “Our programs are like airport runways -- necessary -- but at some point they must end for our people to take off. Otherwise people start thinking they are airport baggage carts when in reality they are airplanes. It's a tragic loss of identity.”  Others-focused ministry has a unique power to remind us of our identity as disciples of Christ, not consumers of religious goods and services.

 Why is self-feeder discipleship (rather than consumer discipleship) important?  For several reasons:

-this discipleship determines the quality of spiritual movements both in the local church and more broadly

-whatever substitutes for this discipleship is what the church looks like (in America, for instance, consumerism commonly gets substituted for discipleship so instead of making disciples, we work to satisfy consumers)

-leadership is an extension of discipleship; the type of leaders you have is determined by the disciples you are making.