For my end of the semester research project I\u2019ve been reading and writing about how the world has been skewing our view of true leadership. Miller and Cavanaugh helped me see that consumerism has played a pivotal role. Consider this\u2026Who would write, let alone read, a book about a stable, small company providing useful service through the hard work of lifetime employees? I highly doubt this book would become a New York Times Bestseller. Yet, thousands of small churches have successfully influenced, in meaningful and noteworthy ways, the families and communities where they are planted. In contrast, the popular Christian leadership press likes the highly \u201csuccessful\u201d pastor who started with a home group and within a few short years cultivated a church of thousands. This isn\u2019t to suggest large churches have bad leadership theories, this just points out how even Christian culture is influenced by the world\u2019s measurements of leadership and how publishers cater to stories that will sell.<\/p>\n
Most popular leadership books will leave you reflecting on a list of personality traits that can make you increase your power, influence, and greatness. Yet any leadership theory that has power and greatness as the outcomes is necessarily going to be at odds with the purposes of Jesus. That is why I really like Miller\u2019s thought that the sacrament of the Eucharist has the ability to draw us back to what is most valuable. With consumerism feeding us with false desires it makes great sense to me that focusing on Jesus and the Cross will change our desires. I like what Miller says, \u201cDesire involves, not only our desire for God, but also God\u2019s desire for us, the desire for the kingdom of God and God\u2019s justice originating from God\u2019s steadfast love[1]<\/a>.\u201d Cavanaugh also speaks to this desire when he says, \u201cOur attachment to things we buy is short-lived, which leaves the consumer desiring not necessarily more, but something else.\u00a0 Because of these types of desire are never satisfied, marketers have us just where they want us\u2014chained to consuming in pursuit of happiness or our ideal identity[2]<\/a>.\u201d The world\u2019s desires will never satisfy, only Jesus will satisfy.<\/p>\n Cavanugh and Miller both suggest in one way or another that we often want to make changes to our consumption patterns, \u201cto live another way, but we simply do not know how[3]<\/a>.\u201d Yet, they both give an answer that really resonates with me. \u00a0I\u2019d like to think the more we stop focusing on what we don\u2019t have and the more we focus on Jesus, on what He has done for us, and who we truly are and all we have in Him, then the more free we will feel to follow Him and love others well. By fixing our eyes on Jesus we will be less swayed by the patterns and desires of this world and will be drawn to seek only Him to meet our desires.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Vincent Miller,\u00a0Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture<\/em>\u00a0(New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing, 2005), 110.<\/p>\n
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