Advent Conspiracy

As I've mentioned previously, I think the largest threat to true Christianity today is consumerism. Jack Wisdom of Ecclesia poignantly stated in a sermon a couple months ago that "Christians in America are no different than non-Christians when it comes to being suckers for marketing and advertisements." Sadly, this is no more true than around the Holidays. Christians claim that Christmas is all about Jesus, but far too often the beauty, simplicity and significance of Christ's birth is lost amidst the chaos, shopping, and constant busyness of the season; it becomes about us.

I'm just at a place where I'm questioning what all that crap really has to do with what we're supposed to be celebrating. Now that Sarah & I are parents, we're thinking about how we can reclaim Christmas and celebrate it within our family. I'd encourage everybody to check out Advent Conspiracy. It's a great organization with ideas on how to celebrate Christmas differently.

Here's some various questions & thoughts that Ecclesia & Advent Conspiracy have stimulated within us:

-Americans today are the richest people in the history of the planet. It seems wrong that we spend millions of dollars getting more stuff we don't need when there are millions around the world who don't even have clean water. We need to learn contentment.
-What if by getting our kids what they want all the time and giving them more and more stuff, we are not helping them, but hurting them? What if we are ingraining in them the exact opposite of what we would long to be?
-Jesus only got 3 gifts for His birthday. Wouldn't it be weird to go to Jesus' birthday party and get more gifts than He did?
-Let's give gifts to one another that are meaningful, not stuff that just makes us better consumers and stuff we'll throw away when we're bored of it.
- Because it's His birthday we're celebrating, our primary gifts of the Season need to be gifts to Jesus. And He made it clear that when we give to "the least of the these," we've given to Him. What a fascinating idea to to give a gift to Jesus on Christmas by helping the poor!

I'm inspired by what Ecclesia did for Christmas last year as a church community. By taking this approach, they raised $56,000 and built a well for a village in Nicaragua. That's the kind of stuff Christmas should be about. What a beautiful picture of the Kingdom that paints for non-Christians. Even the harshest of critics couldn't help but want to be part of a community like that.