Urban Idealist

I don’t know how, but since moving to Paris I’ve been had the chance to meet a lot of really cool people. People who I would have certainly never thought that I would cross paths with. Yet, God uses these chance meetings to encourage my faith and give me new insight into life as a Christian and following Jesus. This last week I’ve been able to spend some time with a guy named Gordon Pennington who runs a media consulting firm called Burning Media. His story is on the website, but his future is what makes this guy so cool. Gordon is a committed Christian guy who is using his vast knowledge and skill in marketing to advance the Kingdom of God. He is the first person to admit that marketing is often used to sell things to people that don’t need them and is fully aware of the many woes there are behind marketing strategy and he raised good questions about these issues. Such as: What is our place as Christians in giving in to marketing? What should be the Church’s response to marketing? What can the Church do to bring justice to unethical business practices? How can we resist marketing in our culture and see truth?

The thing about Gordon that I really enjoyed talking about was culture. I am a wanna-be sociologist and I love the subject. I read what I can, but it was a treat for me to talk with somebody who is in the process of writing a book that I would read. We talked about what shapes culture and why culture is what it is. We talked about what it will take for the Church to influence a culture that has given itself over to media and marketing. A culture in which the products (music, movies, cereal, shoes) that the public use are dictated by big business.

In all of our conversation about this there were two things that stood out to me. One is the reality that people are used to personify products. As a Christian this is convicting to me. Each one of us is a breathing, walking, talking personification of who Jesus is and was. Advertising companies go out and find a celebrity that will represent their product in order to give a product some sort of person-hood. Jesus comes and chooses us, abnormal and broken people, to remain on earth and be His person-hood. Life is the best way to represent any product. We as Christians must do the same.

The second thing was that to truly influence culture we have to show that our God is capable of changing lives and showing up in ways that only He can. I used to think this is how I lived my life…I would say, “If God doesn’t show up things aren’t going to go well.” Since moving to Paris I feel like I have stepped back from this attitude. I haven’t adopted or dreamed many ‘God-sized’ goals that I have acted on. I do think that we are surviving and thriving here only due to the grace of God, but I need to be real with myself and say that I could be living my faith more boldly. The best tool that we have as Christians are the times when we have done our best, it wasn’t enough, and God came in and redeemed a near disastrous situation. I feel like I need these times…it is both a drug for us that keeps us dependent on God and a powerful display of who God is.

Some Christians that I know reject the idea of marketing and advertising…and I am among those who do…depending on the product. I have no problem doing our best to use the tools that God has given us to make Himself known. I am more than happy to admit that the product that my life represents is beneficial to every person who will receive it. I will do whatever I can to make Jesus and the Kingdom of God known.

As a Christian I need to be weary of the times when I find myself giving in quickly to culture and sacrificing the calling of God. I would be a liar if I said that I haven’t had my attention too fixed on things that really aren’t that important. This is an area that I need to repent of.

I guess that is the point of this post…To share with anybody who reads this that I am looking for new ways for my life to ‘advertise’ (not the best word) the right things and for my life to avoid giving into the wrong things.