Toward a Missional Economy, Part 1

I recently spoke on “Economy and Mission” at Verge L.A. 2009. Since starting Twoshirts.org almost two years ago, this has been a significant subject of study for me and it has direct bearing on how we shape community – something we’re currently neck deep in defining over at Ikon Community. So, over the next few days I’ll share my Verge presentation here in the hopes of stimulating some thoughtfulness about how missional churches might follow the Holy Spirit in cultivating subversive, grassroots economic communities in a desert of greed and inequality.

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I am an economist. Not by education or by training. The truth is I don’t know much about “macroeconomic rigidities” or “consensus forecasts,” but what I do know, perhaps naively, is that the heart of economics is merely the stewardship of resources, or, quite literally the “rules of the household” (Greek: oikos & nomos). Therefore, I am economist simply by living.

This means you are an economist too. It doesn’t matter if you’re poorly educated or hopelessly impoverished. Economics isn’t about what you know, or how much you have; it’s about how you handle what you have. Everyone has stuff, and everyone has a way of figuring out what to hold on to and what to let go of.

Obviously, then, God is also an economist because God has stuff – lots of stuff! So if, as I take it, “mission” means going where God goes and doing what God does (John 5:19) then a critical question for us is, “What is God the economist doing?” Or, perhaps a more helpful question for shedding our cultural prejudices would be, “What are the rules of his household?” Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: 2 Corinthians, Church, Consumerism, economy, Exodus, gifts, Ikon Community, Manna, mission, Paul, twoshirts.org, Verge LA

Make Something Day, 2009

It’s the time of year when we start thinking about gifts. No, I’m not talking about Christmas. Friends Jason and Brooke Evans started Make Something Day a couple years ago as a way of practicing an alternative economy of simplicity and gift-giving on the most conspicuous consumption day of the year: Black Friday. Naturally, this idea appealed to me right away as it goes hand-in-hand with the gift economy approach of the Twoshirts.org Community.

Here’s a snippet from the MSD website: Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Black Friday, Culture, gifts, Jason Evans, Make Something Day, TheOoze.com

Steve Jobs Beats Porn & Poverty

While the Great Recession continue to confound and grind away at the hopes and dreams of Americans everywhere, even the most escapist industry on the planet has proven to be hard hit by the economic squeeze: that’s right, according to The Economist, the porn industry is “scraping by.”

Most of the industry consists of small private production companies whose numbers are secret, but Mark Kernes, an editor at Adult Video News, a trade magazine, estimates that the American industry had some $6 billion in revenues in 2007, before the recession, mostly in DVD sales and rentals and some in internet subscriptions. Diane Duke, the director of the Free Speech Coalition, the adult industry’s trade group, thinks that revenues have fallen 30-50% during the past year. “One producer told me his revenue was down 80%,” she says.

Meanwhile, Apple Inc. reported today their largest single quarter profit ever at $1.6 billion amid revenues of over $7 billion. Altogether this means that in 2009 – right smack in the midst of one of the greatest economic crises in American history – people will have spent roughly 36 billion dollars on Apple computer products and porn alone (I guess now I know why my MacBook is called a “Pro”).

To put all that into perspective, consider this:

• To finally provide clean water for every person on the planet would cost only $10 billion per year for 10 years.
• The elimination of starvation and malnutrition on the planet would cost only $19 billion per year for 10 years.
• The elimination of illiteracy on the planet would cost only $2 billion per year for 20 years.

You could validly dispute the specifics of these figures but the basic point remains true: something is seriously wrong with our priorities.

Technorati Tags: charity, development, illiteracy, News, porn, poverty

Coffee, David Petraeus, and the end of the Empire

I continue the slow but sure migration of older posts from my previous blog. Today, a little attempt at tongue-in-cheek Great Recession humor…

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With all the talk about the new frugality amid tough economic times, I came across this great little article recently:

Frugal Is Cool in Cash-Strapped U.S.

“There is a sense of mourning and confusion and a real feeling of living in the last days of empire,” Tobar said.

Author Hectar Tobar is describing the widespread American sentiment of fear, a mood that is striking to him, having returned to the United States after a seven-year hiatus. Apparently we’re not the confident, fearsome mongerers of war and capitalism that we used to be. It’s a great article. Read the whole thing.

I can’t say I’m surprised. All the crashing and collapsing going on lately has brought to mind an Op Ed article written over ten years ago in The New York Times. Back then, my good friend Jason Dougherty and I were beginning to feel our bourgeois oats. We learned to frolic on foamy shores of Lattes and Cappuccinos. We luxuriated in the rich acidity of double and triple shots of espresso sipped gently from tiny little cups, or dumped wholesale into steaming mugs of drip coffee or chai tea. We were, we thought, the spiritual progeny of  the John Adams quip, “I am a revolutionary so my son can be a farmer so his son can be a poet!”

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, coffee, David Petraeus, economy, Empire, Great Recession, Hectar Tobar, New York Times, Oil, War