How Eddie Gibbs Ruined My Life
Picture me in the year 2002. A blissfully content 30-year-old youth pastor for a delightfully hip little church nestled in an upscale Rocky Mountain resort town. Skiing and snowboarding with affluent teenagers was my job. I highly recommend it.
What I don’t recommend is disturbing your ambitious ministry career with the highly upsetting claims of trouble-makers like Eddie Gibbs. IVP seemed insistent, in those days, on sending me books in the mail and on one of those fateful days of the young millennium they sent me a slyly unassuming book titled, Church Next.
I’m quite sure I was duped into reading it by the tastefully conservative cover art; its throng of crowds promising ministry prosperity to all who thumbed the pages. As if that weren’t enough, early on Mr. Gibbs sprinkled his prose with references to “post-modernism,” an intoxicating topic for young Gen-X pastors longing to make their own profound ecclesiological mark in an Evangelicalism largely dominated by ex Jesus movement hippies who still waxed wild-eyed from time to time about the “Christian communes” and counter-cultural radicalisms of their own youth.
Gibbs said changes were coming. Moreover, those changes would be “quantum.” I, for one, was ready, not only for my own success, but for the somber displacement of the preceding generation. I greedily read on. The rest of the book, however, terrified me. Gibbs had the audacity to predict, among other ghastly things, the ultimate demise of the professional ministry class.
The church in the post-modern era must be prepared to witness with vulnerability and humility from the margins of society, much as it did in the first two centuries of its existence. The part of its past that truly liberates is that which is rooted in the gospel and the community life of the people of faith throughout the centuries and in multiple cultural contexts. On the other hand, the part of the Church’s past that is associated with the politics of power and the compromises of self-interest must be jettisoned (p 30).
Being only a few years into a full-time career in ministry, I did what any self-respecting professional would do – I put the book on my shelf at eye-level so people would know I’d read something written by a Fuller professor. Otherwise, I totally ignored it.
Little did I know the book had sickened me.
Gibbs had cleverly contaminated the pages with a carefully engineered virus which – though I wasn’t immediately cognizant of it – had subtly affected my vision, making it impossible for me to see the church the same way again.
Diabolical!
Looking back years later, I can now recognize how Mr. Gibb’s penetrating insights and damaging sociological applications have ruined my perception of the very relationships that are fostered in conventional, market-based church models. Believe me, it gives me no joy to do it, but for your own sake and that of others I must share this example of Gibbs’ infective handiwork as a warning:
a further aspect of the exchange basis of marketing [that negatively impacts the church] is its reciprocal basis. [Kenneson and Street] write, “the reciprocity embodied in self-interested exchange is not the same as the reciprocity embodied in gift-giving…Gift giving establishes and sustains relationships by acknowledging indebtedness…but this is precisely the kind of indebtedness that self-interested market exchanges seek to avoid.” in the marketing scenario, once you have paid the price and received the goods, you are free to walk away…In contrast, the gospel is not a product to be marketed, but a life-long relationship to be established and developed.” (p 51)
Surely now you see what I mean. If one is willing to question (in a commercially-bounded society no less!) the sanctity of relationships built on an ethic of commerce, then what else can possibly remain outside the realm of criticism?
For me, sadly, the answer is “not much.” I’m sure I could insert some pithy bit of wisdom about foundations and cracks and the need to demolish the structures built on unsound footings, but I’m sure that’s not necessary. You get the picture.
It’s worth noting that I tried beating this illness at first. I worked harder, creating bigger programs and more colorful flow charts and elaborate matrices of ministry management. I honed my preaching skills until I could entertain even the most distracted, convict even the most jaded, and inspire even the most slothful. Yet, the fever remained. When that didn’t work I sojourned to a bigger church, in a bigger urban center-city, with a bigger position and a bigger paycheck, hoping to find my cure in the ritual bloodletting of periodic inner-city relief work.
Sadly, that only exasperated my symptoms, for I seemed to be merely tasting the medicine without swallowing it whole. All along the way, Gibbs’ words pulsated through me, multiplying exponentially at the cellular level, and I found some of it was more applicable than ever before:
In response to the challenges of modernity, churches that made a significant appeal to the baby-boomer generation did so through applying marketing strategies rather than mission insights. This shortsighted strategy has contributed to shallow discipleship, short-term commitments, and compartmentalized living. Tom Beaudoin aptly describes boomer religion as “religion-as-accessory,” resulting in Gen-X children taking the next step to “religion-as-unnecessary” (p 31).
How can one man resist the tide of such insidious rhetoric?
It is now my unhappy duty to admit the full extent of my condition: if only a life of vulnerable humility on the margins of society is a true witness to Christ in our culture, then the only faithful choice for me is a life of non-professional ministry. If only exchanges of grace and generosity – as opposed to market-based exchanges – can cultivate freedom, gratitude, and loyalty in relationships, then the only sane choice for me is a life of gifts.
Hence, last year my wife and I quit our big jobs at the big church and moved across the country, recklessly running the risk of exposing countless others in an entirely new region of the country to this terrible malady (it turns out, there were already many others here suffering from the same symptoms). I’ve walked away from professional ministry entirely and worked to transition into a new career field. We started a website designed to foster a life of gifts, and more recently, we’ve started meeting with a new, smaller community of faith every week in our home to explore what it means to be the people of God on the margins of society, while still affecting it with the gospel.
And now you know. Let this sad tale serve as a warning to you and others! Steer clear of Eddie Gibbs and his ilk lest you find yourselves throwing away your comfortable career, your cozy faith, and your predictable life in order to chase after the unrealistic ideologies of the gospel.
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