From “retail therapy” to “retail ministry” …

When you hear the term “retail therapy” you likely picture someone with arms laden with bags from shopping, not for needs but instead using spending on themselves as a coping mechanism to deal with the tensions of life.

In the moment, you might “feel better” as you shop and indulge yourself, only to discover spending money is not a salve for treating life’s trials and troubles. You may feel somewhat “soothed” in the moment, but “retail therapy” never satisfies.

So why are some churches attempting “retail ministry”?

As church leaders have scrambled to learn how to best minister to their flocks in very different circumstances — a global pandemic that keeps them from gathering — some have turned to “retail ministry” as some sort of means of “soothing” their members. For example, one pastor took to social media seeking ideas for something he could purchase to give to church members as sort of a “thinking of you” gift. Several churches have turned to spending on non-essentials as some way of ministering to people during a pandemic. This at a time when needs for benevolence spending has spiked as many more people find themselves out of work and families struggling with lost incomes needed for real essentials like food and keeping a roof over their heads.

Just how far afield has the church gone when it thinks the best way to minister to people in a time of global crisis is to go shopping for gifts for them?

What is needed is real, biblical Christian ministry, the kind we see from the early church who, in very difficult times of their own, rallied to put love into action by serving and making real sacrifices for one another. All of that plus making fellowship together important which especially focused on prayer, the teaching of the apostles, and breaking bread together.

Could you imagine in their more difficult days one of the apostles suggesting they go shopping for gifts for church members so they might feel better?

I think what the apostles understood was our greatest need is for Jesus Christ, who alone satisfies our souls. This is what the Apostle Paul pointed to when He preached in Athens, as he highlighted a great truth we must daily remember: It is in Jesus Christ “that we live and move and exist” …

“So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: ‘Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: “To an Unknown God.” This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about. He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs — for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him — though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring,’” Acts 17:22-28.

If it is in Christ that we live, move, and have our being, then church doesn’t need to go shopping for trinkets, but to make Christ Himself, and His love, what we give and share with others.

Scotty