This post was last updated on February 14th, 2024 at 09:32 am.

Do you see more producers or consumers in the church or the community?

For example, do you see others:

• consume more raw materials in a week than what they produce, or vice versa, or
• produce something for the greater good of humanity verses consume things that bring humanity down, or
• in the church consume the church’s resources instead of helping produce resources for the church.

Let’s focus on the last example.

Consumer vs. Producer – probably the best way to distinguish the difference is to use an example of Joe. Joe comes to church on Sunday and goes to two Bible classes, takes in the worship and sermon, then leaves for the day. He doesn’t come back to church any other days to help out around the church and doesn’t donate his time to the church’s mission. In this sense he is consuming the classes but not giving much back. Now let’s take a look at Joe in a different scenario. He still takes in the classes, worship, and sermon; but he cleans the church’s bathrooms weekly, mentors men every Friday, donates time to the Christmas fundraising event, and provides free plumbing services to the church.

Before we tell Joe, in the first scenario to pull his weight, we should be aware of a few things. 🙂 I don’t believe that there’s anyone that’s truly just a consumer or a producer. Everyone at some time is either a consumer or a producer and it changes throughout the day – sometime minute by minute. The question one should ask is, ‘do you give back in some way greater than what you have taken’? Another caveat, is when someone is a new visitor to your church, most of the time they are learning about the organization any way they can or many times they are in real trouble looking for answers. In these instances, and possibly others, they will probably be a consumer for majority of their time spent at church. This consumption behavior may go on for awhile when a person is new to the church. The church should gradually mentor them into being a producer, in some capacity, that’s greater than what they consume – in all walks of their life. They should be a producer in their home life, mentoring their children, at work, taking interest in others, etc. How much better will the world be, if we had a little less consuming and little more producing for society’s enrichment?

Becoming a Producer.

What are some things people can help the church with to become more of a producer? There’s teaching adult or children, mentoring others, helping in the nursery, helping around the church grounds or cleaning, donations, etc. A few other examples that may not come to mind are welcoming new people and showing them around, evangelism, community service in the name of the church, and encouraging pastors – especially after a hard delivered sermon. Feel free to add any that you thought of in the blog’s comment section.

Here’s a blast from the past: Can you remember when produce was so inexpensive like the one in the picture? Be careful, you may date yourself. 🙂

Image by chandlervid85 on Freepik