Gifts according to Kester Brewin

Kester Brewin, in his book "Signs of Emergence" proposes that "a conjunctive approach to faith must reevaluate the church's modes of exchange, and that central to our critique of consumerism must be the rediscovery of the transaction of gift." Wha....? Well, simply put, a gift is something that gets passed along, with nothing given for it in return--there is no exchange, a gift is not a commodity for it cannot be bought. In clarifying this for us, Brewing argues that we in our lives of faith enact that faith as a gift to the world--meaning that there is nothing we should expect in return for our work: no greater numbers, no pat on the back, no nuthin'. Because it is not about what we get out of things such as worship, but what we put into them. Let me pause here a moment to snark a bit about the "mega-church worship style" which I have always felt was more commercial than sacred. All that light and music, showmanship and special affects. It always reminded me of the circus; what do we bring to the circus? Nothing except ourselves and our desire to be entertained. At the same time, with the repetition you get in more mainline churches, there is also the same risk of "going through the motions" and not putting any more into it than one would at the non-denominational megachurch. Worship must involve the person as a participant--putting something out there without the need or expectation of getting anything back from it. Not that something won't come back, but that the outflowing of someone's being, personhood, love, is more important than what they are getting out of the experience. But something is going to come back to us. So how does one manage a kind of balance between the giving and eventual reception?
There is a way to keep gifts from becoming an exchange, Brewing points out, and that is to give the gift up to a third party so that the gift actually disappears. Gifts given back and forth are no longer gifts, but exchanges because, of course, there is the expectation that one will recieve something in exchange for his or her gift. Think about what the value of your gift is then. It is merely the value of the thing you will get in exchange. This is what commodities exchanges do for us, teaches what the value of something is in terms of money. In such a model of direct reciprocity, there is no growth, no broadening of one's view, no creativity, and fundamentally, no love. When we emphasize giving, rather than recieving, we can remove ourselves from the consumer identity our society has given us and stop valuing things one-dimensionally (dollars and cents). Instead, we open ourselves up to value things as gifts, with all the meaning and love that goes into making something a gift. It has the potential to reshape how we live and indeed how we worship. A third party, in whom the gift (as Brewin points out) disappears, keeps the gift from making its way directly back to us. This emphasis on giving makes me wonder what the difference then between worship and living would look like. Perhaps the distinction would be lessened? Possibly.
Brewing goes on to point out that gifs are terribly personal, and to allow someone to share his or her gift in the worship sphere allows that individual to worship with "integrity". And see, here is why I really like this book. Brewin's understanding of gift demands that a person have agency. By this I mean that a person can fully engage in the world as faithful Christians and can use this ability to reshape the way we live, worship, pray, and so on. When a person has his or her full ability to act, then the sky is the limit. There is no longer one way to do something, and certainly no one way to be a Christian. We all have gifts given to us, doesn't it seem appropriate that we all have a space in which to share these gifts? And not just certain kinds of gifts, but all kinds which means that we must create flexible spaces to accomodate such variety. Sounds like fun to me.