I have notebooks full of church curriculum. Bible studies. Sermons. Worship events. I even have the notes for a discipleship class/program I helped put together. I spent a lot of time in my twenties thinking about how to help people be better Christians, how to help people get the right doctrine, how to help people correct their theology and find a deeper relationship with God.

I was part of the Church industrial complex.

There’s an idea floating around most churches in the United States that programs will help people be better at practicing Christianity. So, we offer classes, books, sermons, and curriculum to help people learn to be a disciple of Jesus.

Most of these things end up costing someone money at some point. We pay to get tools to get a better relationship with God, to learn the right doctrine, to be better Christians.

This is an industrial complex disguised as “spiritual growth.”

I’m not against people being paid for the work they do. Paul says that a worker is worth their wages, and I agree. Pay clergy. Pay writers. Pay theologians. None of this is inherently bad. Hell, I have a whole library of (mostly) books on Christian topics. I believe in paying people for the work they do.

What I question is, what work are we actually doing?

We talk about spiritual growth, becoming mature Christians, discipleship, and then we turn it into something that is domesticated and palatable to the system of oppression and the powers and principalities of the U.S. We are actually throwing smoke bombs and calling them the cloud of unknowing. It’s a smoke screen to hide the fact that this is not true discipleship, not truly following the Jesus of the Bible. Mostly, we are simply trying to better ourselves in some vaguely moralistic sense and turning Christianity into a money grab.

While I never charged for my studies—volunteer labor in church is a whole other discussion—I was still part of this Church industrial complex, this commodification of discipleship. See, it’s not exactly about money. It’s about formation.

What is a commodity forming us into? We collect programs, books, podcasts, and sermons as if they are figurines to decorate the halls of our hearts. But many—if not most—of what is produced under the guise of “Christian growth” is nothing more than a product to consume or a program to complete. How do we measure our progress in the Christian life—as if it was a progress bar to fill up? We measure our growth by what we consume.

See, we all spit out theology or moralistic practices as some sort of proof that we are “good Christians.” But, most of the time, all that means is that we are becoming nice, white people who don’t really rock the boat and vote correctly. We become volunteers and tithers as if that is the goal of a life that follows Jesus.

We’ve turned Christian maturity into a subscription that we keep as long as we pay the monthly fee. We’re star struck by celebrity pastors and Christian leaders that have a good platform for what their hobby horses are. We ask people to “invest” in their spiritual growth as if they were playing the stock market.

Here’s the kicker: much of the time we don’t even know this is what we are doing. We have been so conditioned to a program driven church that we don’t even blink when we fall into comparing our spiritual life to other peoples. We become convinced that because we have our theology correct, have read so many books on Christian growth, attend every sermon and class that we are good Christians, pleasing in the eyes of God.

All we end up with though is a domesticated, watered down, country club version of Christianity that lacks real power to challenge and change. Instead of consuming and being changed by the body and blood of Christ, we consume information about him. Spiritual formation—the process of becoming more and more like Christ—is systematized, sold, and streamlined for easy consumption without any real challenge to our lives.

The Christian industrial complex continually tries to sell us transactional theology and Christ as a brand.

But Jesus isn’t about that kind of life.

Jesus isn’t about forming us into nice, moral people who volunteer at church and tithe ten percent or more. Jesus isn’t about an individualized formation of spiritual triumphs and measurable actions to prove your love for God.

Instead of something to consume, Christ gives us something to do, and that something is the very thing he does himself. The Christian industrial complex tries to sell us formation. But Christ bears witness.

The witness of Christ isn’t something you learn in a book or a class or anywhere else. You see, Christ’s presence bearing witness to the reality of the human condition in the places that are hard to look at.

The wounded.

The oppressed.

The suffering.

Black bodies killed by the state.

Legislation against queer people’s right to just exist.

Overt—and subvert—control over the bodily autonomy of women.

Genocide in the name of “God.”

These are some of the places where we see Jesus bear witness to the reality that the world is not how it should be, yet God hasn’t abandoned creation. Instead, God is found among the broken, the suffering the oppressed, telling the truth that the kingdom of God is for them, and that empire is false, no matter how it is packaged… even as Christian growth.

Jesus tells us that a new way of existence is not only possible, but that it is breaking into this reality with such force that the powers and principalities of this current system are struggling with everything they have to keep the kingdom out.

This is a witness not only about who God is, but it is about us as well. Here, in Jesus, we see humanity truly alive, spreading itself out like a tablecloth for the sake of other people. In Jesus we see what it means to be human and how much that looks like who God is.

Jesus shows us that there is a God who refuses to stay distant from the suffering, a kingdom that cannot be commodified, and a humanity that is most alive when it gives itself away in love.

This is the church’s real testimony. We see Jesus sitting in solidarity with the hurting, the poor, the oppressed. We are witnesses to who this God is, what this inbreaking kingdom is, and who humanity is supposed to be. We witness these things and testify to the truth of it all by joining Jesus in his solidarity and his sacrifice.

We aren’t just talking about Jesus, about beliefs, doctrines, and theology that circles around Christ in some ethereal sense. No, we tell about what we witness: the person of God found in the suffering of the world. Telling about, turning towards, and taking action in the name of are our political acts of worship.

Worship is a political act. It is a declaration of allegiance to the crucified one. We declare we are not citizens of the empire around us, that we are not committed to commodification, dehumanization, power, greed, and everything else that the kingdom of God has conquered. We turn towards Jesus and away from empire. This is a political act that informs everything we do to testify about Christ and his table-oriented kingdom.

Learning to testify to another way of living, to another power, to the suffering Jesus as lord of all—this is discipleship.

When we choose communion over commodification, we testify.

When we practice economic resistance with mutual-aid and direct care for needs, we testify.

When we tell honest stories that don’t always wrap up neatly, we testify.

When we elevate local, marginalized voices, we testify.

When we lean into sacramental, slow living, we testify.

The church is called to repent and convert away from the tools, ways, and methods of Empire, and when we do this, we testify to the truth of Christ.

This, all of this, is why the church should be in the streets.

We the church should be about direct action and political protest because we bear witness and testify to another existence, see the harm that this world’s systems of power cause, and want to live as resurrection people for all. We should have our liturgy in the streets, praying, psalming, and enacting parables in the face of the lies of domination and greed. We must physically stand where we see Christ: in the margins and suffering caused by the evil of this world’s systems.

Resisting injustice and calling for reform—resurrection—is picking up our cross and following the cross-shaped love of Jesus.

In the United States, we are in a crucible. Christians are backing an authoritarian government that is bent on elevating white, cis, heterosexual, (a certain kind of) Christen men as the dominate authority. This administration is set on silencing, taking away the rights, and erasing everyone who disagrees or doesn’t fit this mold. It is sickening, and the church is going along with it.

We Christians must reclaim our witness, our testimony. We must speak out. It’s not time to be silent and complacent with evil. It is time to engage our prophetic imaginations and find direct and creative ways to testify to what we have seen in Christ.

Our testimony isn’t about performative virtue signaling. It’s the truth from the body, from the reality of our lived, embodied experience. Christ is revealed in survival, grief, joy, protest, recovery, and hope. The stories we tell in our words and our actions name God’s presence in the margins, and that is holy witness.

This is what it means to be the cloud of witnesses. We are the ones who see the reality of this world’s systems and the truth of the suffering savior. Living into our imaginative expressions of the testimony of truth we hold is how we reclaim discipleship from the marketplace. It is how we speak truth to power in the face of fear and death. It is how we live not as consumers but as cruciform lovers. This is the call, and may it be clear: it is time for we the church to rise up and love our testimony out loud, at home, at work, and in the streets.

This is our witness, and it is time we reclaimed it.