the attractional v. missional debate
I think the use of the term attractional is a tad ambiguous, but because I am partly responsible for introducing it into the broader conversation I have to stick with it. What I am trying to get at in using the term attractional is what I call the missionary mode or primary posture of the church in relation to its context. An attractional church is one whose primary stance towards those it seeks to reach is couched in the expectation of a come-to-us mentality. And this expectation as it plays out in the US, Europe, Australia, etc. was basically formed in a time in history where the church had a central position in the culture and people naturally came to church to be cared for, to hear the gospel, and to participate in the community life. The problem is that adopting such a mode is at the cost of fundamentally altering our understanding of ourselves as a ‘sent’ people. (Incidentally, the word missio, from which we get our word mission, comes from the Latin word meaning sent.) And this is further exacerbated by the fact that we live in what historians and theologians rightly call a post-Christendom era. In other words, an attractional church can work in a Christendom context, but in a missionary context it actually undermines our efforts to reach people meaningfully with the Gospel of Jesus. It is literally out-moded! A ‘sent people’ no matter how you configure it implies a going of sorts. And when combined with the other primary theological metaphor in the bible of how god reaches the nations, namely the Incarnation, it clashes head-on with the primary expectation built into attractional forms of church. Hence the conflict–they are basically two different conceptions of church vying for our loyalty in our day.
But another ambiguity can be explained by saying that while a more missionally defined church moves from a come-to-us mentality to a go-to-them mentality, nonetheless all expressions of church should be attractive. That is, we should always be culturally compelling. Don’t mistake not being attractional for not being attractive.
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116 Responses to “the attractional v. missional debate”
We are to “seek and to save that which was lost” any other model is not Christs model.
The come see model doesnt work in a missions context, but I think it works in a sheep rustling context.
This has become a hot button for me - and all because I read The shaping of Things to Come.
I believe that churches need to avoid the danger of “Attractionalism” - the belief that creating an appealing church service and programs will attract unbelievers to come to church.
The majority of members in attractional churches have abandoned personal responsibility for showing and sharing the truth of the gospel. Instead, they expect the church services and the paid professionals to accomplish the evangelistic ministry of the church. This abdication of personal responsibility to join Jesus in His mission, coupled with churches that design church services to attract unbelievers to church, are significant obstacles to missional activity.
As Ed Stetzer states, “attraction is not enough.”
In American Christianity there is a growing tendency among churches to believe that if they change the worship service to be more appealing or attractive to the unchurched, then unbelievers will start coming to church. Making changes because you believe it will get unbelievers to go to church is at the core of attractionalism.
To truly be missionaries in their neighborhoods, Christians must not focus on attracting people to church. Instead, efforts must focus on incarnationally displaying the gospel to everyone everywhere.
we talked today about “consumerism” in one of my classes, and someone mentioned how lots of US megachurches have started introducing food courts, bookshops, coffee shops, and the like into their enormous, sprawling buildings for what they call their “contextualization”.
Anybody else have a problem with that logic? It took me a few minutes but I finally figured out what was wrong with it - it’s not that they weren’t “contextualizign” or whatever (though syncretism might be a better word), but it’s like they thoguht that by creating this … ah, “sterilized” (for lack of a better word, though it’s debatable if they succeeded) environment separate from the world to attract people to so that they could then be “evangelized.”
I think I got mad at that point and I dont’ think people were happy with me. I asked why it was that people thought they had to remove people from their home environment to spend their time in a fake copy of the real world that mimics some of its lesser qualities (and does’nt even do them better), instead of saving the money for something useful (like missions or humanitarian aid or something) and spending their play money in ACTUAL pubs and food courts and coffee shops and getting to know the people they’re supposed to be trying to reach! Does that make any sense, I’m not sure I wrote that very well …
Agree with you Alan, - but the ‘attractiveness’ you mention in the last para has to be to Jesus and to His Kingdom, not to the church or to us as “God’s people”.
And a loud “amen” to Chris - I’ve got to the point of all but giving up on ‘church’ as it is today - too much of an organization, and not enough of an organism; too much an ‘in’ club rather than a kingdom expansion movement.
yeah thanks alan - i’ve got you to blame for having this (clarifying) discussion with a few people, e.g. “but the church should be attractive…” to my answer “yes, yes - be as attractive as christ’s salt in a bland world, but don’t sit on your arse and wonder why people don’t want to come and experience your attractiveness!”
although, i may have scored you some book sales out of it by ending on,”anyway, you should read the shaping…, it’ll clarify the lot!” ehehehe
Hey Al…do you think the ‘extractional’ works?
Justin, are you asking if I think ‘extractional’ church works? For others here: extraction being the thing which happens when an attractional church brings people to faith in a missional environment thereby ‘extracting’ them from the host culture.
Sure it works…in the short term. But in the end it acts against its own cause by creating a Christian enclave/island in the ocean of the host culture. In the end it defeats itself. As I say somewhere in TFW, in a missional setting, attractional equals extractional.
Man I am waayyy too wordy, someone slap me!
Deebs, I can’t tell you how many arguments I have on this one too. Like the other commentators note here, I think the detractors have so much vested in attractional forms of church, that they find this particularly threatening. Actually I think we should be combining missional with the word incarnational (missional-incarnational) to really get the comparison across. I think some churches can become missional, but incarnational is another deal entirely!
I think our whole problem stems from the fact that there are centripetal and centrifugal aspects to mission in both the Old Testament and New Testament. But some people get mixed up with the gathering of people into the Body of Christ as the goal of mission with attracting people to the Body of Christ as a means of mission.
Here is what I mean, the Christendom Church largely suppressed the centrifugal aspect because it believed it had Christianized culture and so centrifugal mission if it was carried out was carried out by professionals at the edge of empires. Yet there is still a centrifugal aspect to contemporary mission. Chris Wright in his monumental new work of biblical theology, THE MISSION OF GOD (an absolute must read) comments, “So the centrifugal mission of the NT church had its centripetal theology also: the nations were indeed being gathered in — not to Jerusalem or the physical Temple or to national Israel — but to Christ as the centre and to the new Temple of God that He was building through Christ as dwelling place for God by the Spirit. … So as the gospel goes out to the nations (centrifugal), the nations are gathered to Christ. (centripetal)”
What worries me is that I am increasingly meeting people who want to say mission has no centripetal dimension. Mission is just incarnationally going and living a missional lifestyle in contemporary culture without a tangible expression of the Body of Christ. In this understanding there is no centripetal, gathering of people into the Body of Christ. If Christendom Church’s mistake was to divorce missiology from ecclesiology we have to be careful that the so called emerging movement does not end up advocating a missiology divorced from ecclesiology.
If anyone is sufficiently interested I have some further thoughts on this tension here
http://www.xanga.com/JamesPetticrew/574080872/item.html
Alan, can you establish a biblical premise for doing (and being church) deliberately with/for non-believers?
What I mean is, does the biblical model of church allow for missional ideology? In that the whole idea is to meet with non-believers as a “church meeting”.
Something from an epistle might be nice.
NB: I don’t believe the attractional model is biblical either.
In fact I think I subscribe to a more “extractional” format that you have described above. Except ideally the person doesn’t become insular because the push is ever outward in an “ever increasing circles” type way.
alan:
you have described the situation i am in as a worship pastor to a tee. i am in a megachurch in the u.s. midwest and the ‘come-to-us’ model is philosophically, albiet subtlely, our m.o.
i resonate so much with your thoughts and find myself with a great amount of tension in my current situation.
this attractional idea plays into worship in a big way. as we are approaching easter, i hear things like ‘what is the wow factor this year?’ or ‘we have to really wow people into coming back.’ i find myself almost sickened at this type of conversation.
what advice would you give a young worship leader in a context where attractional seems like alot more than just being ‘culturally compelling’ and rather a ‘ploy’ to increase attendance?
Alan - I think your point in comment 8 was key. I cannot tell you how often I’m hearing “we need to be more missional” in churches all over the place when very little is changing except that they’re doing more hit and run evangelism projects. I suppose it’s better than nothing but a missional-incarnational “approach” is more of what we should be living IMO.
As for the question of Biblical support - the Bible doesn’t actually give us models for church structure, those are created by man. We can see a tiny bit how the early church lived and of course we can see how Jesus functioned but all of those behaviors were within certain cultural contexts.
There are principals that can help guide us but to look for a model from the epistles is really missing the point.
But that’s part of the conflict in which I find myself regularly when working with certain within modernity - - BUT WHERE IS IT IN THE BIBLE?! they scream. To which I want to scream back WHERE IN THE BIBLE IS YOUR MODEL?! that’s the whole problem with metanarrative IMO.
Hey Al…I was asking if you thought the word ‘extrational’ works better at communication what you mean instead of the word ‘attractional’….that’s all.
Alan, I had the most interesting experience last night. The large church where I served on staff, but am nominally attending while attending another home church, had an interesting seminar during the regular Wednesday Night service…it was about becoming “A Five Star Church”, like a hotel or restaurant…
I will say that, having taken the “red pill” over a year ago, it was jolting to my system…nauseating is a better term…to listen to them rehash all the attractional fine-tuning required to be “five star”. It was like eating a chocolate chip cookie after being completely sugar-free…gave me a headache.
I certainly do not wish I had taken the “blue pill” — not ever — because I’m moving to take back the term “church” to actually describe Christ’s followers instead of buildings and programs.
It may be a hard road, but it will be more fruitful than working up a frenzy trying to become “five star” at something that doesn’t work. This was so sad to me…I’m grieving a little today for the “they just don’t get it” of people I love….
Blessings,
An interesting quote from Price Pritchett in *The Ethics of Excellence* - “The organization can never be something the people are not.” If there is no qualitative discipleship going on, it doesn’t matter what happens quantitatively in the programs.
If “attractional” methodology brings people into a space where there is no real/deep/”attractive” Christlikeness or Kingdom Culture there, then what’s the point? It’s like glue where people get stuck.
In my thinking, this duality exhibits the same difference between substance (attractive) and seduction (attractional). In which case, “propositional” truth may take on unintended meanings, sadly.
‘what is the wow factor this year?’
Easter is always a “wow factor”… that the Son of God would suffer so terribly and die in obedience to the Father that we might be reconciled to God.
One might ask of those who claim to follow Christ: “just how far are you willing to go… how much are you willing to suffer… to seek and to save the lost? Because that is the example of the one you call your Lord and Saviour”.
I personally have no objection to a worship experience that hooks into hearts and minds and emotions about the greatest message of all time. If you have the opportunity to express this in the position you find yourself in… well go for it.
I know what you mean about conflict… I was listening to Wolfgang Simpson about house churches and the simplicity of this struck such resonance with me. But in prayer I have a sense in my Spirit that God is saying “not now.” I am still called to do something in a more institutional church setting (which God has not yet abandoned!) and if so… dang, one may as well do it well.
Is reformation of the IC possible? It’s a more difficult road compared to starting something from scratch… it’s like teaching adults compared to teaching children. But I do think it’s possible, and I even think that some are called to this. I would suggest my local church is a bit “hybrid”… it has “missional activities” without the expectation that those involved will necessarily attend Sunday church… the senior minister uses the example of a strawberry patch… runners shoot off from the parent plant, and the offspring may develop a life of their own… or may remain connected to the parent plant. The growth and fruitfulness is what matters, not the ever increasing size of the parent plant!!!
Might you have a role to agitate for “missional experiments” in the setting you are in, or might God be calling you out? That will be a matter for prayer and discernment, but I know the Spirit can speak into your heart.
‘we have to really wow people into coming back.’
“I would rather confront them with the truth of the gospel and NOT have them come back, than entertain them in a way that has no power to change their lives”
That might shut them up temporarily.
I agree in principal with the argument against attractional etc. However, I don’t think the case has been made convincingly enough with regards to deconstructing how post-modern culture operates. The culture I live in Australia still revolves around attractionality in all forms of life.
Our kids go to schools in the local community, along with hundreds of others. People belong to a raft of different interest groups in our community and congregate together in order to pursue these interests.
People join sports clubs, pay huge fees, conform to uniform and behaviour standards.
We congregate in stadiums in our masses to watch sports or entertainment.
The case against attractional fails to overcome the reality of how people [in the West]live their lives. We happily GO to things, we happily BELONG and CONFORM to codes.
Or work habits mean that we have to go and conform. This is an everyday experience for most of us.
Attractional does not run against the grain of modern culture. We are surrounded by advertising, pummelled by marketing, and harrassed by telesales people. We are surrounded by an attractional world vying for our attention and our dollars.
Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with it all, it does show that the notion of what the post-modern world is for emerging ecclesiologists, is purely romantic.
That’s a good point i-merge… but I think we need to hold this alongside the command of Christ to “make disciples” (not collections of people who have some adherence to a religion who can be herded into a room) and ask what the best method is for doing that in our current culture. Making disciples is a very different job from creating groups of some religious coherence… and the church at large has a bit of a hit and miss track record at doing this. I think we need to be on this journey of asking how to be a faithful disciple (and how, in partnership with the Spirit, we work to make faithful disciples).
Maybe I missed something, but didn’t we get a tad off topic from the point Alan was making? I didn’t read his post as a missional/attractional debate, but as making a case that while missional is not attractional, it must be attractive.
If that is correct, then I concur with him 100%. The problem with monikers is that once we have created a negative one, then every time we use it in context with anything positive, we immediately think negative. When I met my wife, I found her to be attractive, and that caused me to go on a mission to win her heart.
Nothing negative about that.
In the same way, missional Christianity must look attractive to people if they are going to run after it. When I talk to people, whether on the street, in Church, or in pubs, I tell them about our missional work with homeless kids in Ukraine and the things we are doing to change their lives for them. When they ask me why I do it, I tell them that my faith drives me to do it; that my faith drives me in all that I do. I tell them that my passion of following the example set for me by Jesus has made me overflow with compassion for those in need, and that in this, I find purpose in my life, not in once-a-week religious observances where all the money I throw in the plate goes to building a nicer place to worship.
Guess what? It is a rare occasion when I find someone who doesn’t find this kind of faith attractive. Few are those who don’t thirst for that kind of meaning in their own lives. Fewer still are those I’ve found who don’t long for it, but who have found all they need in traditional, attractional, institutional religious services.
Real-life, purpose-filled, compassion-based, faith-driven Christianity is so attractive that nearly everyone who is confronted with it wants to jump on the bus–or in our case, on a plane to Ukraine.
Indeed.
“the notion of what the post-modern world is for emerging ecclesiologists, is purely romantic”
I would actually say with 100 % confidence you haven’t read The Forgotten Ways… because I cannot imagine you’d dismiss all the thought and research that has gone into Alan’s thesis so blithely. So do hang around… Alan admitted at the outset the term “attractional” is ambiguous and prone to misinterpretation, but if you want to understand what he’s trying to say it’s well worth the journey.
i-merge and Janet, isn’t this part of the problem? That the IC has lost its counter-cultural bearings, calling and edge?
That Jesus, as LORD, has called us to follow him, not what’s new and exciting in our culture (even our church culture!), which, as Brad mentioned, can border on propositional seduction (consumerism/materialism/individualism) of the attractional rather than the winsome substance (salt/light/love/fruit/communitas) of the rugged, adventuring attractive.
Back to Alan’s thread on “Jesus is my disequilibrium”…
Janet, I agree that God will continue to work within the IC, because he has children trapped there…senior saints and others who just don’t seem able to make the paradigm shift…or lots of other circumstances. I honor your willingness to obey until God releases you, knowing that God will bring great blessing because of your presence and glory to himself in the process.
That is what makes this process even more difficult than some might think—that there are groups of believers all over the world in different stages and paradigms. One size will not fit all. We must continue to trust that the Holy Spirit will lead those who are willing to be led…into God’s will for them in their circumstance.
For some that will be in the IC, for others it will mean the wild ‘n simple Organic/house church, and for even others it will be something even wilder or in between — whether hybrid or something else. But whatever it is, we must keep this piece of Alan’s TFW formula true: that our Christology forms our Missionology which forms our Ecclesiology. If we can keep that in focus, then we can be an authentic manifestation of Christ’s Body in whatever circumstance we find ourselves.
And, friends, each path will have its own unique challenges. A path known and commonly described as “picking up our cross daily and following Jesus” cannot be expected to be easy or comfortable.
The “WOW” experience of Easter runs the whole range of paradigms. As long as we remember that it is The GREAT Eucatastrophe…from a shocking death on a cruel cross to outrageous victory over death…then the message of the Gospel will bring the power of salvation into the lives of those searching for a God who is calling them to come home.
Blessings,
Well…you can tell how long it takes me to post…two other comments got in first.
Janet, I must be more dense than usual today…I didn’t follow where the comment “the notion of what the post-modern world is for emerging ecclesiologists, is purely romantic” came from…help!
webb - first of all, conversations with real humans aren’t usually as clean as all that (staying on topic and such)
so I wouldn’t get too worried about a few rabbit trails.
second - I’m not sure what sort of people are in your space but I can tell you there are PLENTY of folks around here who find this sort of thing attractive but aren’t jumping on the bus. People in our space are generally pretty lazy. Living the mission takes quite a bit more effort than most around here are used to or willing to invest. Now, if you’re talking about those who aren’t currently christ followers, then yes, most people are attracted to that. But lots of leaders are trying to work within an existing system that is resistant to change so working this stuff out is very important for those people and not as simple as we’d like ;.
Mak, I wasn’t complaining about not staying on topic; it’s just that it seemed that the point of Alan’s post was an important one, but it got taken back to the attractional v. missional debate before it gained any discussion.
Some other bloggers have been contemplating whether or not missional can be attractional lately and I thought this was where Alan was trying to go with this. It is important, I believe, for the very reason that you speak of the lethargy of those in the existing systems. We are not going to talk anyone out of something that they already feel is working without giving them a way to experience missional in real-life situations.
Example: A friend of mine recently went down to the gulf coast with a team from his old denomination to help rebuild some homes damaged by Katrina. Most of these folks were as traditional as an old braided rug, yet church will never be the same for them. The experience of being the hands and feet of Jesus to people in need for one week made them realize how empty their faith really had been all those years, thinking that attractional church services was all there was to Christianity. It is virtually like a veil was removed from in front of their eyes. Some are even signing up for one of our trips to Ukraine.
One pastor who went on trip scolded the district superintendent asking him why she didn’t learn to do that in seminary. She literally felt like everything she had been doing in ministry had been in vain up to that point.
Working through these things are important, but it comes a time when we have to get out and do it. Painting by numbers just doesn’t get it. It didn’t work in traditional church, and it certainly won’t work in this new paradigm. I guess I just glad I no longer have to work within the old wine skins. I’m not so certain I would have the patience any more.
Webb Kline let me take you up on your attempts to turn the thread back to its origin: missional should also be attractive.
Have we come full circle here, and are we having our emerging cake, eating it and licking our fingers?
At what point does a missions activity [which attracts a lot of support and engagement] become something which [albeit not designed to be] is attractions?
I would think the answer to the original proposition is a no brainier: of course our missions activity should be attractive! We don’t set out to put together something that is unattractive do we?
The point I was making on the broader debate is that I think emerging ecologists are perhaps way too ahead of the game. People in our society have no problem with engaging in structured institutional entities. Apart from a small minority of our population, most of us DO NOT live in a fully transitioned post-modern world where we everything is organic etc.
I got a shock this week - my bank manager asked me to explain to him what ‘all this broadband issue is about’ [an issue currently in Australian politics]. I tried to start by comparing broadband to dial-up. Futile, he doesn’t have and doesn’t want a computer at home. He didn’t seem to think that he was unusual. I’m constantly amazed at how many ‘old world’ people [in their 20's & W's] I meet.
When I mention the word ‘bog’ most people [broadband users] look at me blankly. I’ve had to recalibrate just how post-modern I think my world is, and how conversant people are with the foundational mind-shifts that it represents.
It seems to me that much of the world around me is still thoroughly modernist.
Therefore redeemed forms of ICC may be possibly be more attuned to connecting with people than you think?
My spell check has changed ecclesiologists to ‘ecologist’ above, and ‘missional’ to missions and attractional to ‘attractions’. Apologies.
The Mak is back! Makeesha has said it for me.
i-merge,
I appreciate your note that not all culture around all of us everywhere is postmodern. The claim that everything’s postmodern so we need to change everything accordingly to “reach” people is, I think, overreaching. The specific cultural undertones and mixes in specific places cannot be described so universally. To the degree that the church is a missional community, or a genuine community at all, it’s always radically local, though without being parochial (i.e., placing the demands of local culture above the work of the Spirit who makes us one body in Christ). And what local culture looks like in one place, even in the same town or city, may be very different than in another.
I’m less than convinced, however, that noting the non-universality of postmodernism represents a significant argument against the observation that the trying to witness to the kingdom of God, to be a community that follows Jesus, and to invite people to join in the mission of God with us as we follow Jesus (whether they choose to take us up on that or not) works best when we’re actually doing THOSE things.
And Christian worship isn’t any of those things, or at least not the primary means by which most of those things are accomplished– though it is a primary means by which they are celebrated. Rather, Christian worship is much more a venue where those who are doing those things give thanks, seek help, intercede on behalf of others, and experience communion with Christ that sends them back out into the mission– not because offering our worship is an “attractive” thing to do, but because we find, as a result of being in mission and following our Lord, that we can’t NOT do it! And we’re grateful, too, for the opportunity for encounter with our Triune God and each other we experience in it.
In the IC, we’ve confused and often replaced evangelism with Sunday worship, mission with “the offering,” and discipleship with learning about the scriptures in Sunday School or other “Bible study” venues. It’s not that worship, financial support, and learning the faith through intellectual encounters with scripture (and tradition!) are unimportant– but they’re not the same as the other things. And we tend to act as if they are… and thereby make the “other things” which are front and center and mandatory for discipleship either extraordinary, or optional, or both.
Jesus didn’t say “go, get people to worship with you”– instead he said “as you are going (i.e., along the path of your continuing to BE disciples on my mission!) make disciples in every nation.”
One might have spoken of a slightly “post-Hellenist” cultural thing happening in a large part of the Mediterranean world in the first several centuries (though a lot of Hellenism was there under a Roman veneer, and under that the cultural particularities of the pre-Hellenist cultures as well). I don’t see the apostles anywhere too terribly worried about whether they were or were not in a post-Hellenist culture. The witness of scripture and the early church is that they were being disciples everywhere (once getting some sense of the basic lay of the cultural land) and making disciples everywhere they went, no matter the cultural context. And they did this NOT by “leading with attractive worship” but rather by leading with ministry, evangelism, invitation to discipleship, training in the way of Jesus, and THEN worship. This is why Paul could say in all honest to the church at Corinth that he was glad he hadn’t baptized many of them… his ministry there was teaching the way of discipleship– it was Apollos who moved them to the next level in baptism and worship. By the third century in many places, the becoming a full participant in Sunday worship (or in some cases ever seeing a Sunday worship experience at all!) could be delayed by three years or more… and not just because of persecution! (I’d submit that the demands of the mission itself create enough “communitas” in Alan’s sense if the mission is well engaged in any context, persecution or otherwise!). If that were the case, one would have expected the Council of Nicea to have removed the standard three-year catechumenate– instead they affirmed and strengthened it, adding even more years to it in certain circumstances, even though the new context in the Roman empire was not thought to be one of persecution going forward.
Peace in Christ,
Taylor - love your post.
you wrote:
>>In the IC, we’ve confused and often replaced evangelism with Sunday worship, mission with “the offering,” and discipleship with learning about the scriptures in Sunday School or other “Bible study” venues.
sorry, pc has a gremlin, will post the full reply later
I take your point i-merge… there are plenty of people whose mindset is in fact “modern” and more traditional approaches to mission and church might be effective.
I tend to agree… I think the West does find itself in “in-between” times… personally, I think to reach as many as possible we need to encourage diversity… to be respectful of the role of some parts of the IC to reach some segments of society… but also to be willing to experiment like mad in diverse expressions of church / mission.
I don’t think it helps get the job done if we get bogged down in taking pot-shots at one another… I’m quite comfortable with the idea that God calls some to work for mission in the IC, and calls others to work for mission in various other “emerging” expressions of church life and mission, and calls others to focus on reaching particular subcultures, and calls others to work in cross cultural ministry. As the Archbishop of Canterbury reportedly said: “Let a thousand flowers bloom”.
Alan does remind us that the statistics in the West overall paint a picture of IC decline… more of the same is unlikely to get the whole job done.
“When I mention the word ‘bog’ most people [broadband users] look at me blankly.”
Looks like even the spell-checker is back in the 20th century!
When I first watched Sister Act, I thought: My church rocks like that (as do many others), why doesn’t that pull in people off the street?
When I saw it more recently, I thought: Ah yes, the attractional mode of church. Though the film does show the church/convent move from being insular to more engaged. And though the nuns seem laughably out of touch with their community, looking closer at myself and typical comfy Christians, we’re all a bit like that, and need some rough people to come in and teach us stuff.
I can only report from the battle field. This is what we are seeing and what is working for us even though we never planned it this way.
Here is a diverse list people and groups who are working with us, or will be working with us in the near future in our little missional endeavor:
1. A Catholic special needs school staff of teachers and administrators.
2. Numerous, mostly very old-school traditional Methodist Churches
3. A fundamental Bible church.
4. A charismatic church.
5. A number of full-time rock and roll musicians with little or no theological background.
6. People we’ve met in a number of bars.
7. A staff of a several pediatric hospitals, some Christ followers, some agnostics, just people drawn into our mission out of compassion and the desire to make a difference to children in need.
8. A group of Amish and Mennonite carpenters.
9. Financial investors drawn to us out of the need to want to do something purposeful with their money.
10. Some old hippies.
11. Some, like myself, who are missional community minded, but no longer are involved in traditional church.
Many of these people have come on board with us because we have offered them something that was challenging and made them feel like they were serving God and humankind. Many of the church goers were not getting this in their churches. Most have not left their churches, but are finding missional work more edifying and fulfilling than what their churches were offering them. Many of them are planting the missional seeds in their congregations. No one says this has to be either/or. The phenomenon we are experiencing, as I am sure many others are, is that missional can unify across theological and cultural lines without compromising the Gospel in ways that Ecumenism could never have hoped to.
Those who are from the traditional churches still have their liturgies and worship the way they see fit. You wouldn’t know that they were even missional if you went to one of their services. It doesn’t matter. They’ve found something at last that drives their faith. It doesn’t change the way they worship, and that is just fine. The same goes for the Catholics, charismatics, and the fundamentalists. Nobody is changing the Amish or Mennonites either. In fact, this is nothing new to them. They’ve been missionally minded forever, and as backward as some of us may see them, they have a lot to offer missional communities in terms of examples. Out of the not-yet Christ followers, they are merging either toward the missional community concept, or are finding their place among some of the other traditional church communities.
This is why I don’t personally subscribe to the attractional/missional debate. Alan has done a tremendous job of teaching us the difference between the two. The task is for us to learn missional and unlearn the things that have made us too attractional, and to find the right balance that is most efficient and productive in terms of changing the world through the compassion, grace and mercy of Jesus we extend to all. Missional isn’t nearly as much about changing church services as it is about changing the way the church serves.
janet:
with due respect, i think you know that when i talked about my church using the ‘wow factor’ verbiage, they are not talking about your version. what they are talking about upping the ‘ante’ attractionally from what we normally due. this usually boils down into things like what big song, what new lights, what killer drama, etc. is going to really grab people. very little, if any, conversation is about presenting a simple yet robust gospel message. check out what bob hyatt has to say about this
i think for the most part we are talking about this in the context of things like corporate worship, special events, etc. With that in mind:
one of the biggest issues with the attractional model is that it produces consumers rather than disciples. this is so true in my context.
we are the biggest church in a metropolitan area in the midwest and we have become known as the place to go if you want to see contemporary worship done right. further, our holidays have traditionally become ‘productions’ [not pageants, more like Blast meets Cirque meets Lakewood], way outside of what do week in and week out. and we do it in the name of retaining visitors beyond the holidays.
we have been in this paradigm for a decade now and we traditionally have 3x the amount of visitors during the holidays but the minute bump in increased attendance hasn’t even come close to justify what we are doing. by my estimation, attractional isn’t working…
i believe that as the church moves further and further from being the dominant seat of culture we will find attractional methods less and less effective.
i heard ed stetzer say at a recent event that we need to move from attractional to incarnational because the church has to be more interested in the harvest than the barn. i think unbelievers are way smarter than we think they are. i can’t help but think that unbelievers feel like they are a commodity and that we care about our ‘barn’ than them anyways. how can we shift to seeing them as already ’sought’ as earl creps says?
further, when we use attractional methods we are for the most part contending for the same small slice of the pie that represents the “reachable unreached” people.
he subtely of this is that ‘attractional’ only appeals to a small subset of people. and we have already reached most of those people. i would go so far as to say that in america, that subset is primarily boomers which means that all the generations succeeding them aren’t reached by ‘attractional’ models.
i know there are exceptions to the rules. you can’t put a blanket statement on all generations, but to me, the generalization still holds.
we need to start thinking about the unreached people groups that are being overlooked and what is going to authentically reach them.
i almost think that the idea of being counter-cultural is going to take on new meaning in the near future in that the church needs to be counter-cultural from itself. at least in the sense that unbelievers see the current incarnation of the modern church as a slick, well-oiled machine, not as as a place that is simple, authentic, under-produced, etc..
the irony in this is that we end up becoming “Jonah’s”, like dan kimball so aptly put it in his new book.
we think that where we are [Christian subculture] is going to be a place where the greater culture will want to be so we don’t go to ‘Nineveh’ we wait for ‘Nineveh’ to come to us, especially if we dress it up.
we are in ‘Nineveh’ times and as i scan the cultural horizon, mailers, clowns, and productions ain’t going to cut it in ‘Nineveh’…
Man, there are some great comments here. Let me add some more fuel to the fire. One of the most sickening versions of attractional chhurch gone mad that I heard about recently is the competition for who can bring the most people to evangelistic Sunday service. I recently heard of three versions of this madness. One involved winning Harley, another a second hand Lotus (!!) and yet another (a poorer and even more desperate church no doubt) advertized in the local paper that anyone who would come to church would get a box of chocolates! Has it come down to this!!!!
This has become trendy in the US. Although I hate to admit that the last two examples are from Australia! It shows a certain desperation and its really lacks integrity.
Well said, Brad - we are in Ninevah times!
Janet - your thoughts are always so encouraging (especially post 16).
But back to the attractional delimma in the States - the worship event or Sunday services are the big deal and what people are committed to (yet research indicates most people attend church 2 or 3 times/month)
We need models or behavior that demonstrates we are a people committed and obligated to each other - devotion to each other - and actively engaged in social action towards one another.
The attractional mode is devoted to excellence of performaning arts, creative communication, and filling seats!
Brad, let me just say that I hear your conflict and anguish in your searching for what to do. Like many others, you are contemplating “swallowing the red pill”, (if you haven’t already),…but know that walking the line between attractive and attractional is very difficult, at best.
Even as I type, I pray that the Holy Spirit will speak into your heart and connect you with those who can bring clarity to your situation.
In my view, this site has at least three types (admittedly over-generalized, of course) of incarnational-missional servants of Jesus:
1. Those who feel called to stay in the IC, trying to impact “the show” to provide balance because they have significant influence they can leverage…resulting in “hybrid” kind of churches. I think Janet feels she is this type.
2. Those who feel called to leave the IC to “go to Nineveh”, in order to have their emerging missional expression of the Gospel start fresh without all the baggage of an irrelevant frame of reference. I have recently moved into this type.
3. Those who do the best they can to function in the IC, while feelings of horror that those around them “just don’t get it” slowly creep up and threaten to overwhelm them. I was in this situation in my last pastoral position in a large congregation….and it sounds like this is at least part of your situation.
Is that even close? If it is, then rest assured that there are those here who have been in your shoes and know some of what you’re experiencing. And so you will find that you are preaching to the choir, here. With lots of “amen, brother” comments.
But we are also willing to walk beside you…because I, for one, know what happens to those who choose to walk in Jonah’s shoes: they end up fish puke on the beach somewhere.
It takes a lot of wisdom and courage to hear God speaking to you in the midst of your current circumstance. If he says “stay” then you can’t complain, but must look for helpful ways to influence in submission and obedience. If he says “go” then you have to find graceful ways to extricate yourself without dividing the Body. And if you can’t hear a clear “stay” or “go” then you must quiet down your soul so you CAN hear. This is one of the most difficult things to do when you’re in a “big show” environment.
My prayers are with you, brother. Persevere. God’s faithfulness is without question.
Blessings,
And Alan and Seeingkalos added encouraging posts while I was praying and typing…
Blessings.
Brad, I apologise for sounding glib… I do understand you were talking about a “consumer experience” mindset.
Ever the optimist, I wanted to flag a faint shred of hope that even this might be somewhat redeemed by the grace of God. God has clearly given you gifts in creativity and music. I believe that art, drama, music etc. actually can be so touched and empowered by the Holy Spirit it can move people to weep… even move people to repent. If we cannot weep on Good Friday, we probably cannot weep about our faith at all.
But I do not wish to be glib about the depths of your dilemma. I truly echo Penny’s prayer for you.
Jan, our resident optimist, now you must say sorry to Peggy for calling her Penny!
hehehe
Oh groan, not again…
Sorry Peggy… I know lots of Penny’s in a face to face kind of way, but no Peggy’s… it will probably slip out again!
But I do apologise!
Don’t worry, be happy.
I know this next quote probably does not fit in this thread but I don’t know where else it will fit. It is by Elizabeth O’Connor of the Church of the Saviour. In it she connects being prophetic to a willingness to being able to change… Of course she was relating it to her own church.
“We never have expected to hit upon that final stable structure. This is important for a church to understand, for when it starts to be the church it will be constantly be adventuring out into places where there are no tried and tested ways. If the church in our day has few prophetic voices above the noise of the street, perhaps in large part it is because the pioneering spirit has become foreign to it. It shows little willingness to explore new ways. Where it does it has often been called an experiment. We would say the church of Christ is never an experiment, but where that church is true to it’s mission it will be experimenting, pioneering, blazing new paths, seeking how to speak the reconciling words of God to it’s own age.” It cannot do this if it is held captive by the structures of another day.” (Elizabeth O’Connor….Call to Commitment)
Now, Alan, to be fair…Janet called me “Penny” over on the “announcing apple computer” thread–and already apologized over there.
You need to apologize to her for embarassing her on this thread…and for confusing this group of folks
OH NO!!! Sorry, Alan…I am the one to apologize…mea culpa…I hadn’t gotten to the end of Janet’s comment where she referred to my post and called me Penny again.
Don’t we just love chaos here, friends
As I am fond of saying, Janet, you can call me whatever you want…just as long as you don’t forget to call me for dinner….
Blessings, all.
Franks, great quote for a great woman of God. Man, that is one really good church. They have changed name, but they are still going.
“Man I am waayyy too wordy, someone slap me!”
Yes Alan, I have thought for some time that you deserve a spanking over the “attractional” language (slap). I don’t know how many times I’ve spoken to people who’ve asked, “What’s wrong with being attractive?” O my Lord!
Usually at that point I look for a brick wall to bang my head against. “Donna eis requiem” (thump)
I would also suggest that the word “missional” can be equally ambiguous: “We send people overseas, we’re missional!” We need some nomenclature that is less ambiguous methinks. Personally I prefer the field-of-dreams metaphor (”if we build it, they will come”) and wonder if it would not just be simpler to talk in terms of ‘you come to us’ models vs ‘we come to you’ models.
But this raises an important issue. How many emerging churches really operate on a ‘we come to you’ basis. How much of the ‘emerging missional church’ is really that much more ‘we come to you’ than the mainstream?
They have changed the name????? To what?
Alan, I like what you said about giving away things to come to church. Here’s a new word - “Bribaric!” Bribing people to come to church is religious barbarianism. Can God use even something as goofy as your examples for someone to find him? Probably - but man it seems to lack integrity. Let’s do an experiment - Let’s see how crazy we can get and if God can use it. So here we go - we’re going to have one of those Sundays and invite Jarrel the Gospel Jackass! Each attender gets a yank on his tail to see if they get that lucky pot o gold! The only good kind of attractional is when we are being the body so much in loving and serving others - people want to be a part of that - because it’s real and it’s beyond that Sunday event.
Yeah Bob. Well said.
Frank, I can find out, but I can’t remember at the moment.
A friend of mine shares of a church plant that began a college ministry on the leadership of 2 guys. In reading this story it seems the church is beginning at some degree of an “Attractional mode” by drawing up to 30 students.
Whats really cool is that the 2 college ministry leaders lead and prep their 30 or so college students to engage in missional-incarnational ministry at the local Pizza Hut.
How many of us gear up to go to Pizza Hut to serve the Restaurant as opposed to us simply being served? This story is very cool and encourages us to “pick a restaurant!” Check it out here(http://www.newchurchinitiatives.org/articles/pickarestaurant.htm)
ALAAANNN!!!! Yeah, I’m back. That’s what happens when you’re a bit too radical for the establishment, you get kicked out and then you get to come out of the blogger protection program
Good convo. here. Not really much to contribute except to say, as you can tell from my comment above, this is real business in churches today. I know as much as anyone how risky and difficult it is to try to enact change.
Boy there are a lot of comments to this thread
I didnt read them all but I read the topic shortly after having a discussion with some 14 or 15 year old students of mine who are members of apparently succesfull attractional churches
This discussion amazed me as trhese kids are probably the most idealistic and supportive members of these churches even more so than their parents and I must admit I was left feeling a little swayed in my opinions which caused me to question again my commitment to the incarnational/missional church model
Funny how the certainty of some indoctrinated teenagers can be so convincing reminds me of myself many years ago
Perhaps this is why youth movments see a measure of success as the drivers of this movement havent had time to get pissed off and jaded with the institutional church just give it time it may not happen overnight but it will happen
(tounge firmly planted in cheek)
RePete - - we work with young adults, some just out of highschool, some several years out (and in my husband’s and my case 10 and 19 years out). It’s really amazing the differing attitudes between these people and the youth in youth groups in this area.
It’s also radically different when you compare “churched” folk and “unchurched”. We want comfort, we want simple. we want easy - in many ways it’s human nature. But if that comfort is attacked or wanes in any way, the desire to be a part of something bigger and better gets planted and starts to grow.
to be honest, I sort of get a little excited when someone has a kind of fallout with their institution/church because all of a sudden, the box of cotton candy and pink bunnies with bobble head Jesuses and Jesus is my boyfriend songs gets busted wide open and they’re free to dream of something raw and messy and real and adventurous!
I don’t think I am going to add much to the discussion but I would like to ask for some help. I am a youth director at a church in the midwest that hopes to some day be attractional (my church hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years). Up to this point the leadership including myself have thought that this was the answer.
A friend of mine (who I am now in debt to) showed me this site. So I have read a lot here and other places. It makes sense to me to be a missional/incarnational church (although it did take a while for me to stop defending the way we are currently doing church). Incarnational meaning “being Christ” to someone I assume. You guys use a lot bigger words than I have in my vocabulary (hehe). Anyway, I am currently sitting on a “Longrange Planning Committee” that is determining the direction and focus our church should have in the future. I guess my I have two requests of you guys.
Would you pray for this committee that ultimately we would move in a direction that would please God and actually make a difference for His kingdom. I believe based on the little I have heard, that being a missional church is part of the answer.
The other is how would you explain this to a group who is like I was 3 weeks ago and is totally alien to this thinking. The group of people have never known anything other than the Sunday Morning sing, offering, sermon, go eat somewhere routine. I need to add that I do not feel God leading me to leave this congregation. Thanks for the help!
Ryan, know that I am in prayer for you even as I first read your words. I grew up in the Midwest, so I have a good idea of your situation.
I would offer my two cents this way:
1) You need to get Alan’s two books: “The Shaping of Things to Come” (with Mike Frost) and “The Forgotten Ways” — and you must read them thoroughly (no skimming or jumping around) yourself, in that order. Allow yourself time to process without talking to someone else (unless they have already read the books, like our friend that sent you here). Come and read Alan’s threads, if you want to hear how other confused people have processed what you’re processing! (Apologies to all my wonderful, confused, brothers and sisters at TFW! We journey together in the glorious mess!)
It will take you a while to get your brain around this stuff—and bring your new vocabulary on-line
! So, as you’re reading, be praying fervently that the Holy Spirit will help you understand what Alan is saying and that He begin working in the hearts of those who serve with you on this long range planning committee.
You cannot lead someone where you have not gone yourself…and if this site has opened your imagination, then you owe it to yourself and the leadership team to follow the Spirit’s lead.
I will share the words I received: don’t wait; be patient.
Don’t wait…READ, READ, READ. (If you have to wait for the books to come from Amazon.com, go back to the start of this site in October and just start with Alan there.)
Be patient…wait to introduce this until the Spirit leads you and you are confident of that lead. Don’t walk into this if the Spirit is not taking you there. Sometimes a move made too quickly or prematurely can interfere with the ground working that the Holy Spirit it laying. Walk in step with Him, not ahead of Him.
Be blessed, brother, as you follow God’s still, small voice speaking into your heart. You are not alone.
Anyone have something else to offer?
Who can top that, Peggy? Wisdom and comfort ooze from your posts!
Ryan, I would agree - no skimming & process & expect a recoil when sharing what you learn with others in the Attractional mode - as Alan points out, many of us came to Christ and have been shaped in Him through this “traditional” mode of church, yet most of our culture is alienated from it.
In the mean time do some extradordinary “good” stuff (kalos - more than rule keeping)around people and see what happens!
Let us know what your discovering…
Ryan,
Thanks for sharing your journey.
I concur with Peggy– get some grounding in this thinking, which is really fundamental Christian missiology. When you’re through here, go over to newbigin.net and read older stuff that says a lot of the same things.
In the meantime, here’s the simple way I put it in presentations I use. Question: Where’s the church? Is the church our lives in ministry and mission as Christ’s disciples all week long, or is the church the place I go and the folks I hang out with on Sunday morning? Am I going TO church? Or am I going WITH church in ministry in Christ’s name?
These are two fundamentally visions of what church is. One is inwardly focused, and is structured in a way that assumes the purpose of the church is to get as many people into it– and in particular into worship and Bible study and maybe committees for its purposes– as possible. We worship to get other people inside with us… because that’s the ultimate expression of what the Christian life is. Worship and Sunday morning (including the other functions) are the “destination attraction” we try to get people into. Other “programs” or “ministries” done “out there” are really all designed to get more people “in here” where discipleship really happens. Or maybe some of them are to “help those people” in some way we think they need (but have we consulted them about what their gifts or their calling? have we failed to believe that when Jesus said “the fields are white to harvest” that he actually meant that? Or that the kingdom of God is actually happening OUT THERE, whether we’ve organized it or not?).
The other is radically outwardly focused– it assumes that what happens on Sunday REFLECTS and SUPPORTS the primary way church and discipleship to Jesus take place, which is what we do with 80% of our time during the week. We worship because we have to– we can’t not do it given what we’re finding as Christ’s disciples in ministry in his name– both in terms of what we need for our faithful discipleship, and in terms of what we can’t not thank God for together around the Lord’s Table. Sunday morning is a way station– not a destination resort. Institutional structures here are all about supporting and deploying the mission– which is primarily “out there.”
Hope that helps!
Peace in Christ…
See, Ryan…told you that you weren’t alone! I am confident that you will hear something that will resonate with your soul in these words. Thanks, Seeingkalos and Taylor!
Two or three have gathered here in prayer with you…Jesus is here because this is where he always is: sustaining and building up his precious Bride.
Be blessed,
Ryan… I am involved in a denomination that is seeking to “remissionalise” existing churches. No small task.
I think the first “task” of such a future dreaming group is humility, waiting on God, and listening. This breaks up the fallow ground for new ideas. Whatever God wants to birth, should be led by the Spirit!
You could do worse than reflect together on Luke 10
. All of it. (although perhaps one section at a time). Give the word time to soak in. How does this speak to me? What does this mean for us? What does this mean for our church? And pray together. And listen.
We have found the language of “missional experiment” to be helpful in not freaking out the conservatives in your midst… eg having a group from your church “experiment” with hanging out together at a local bar and building relationships, or having a group run a gardening / maintenance group for people in need in the community to build relationships, or a having group working in a local school to mentor disadvantaged kids and build relationships with their families or… x,y,z whatever… as the Spirit leads. This is less confronting than “this is the new direction for our whole church”… it avoids a bun fight when you don’t need to have one.
I personally believe it’s really important to get into your heart and soul that God calls us to faithfulness, not to “success”. Look at the call of Isaiah… he was pretty much told to do something that would be a “failure”… he was to warn of repentance, knowing no one would listen. Addiction to “success” means people tend to copy what “successful” mega churches do instead of asking what does God want US to do?… and doing this faithfully.
I hope you’re not overloaded already… I will pray for God’s blessing over this little group.
Ryan…
you, the friend who referred you, and others around you are the very people I believe are the key to the future of the church. It’s not so much that others of us here are not, but many of us are some way down the track and you are coming fresh to the beginning of something exciting… You need to take time to breathe the fresh air… there is something about the incarnational-missional approach that is alive where all else has been stale… it’s that spirit of abundant life that is the person of Jesus Christ engaging with us.
We’re not seeking to tear down the church here… we are seeking to set Christ’s church free to be all that He intends for us to be… it’s a great adventure… a multi-faceted great adventure; such a different spirit from the singular Sunday service approach. In revisiting the way we’ve done things there is a tendency to analyse and discard things - however we strive not to be unnecessarily critical of others… many of us have been/are part of the system and we’re being self-critical with a view to building a more positive and authentically biblical church into the future.
One significant purpose of contributing to this blog - as infrequently as I do at present, due to other circumstance - is to be part of God’s instrument for equipping His people for service. Clearly from the response you’ve already received that is the heart of others too. Like many others, as soon as I read your post I began to pray… and I also got excited. Jesus Himself worked with a small bunch of passionate, committed followers who changed the world… YOU and a small bunch of passionate followers of Jesus can change your community, the Midwest and ultimately contribute to releasing the Spirit of Christ to change the world.
As you’ve already identified, at the outset of a change in the way we think, it can be distressing to recognise that some things we’ve believed and promoted have perhaps been inaccurate or misguided. I discover things everyday and I am constantly challenged to reshape the way I think… as you engage in this do so understanding that there are many people with you, many people like you and that the challenge to change and grow each day comes from your God.
As others have said, take time to read and to reflect – don’t let the big words put you off, they’re a form of shorthand that helps us to discuss some issues in less words – when I come across something I don’t understand I church the word into http://dictionary.reference.com and add to my vocabulary (then I try to resist the temptation to include my new big word in every sentence for the next month!)
Also seek out some others with a like spirit you can dialogue with… use Alan’s books as discussion starters… At the risk of compromising the truly missional, and as much as I love Alan and his writing, I might also suggest that there are a number of other books that might help you transition your thinking, from where you’re at now, into a more incarnational and missional framework. Off the top of my head three which are helpful transitional works would be…
Conspiracy of Kindness - by Steve Sjogren
The Church of Irresistible influence - Robert Lewis
Doing church as a team - Wayne Cordeiro
Alongside reading, reflection and thinking – we also need to act on our missional impulse. As seeingkalos has already suggested simply commit to do some good stuff in your community – with no other agenda than just because God has given you the capacity to do it. Make a commitment once every couple of months to give some stuff away for free, do a neighbourhood clean up, help a family in need etc… in the doing of good things, with a bunch of people together, you’ll catch the heart of mission in ways that you’ll never get from reading any book.
Welcome to the grand adventure…
Beannachd Dia dhuit
(blessings of God be with you)
A Celtic Son
Wow…I am back at a sr. high church camp bonfire in Michigan in the ’70s…and the words to a simple chorus fill my heart so that my eyes are overflowing. Maybe you’re old enough to know this song, or where you are they still sing oldies. Even if you don’t know the tune, these word speak exactly to the vision Celtic Son has spun for us:
It only takes a spark to get a fire going…
and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing.
That’s how it is with God’s love,
once you’ve experienced it.
You spread his love to everyone…
you want to pass it on…
TFW bloggers are the best!
I can’t express what it means to me to have a bunch of strangers praying and encouraging me already! I really mean that. I don’t really know what to say but thank you. Thanks for the advise to take it slow and be patient with God’s leading. It is really easy for me to see myself getting excited and running into the next meeting trying to explain what I have learned only to find silence and scrunched up noses.
I have already ordered a couple of the books. In the meantime I have been reading just about everything I can get my hands on. Although there are a few thing I disagree with as far as the emergent church goes, I don’t think I need to abandon the whole thing. Further more, the things I disagree with may only be included in one person’s definition anyways.
I read something earlier reagarding becoming a missional church and I think this will apply to my situation. Even if the Holy Spirit shows this committee (which I think He will) that we need to be missional, and we all are in agreement, there is only the 10 people on the committee. Ultimatly we can not choose to be a missional church without first loving Christ and having a relationship with him that makes us want to be missional. I suspect this might be our biggest obstacle as I don’t beleive a majority of out attending congregation does (love Christ).
As far as the experimentation goes Janet, I have kinda already begun that in our youth department. I stress kinda. There are some limitations to this with youth as some of them don’t have certain freedoms (like transportation) and others are still under their parents authority. This means they don’t have the freedom to hang out with whoever they want. Some parents don’t want their children hanging out with the unchurched! (this shows some of the attitude in my local church, but not all). However, the teens find time to do this as school anyway. The seek out unchurched youth at lunch, build relationships with them and lead them to the point where they accept Jesus’ sacrafice for themselves. We have these kids connected with a group where they learn the bible and are being taught to be obedient (by being missional themselves). We have seen much fruit in the last three weeks.
I have explained what we are doing to my pastor who I think is on board. He wants me to share the successes with him so that we will be able to present this to the committee together.
I thank God for you all.
Ryan
Ryan, these guys have given you great advice. I too hope that your journey is rich and rewarding. Travel well.
Let me add a few more things to Celtic Son’s reading list– some resources that for me provide a really helpful set of tools for engaging mission under the assumption that God’s kingdom really is in our midst, happening all around us, and that God has provided everything needed for us to fulfill our calling. These are tools that particularly unleash the positive power of memory and help build ministry movements AND structures that can be powerful as long as they need to be. You can find the first three of these titles on Amazon or other online booksellers.
1. The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry– Sue Annis Hammond.
2. The Power of Asset Mapping: How Your Congregation Can Act on Its Gifts– Luther Snow
3. Building Communities from the Inside Out– McKnight and Kretzman
Here’s a new book not yet on Amazon, but really terrific, practical and helpful– and comes with a DVD–
4. ABCD in Action: When People Care Enough to Act– Mike Green– available here: http://www.inclusion.com/bkwhenpeople.html
And then there’s Mike Green’s website, which has lots of free handouts and other guidance that helps with the nuts and bolts of the kinds of community organizing work that underlies faithful and effective missional practice– http://www.mike-green.org.
A lot of this may look a bit “secular”– and most of the examples you’ll see in these resources are (except for Luther Snow’s book, which is all about living out these principles in the missional setting of a local congregation). But the principles and practices behind these applications are deeply connected to a theology of the reality of God’s kingdom happening in our midst.
Hope these help as well.
Peace in Christ,
Great stuff Taylor,
my thought was to gently ease people like Ryan, who like many others here are coming from a more attractional basis, into the depths of incarnational-missional approach of which Alan’s The Forgotten Ways is such a passionate advocate.
I don’t know the first three books on your list, but have encountered Mike Green and shared in discussion with him about Asset Based Community Development. While it is a “system” employed in secular settings, as Mike shares it, it is strongly founded on the principles of the Kingdom of God. The freedom with which he distributes supporting materials is refreshing in the context of our fiercely competitive Christian marketplace… is it just me or is there something contradictory there? He’s also a very nice bloke… like the Hirschburger!
Slainte
A Celtic Son
Thanks CS for the compliment. Shucks, you’re a really nice bloke too. Pity we don’t live closer together. Serioulsy, I have loved your involvement on this site.
On some material to help grapple with the missional church paradigm, you might wish to add Alan Roxburgh, the Sky is Falling, and some of Erwin McManus’s work.esp. The Unstoppable Force.
Poor Ryan must be well and truly in “information overload” mode.
Oh well… just to add to it… Churches of Christ in Victoria (Aus) have been working for the past few years on “remissionalisation” of existing churches drawing on Alan Roxburgh’s expertise. You might want to drop the EO Paul Cameron a line about what we’ve been doing at pcameron@churchesofchrist.org.au … Say Janet referred you!
If you get around to it, groaning under a heavy load of reading material!
Blessings on you,
Janet
Isn’t God grand! The great thing is that Ryan works in youth ministry…this means he’s got more energy than he knows what to do with
!
The other great thing, Ryan, is that you now have lots of resources available to you. Now is the time to practice laying it all before the Lord and ask that the Holy Spirit show you which path to take first…and keep asking the question every day (or as many times during the day as necessary).
What a great exercise this has been for all of us! It reminds me, Alan, of the part of the tribal coming of age exercise where the older men are stirred up by the survival stories of the young-boys-turning-young-men. It is in the telling and remembering of our liminal stories that we keep the thrill of the chaos fresh (stir the pot?) and ward off the lure of ease and comfort.
This is the time of year when those who follow The Jesus Way are reminded of the stories of the apostle’s coming-of-age adventure. When Jesus shocked them all by dying…and coming back to life…and walking through doors…and walking along the road.
Remember when Jesus first grabed your attention? It would be a good thing to ponder…perhaps it would be good if we all were to try to find one person with whom we could share a chaotic Jesus story this Easter season?
Be blessed, each of you, according to your true needs — and God’s abundant provision!
Thanks a lot. I mean it. I don’t know how to make all of you understand how appreciative I am. I really do want to check out all of the resources you have talked to me about. I should get my first shipment of books tomorrow. Can’t wait.
To be naive a moment here and to show I have been hanging out here for a very short time. If I understand “missional” in its simplest form, in relation to being attractional, it means to go and build relationships with people where they are at and share Jesus with them as opposed to making your local body (more specifically your weekly meeting) look hip in hopes that people will just pop in. Now, tell me why this is such a big deal to change a church’s strategy to this. It’s Biblical, I think it works. Sure I know this has been the model (attractional) for a very long time for some local bodies. I guess my question is, in everyone’s opinion, what makes us want to hold on to methods that just aren’t working as well or maybe never did work well? Maybe some of yoru answers will prepare me for what I will encounter. Thanks for humoring me.
Why attractional?
1 It’s easy. It’s in our own comfortable space, surrounded by the security of people who think more or less the same as I do. I’m unlikely to be confronted about my beliefs or actions so robustly on “my space” than in neutral space or “their space”. “Going” is scary. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. The preacher is good at communicating the gospel; I can’t do that. I’m too busy to do any more than I’m already doing. (All of this is what they’ll probably feel, but they probably won’t say any of this. But the stuff they won’t say is likely to be the most powerful force at work.)
2 The youth might be “led astray” (what an overstated cop out!)
3 “It’s the way we’ve always done it… (darn, I haven’t thought too much about it.)”
4 It appears to work in some places (although, most of the time churches who grow by being attractional are “stealing sheep”… very occasionally they might draw in the previously churched… it would be rare for such churches to convert the unchurched)
There’s a start.
Ryan -
Excellent questions - keep them coming - your questions further stimulate questions and thinking many of us need to be prepared to handle.
In terms of the “Attractional - it works” let’s summarize various points made on this blog site and in other places (off the top of my head - building off of Janet)
5. Attractional tends to be “extractional”, meaning it has the habit of seeing people as those ‘in’ versus ‘out’ - the people ‘in’ are then removed from their God given sphere of influence in whom the “extracted” person would be most likely to influence for Christ in the first place.
6. Church Growth experts like Charles Arn, George Barna, and Thomas Rheiner - would all point to the numbers that people are more likely to come to Christ through relationships (to the toon of 75% to 90%+), as opposed to worship events, evangelism crusades, “professional speakers” etc. (17% or lower) - I mean how well does it work - the early church and China were not afforded an opportunity to have a gethering of thousands of people all that much yet these movements were explosive!
7. With the predominance of Attractional modes of church the West continues to be in rapid decline and has been for 40 years -America is now the 3rd largest unchurched country behind China and India.
8. 1/2 of American church goers now go to a mega church - as Len Sweet and others suggest - the Walmartization of Church - tendency to breed sameness - so large and massive - no time or money allocated for beauty and creativity in facilities or people.
9. Cultural indicators suggest that the people who do go to church do so 2 or 3 times a month - and sociologists point out that because this is a socially desireable behavior among this group that these figures are likely to be skewed upwards! The Biblical example and admonition suggess gathering daily!
10. In the Attractional mode - most people “go to the church” - Missional mode people are the church and they go to the world!
11. In the Attractional mode people are committed to the plant or facilities - and this takes budget priority over everything.
12. In the Attractional leadership is authenticated by a “official” or “professional” status through seminary degrees and “resumes of experience” (and we know what much of that experience means) and is a “business” transaction. Missional-Incarnational leadership is authenticated by being able to say to your focus people “imitate me.”
13. Attractional church tends to do discipleship and education outside of life - take time out for it thinking - discipleship and education is relegated to the mere transfer of information for an hour or two a week (really as indicated above it only happens 2 or 3 times a month).
I am sure others have much more to offer…
Great start, Janet…and my turn, seeingkalos…”who could top that?”
One nuance that seems missing in point #11 is that the attractional mode is not just committed to the plant or facilities, they are committed to “professionals” doing “the ministry.”
This has two challenges: First, LOTS of budget is taken up with “salary” and “program” issues, as well. Second, the “professionals” have a tendency to not trust the “laity” to actually be able to do true ministry.
I stop for a minute to let that painful truth sink in. Be sure to hear what I actually said…
I was shocked at the number of times this was raised in pastoral staff meetings. THIS IS A BIG ISSUE that threatens the “professinals.” You can expect that people will get defensive about this point. In my experience, as both clergy and laity, only “professionals” that are also mature disciples truly see their role as working themselves out of a job–equipping the SAINTS (read: laity) for the work of ministry.
At the same time, many Christians buy into this clergy/laity role playing because it lets them off the hook for growing up and being mature Christ-followers and disciple-makers. They show up every week, give their tithe, yada, yada, yada…as long as they get “their needs met…and are being fed.” When hey say: “what are we paying them for?”
Don’t get me started….;) And don’t hear that I have no respect for rigorous Christian education.
I do find it terribly ironic that I spent 20 years trying to find a way to believe that God would actually call me to lead and that I (read: as a woman) could legitimately be “ordained” to do the work of Christian Ministry…to actually be hired on the pastoral staff of a BIG, going church, and in just five years leave the “paid” pastoral ministry…to develop a church plant where there will be no “paid” clergy. God is so amazing…and his ways are so not our ways! However he had to work things out to bring me to the place I stand today is just fine with me! LOL!
This distinction between clergy and laity is artificial, at best (evil, at worse) and ultimately results in keeping “the laity” immature. Take a look at the “adaptability and order” thread on this blog site…it’s not very long…my comment #18 might be helpful for you to see some of what I mean.
We still attend the church where I left the “paid” staff. The sr. pastor left the year after I did. The interim pastor is helping the congregation/leadership go through the process involved in getting ready to select a new sr. pastor.
This congregation of 2,000 or so just published the results of their demographical/spiritual survey. The results would be very telling, if they were looking at them with incarnational and missional eyes rather than attractional ones….
(Important context: This was not just a sampling; just over 1,000 surveys were completed! 62% of the members attend the “contemporary” worship [CW] vesus 32% who attend “traditional” worship [TW])
Of the 68 questions asked, these are the ones that jumped out at me:
–80% of the CW group do not attend a Sunday School class…although roughly 80% said that Sunday School classes were important.
–50% of the TW group do not attend a Sunday School class…although roughly 80% said that Sunday School classes were important.
–30% said that they don’t invite their friends to come because the logistics are too difficult (location, time, transportation, etc)
–30% said that none of their five closest friends (not including family) attended this same church
–46% said they spent 1-2 hours weekly in “church activities”; 32% spent 3-5 hours weekly; 14% spent 6 or more hours weekly
–87% said they were satisfied with their relationship with God.
–81% said they were satisfied with their spiritual growth.
–65% said they were satisfied with their personal Bible study and prayer
–60% said they were satisfied with how they share their faith with others (16% very, 44% somewhat)
–52% said they were satisfied with their actual ministry involvement in church
–66% said they were satisfied with their personal relationships with people at church
–71% said that they frequently spent time in private devotional activities (50% every/most days, 21% a few days a week)
–58% have attended college (24% some, 20% graduated, 6% some post-grad, 8% post-grad degree)
I’m not even going to try and unpack those statistics…I’ll let you ponder what they did say as well as what they didn’t say…
Too often, the “bar” for true ministry is not salvation by believing that Jesus is the Messiah-the Son of God and the resultant life transformation, but your “official position” in the church’s leadership structure–or your relationship with those in power.
Attractional church is essentially about establishing and maintaining order and structure and providing an excellent “product” for their “customers”…more than it is about being a living reflection of Christ all day every day in every activity and relationship.
Makes me weep….
This “disconnect” between the Truth of who Christ’s Bride is supposed to be/do, according to scripture, and what most Christians actualy believe/perceive/do is why it is so difficult to change.
For someone to change, they must be truly dissatisfied with their experience and convinved that there is something that can and should be done to bring them closer to the Truth and the resultant continual push for growth. A kind of holy discontent must set in that brings with it a humble hunger and thirst for Righteousness….
This also reminds me of the “holy rebellion” thread here a while back….
Sorry for the seeming-rant, friends…but I felt that Ryan needed to hear this in order to recoil himself at these words…allow the Holy Spirit to help him process them…so that God will be able to prepare him for what lies ahead.
Be strong and courageous…the battle belongs to the LORD!
Janet, Peggy, Seeingkalos, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again.
You (Peggy) mentioned large portions of budgets being taken by “clergy.” I assume that includes pastors? Since I am a paid pastor, I began to search the scriptures to see what it has to say about this. What do you make of 1 Corinthians 9:14
. I do reconize that it says “living” in most translations which is quite a bit different from getting wealthy. In our area, there was recently a news story talking about how a local pastor of a larger local body was maybe receiveing a very large salary. They based this off the value of his home because his salary is not know to the congregation! A board who is made up of close friends decides what the salary is and it is not disclosed to the congregation. This I do not agree with. But it seems that the scripture might advocate some type of compensation for those who commit to sheparding full time.
Also, I received a couple of books today (The Forgotten Way and The Shaping of Things to Come). Began reading “Shaping” today. Pretty intersting stuff. One part I didn’t understand is the part about apostolic (flat) leadership. There is to be leadership (Hebrews 13:17
). I was wondering if you all could help me out by explaining the “five fold model” described on page 12 instead of Triangular Hierarchies. I’m sure I don’t understand.
The Spirit has convinced me that He has placed me here for a reason. That is to present some new and radical ideas to this committee. The next meeting has been postponed (how convenient for me to have more time to learn). Please pray for me that I will be given the words to speak when that time comes.
He is risen, indeed! Our 6:30 am Easter service had about 600+ people today and am anticipating larger crowds in the later hours - most I will not recognize or see for another year. Hmmm…
Ryan, keep reading and soaking. The leadership structure Alan describes has been more familiar in pentecostal settings but not necessarily lived out as he describes.
Most Attractional churches are structured by a “pyramid” (triangular)leadership organization - the higher you climb up the pymarid the fewer the people with more power/authority/and organizational directional influence. Mission and direction flow from the top - downward. The IC (Institutional Church) is dominated by the Pastor/Teaching leadership of the 5 different leadership equipping expressions as seen in Ephesians 4
: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers. The other 3: Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists have nearly been altogether omitted from real influence and leadership positioning in the IC/Attractional model.
Alan and others (now including me) make a compelling case that the Holy Spirit has given us the blue prints for a “healty/maturing” church by having the “flattened” and shared equipping leadership matrix that the Attractional church has essentially ignored, misunderstood, or forgotten. As a result the West really has never understood or seen a “mature/healthy” church. Alan, also makes an equally compelling case that this is organizational genious that Paul gave us that even secular businesses seek or are already incorporating into their ventures.
Frost and Hirsch do touch on this in Shaping but Alan goes into much more detail on it in TFW - with cool charts and how he would define the respective roles working together.
In a nutshell - I think the stark difference between pyramidic/triangular leadership and the 5 fold ministry matrix of APEPT is that the Pyramidic is command and control posturing and APEPT is serving and equipping (not to suggest pyramid guys don’t serve but they’re usually busy as hell with little time to truly doing equipping). The guy at the top gets paid the most and has the most power in the IC. The guy at the top (while he might be a really good guy, most likely got there because of seminary degrees and “experience” in leading along the way of the pyramid.
On the other hand, the APEPT are equally valuable and are visibly and tangibly equipping the body to do ministry (which implies the essence of discipleship - modeling)- or to use the words of (I think) Bob Roberts, Jr. the qualification for leadership in the church should be “imitate me.”
Let us know what you agree or disagree with…
Hi again Ryan.
I think it can be a bit hard to conceive of “flat” leadership in church as we know it in the West.
Imagine for a moment though you’re part of the underground church in China… it’s illegal to meet in an unregistered group of more than 12 people, so churches are organised as house churches. When someone new comes to faith, they are likely to have their home as a base for a new house church. Their friends and family are likely to be reached by this new house church… it is not an “extractional” approach to mission but very incarnational.
In my understanding there is “cross pollination” in the interlinked Chinese house churches… so those with apostolic influence will circulate around, correct teaching, equip the saints etc… those with particular prophetic gifts might also circulate around the house churches… those with gifts of evangelism will circulate and equip others in how it’s done etc.
How this works in a traditional Western church context is not as easy to see. I do know of a couple of churches who have totally embraced the “home cell” idea… they see “church” is what happens in the homes, but also have a weekly “celebration” as the “gathered church”.
Obviously, whenever the focus shifts from a once a week show (if you’ll pardon the expression) to a cell / house church based emphasis, there’s a lot more people involved in doing ministry… especially if these home groups have a focus on doing community service or reaching out to their neighbors as part of their discipleship. All hands on deck.
In my understanding… Al promotes the idea of leadership teams heading ministries, and is working on tools that help ensure the 5 fold gifts are exercised by those teams.
Contribution of others invited!
Ryan, I am happy that our words have been helpful. Seeingkalos–great job “nutshelling”!
As to “paid” clergy (minister, pastor, shepherd, whatever one may be called), I do not mean to say that there is no place for providing the means by which equippers are able to focus full-time on making and equipping disciples! But you do bring up a good point about recognizing the difference between providing needs and wants. Let me be the first to say that the vast majority of paid clergy are not over-paid–by a long shot! But they are all over-worked!!!
But my point is not that we should not provide the needs of those God sends to help us…but that these people are to actually be equpping the saints to do this work. The paradigm of many (most?) is that the paid clergy do the work and the congregants, and those they bring to church to be evangelized, are the consumers.
Look at the statistics I shared from my church. They seem satisfied with their relationship with God, but realize they are missing something concerning involvement in ministry. They are not being equipped to do the work of ministry. They are “fat sheep”….
Be sure to allow yourself time to process what you’re reading. You will not get the full picture until you have seen the whole plan laid out in each of these books. There is no quick way for us to “mind-meld” or “download” this into your brain. Be patient…keep reading…come back and look at the different threads Alan has put up to talk about issues….
Remember that most “clergy” today would be considered pastor/teacher…which is missing the balance of the message of the apostle and the prophet–those that push the edges of the envelope and poke fat sheep to make them work off some of that fat. The consistent problem of the Hebrew people was that they forgot that God gave them privilege for his divine purposes…not for their selfish purposes. It is the same with us. We are adopted as sons and daughters of the King so that we may be sent out as ambassadors of the King. We don’t sit around the palace eating bonbons and ordering slaves around….privilege always serves purpose.
I am happy to hear, Ryan, that the Holy Spirit has shown you that you are to stay. Let me just say to you that there is a terrible truth (I speak from experience) that we just don’t want to believe: that the people of God have a history of rejecting the prophets God sends to bring both correction and direction. You, however, are not to be afraid of this possibility of rejection (since any success would be a result of the work of the Holy Spirit). You have been called to speak God’s words to his people. Go unafraid, brother…the Lord only needs your obedience in order to see his will accomplished! But do check in each step of the way…be sure you are still in line with the Holy Spirit…never take matters into your own hands…always follow Jesus.
Sometimes we are sent ahead to do advance work. This what the case for me. I helped clear away weeds and rocks and plant some seeds. Even though I have been gone for almost two years now, there are some good things still coming from my time of obedience.
Believe with all your heart that God will provide you with all the wisdom you need to accomplish what he has asked you to do. We stand with you, brother, bidding you to climb on our backs and shoulders…as others have done for us.
Sharing in your journey brings glory to God out of what some would call failure in my own journey…but not me! Success from God’s point of view often looks like failure from our point of view…the crucifixion being the very best example!
Keep your eyes on Jesus, do not fear men, build relationally strong bridges with your leaders so that you earn the right to speak truth to them, love them enough to give your very l