I think we should ask ourselves, what about a church should be attractive to our culture. Is it our professionalism? Our ability to run a business? The quality of our music and worship? I don’t think those things are bad things however there has to be more to a church because I can find many organizations who do this well or even do some of these things better than the church. I believe the missional conversation is a good one because I believe for years the church forgot that one of it’s primary functions is mission and we desperately needed to be reminded of that fact but you can’t force a church to be missional. It has to come from the Holy Spirit, the leadership of the church, and the people who attend who understand what role they will play in the mission of God.

In the end I think being on mission is attractive to people in our culture. The gospel is unique and crazy and if we are living it out there is something that draws people to that. Yes I know that something is the Holy Spirit but it is also the community of people living in the way Jesus intend for us to live our lives that is very attractive to any culture in any place.

Good Conversation

Thanks man – it really is about open communication, honest conversations, and being able to find some collaboration between the polar opposite stances on the two words. No doubt, “Competition is great for the marketplace” – and yes, I believe there are ways that applies positively to the church market (yep, I said it)…. But more importantly this discussion can help us find collaboration now when we need it most.

Part 2 is already being drafted…..but i think there is more discussion here first.

I like your term “The Attractive Church” and think it’s a good perspective and worth discussing like you’re doing on here. I’m definitely always going to be a both-and kind of guy.

Great comments in the reply. I know it’s often “semantics” – yet people put so much weight in words – which is not a bad thing. As Casey mentions about the defining and redefining of words. This is true and is a healthy and good thing.

I like what my friend Dave Gibbons says in his book The Monkey & The Fish about how each generation creates a new language to define the now and next – and that in this transition a lot of tension can be created. The use of language is vital to our communication.

“In writing this book, my hope is that we will sacrificially foster and prioritize next-generation thinking, next-generation methods, and next-generation leaders in the church so that the global movement Jesus began will be known first and foremost for sharing love without strings, healing, extravagant radical compassion, and radical reconciliation with the world so lovingly breathed into existence by our creator.” – Gibbons

And Casey makes a great point the “those outside the church” probably know to care or care to know for that matter. But what is important to note – and is one reason I’d even open this conversation is that people are watching us, our lives, our churches, how we operate, communicate, and they are making decisions about the God we profess often times based on the love we share and show for one another.

Regarding Metrics — oh yes, that is not a can of warms…it’s more like a keg or case. Of which is essential to this discussion since it is a key discussion point at many tables and “in between session” times at conferences both big and small.

In general I think that one of the indicators of the attractional model is how we measure success. In the traditional church that many of us now in our 20’s,30’s and 40’s grew up in (which was revoluntionary in its day) the way success was counted was by attendance, converts and offerings. (or even worse, size of programs).
I find much of my disdain with the attractional method more against the “program” church.

I find your thesis to be spot-on. I too agree that for an attractional church to be successful it had to be on mission. I would also agree that there should be something attractive about a missional expression of church.

That said, I would offer up a few nuanced comments. Regarding the attractional church- I think that one of the main problems that continues to cause such division, apart from mere semantics, is that many in the missional church camp believe that the attractional church was on mission. The problem, however, was that the attractional church’s mission was more about serving self than serving God and His kingdom. The argument could be made that the mission of the attractional church, in many instances, was to increase attendance, enlarge budgets, and expand facilities. This resulted in ‘celebrity pastors’ who were perceived to be experts regarding what it took to grow a vibrant congregation. The church, therefore, became more about growth and/or the pastor than it was about Jesus and His kingdom.

The current trend towards being a missional church is not without its faults or excesses either. One of the most alarming trends that I have seen in the missional church conversation is to equate everything with church. Rebelling against the idea of a church building or a produced worship service that people can be attracted to, many are suggesting that we find and cultivate organic expressions of church that occur where life happens. Employing this logic, it has been argued that you can meet with friends in a pub, over a beer, and enjoy church. Others have suggested, sometimes facetiously, that we don’t have to attend church “because we are the church” and that, therefore, we can go play golf on Sunday mornings and enjoy Christian fellowship in the cathedral that God Himself has created. But what is the mission that drives such expressions of church? What is attractive about such a mission? Is Jesus what is being seen? Is it Jesus who makes such an expression of church attractive?

As you have said, I think that the ideal expression of church is both missional and attractional. If we sway to one or the other, it seems that we end up with excesses that prohibit us from truly being the church and thereby keep us from having the impact that would otherwise be possible.

Perhaps I’ll let this issue rest with my father, but I appreciate your view…as someone who only recently found my way back into a “sanctuary” (one that is right for me and may not be approved by traditional minds…more specifically, my father), I understand the value in both and, at the same time, enjoy the true meaning of the “mission”…it’s attractive.

Hallelujah. Amen.