Attractional to Missional

Well, I managed to get all the way through Lent without buying a book as a discipline (that hurt!), bought one this week and now how can I not buy this one??!!

Although I confess this articulates my fears rather than being something completely new I do think this reads as an encapsulation of deep concerns for the church at many levels.

Thanks, (kind of!), for drawing attention to it.

PB

Jesus meets people, where we are at and in our secular world. In fact, his disciples worried about his exhaustion from speaking to one crowd after another. It is easy to imagine that he was a curiosity, a celebrity of sorts. People come to admire and to mock celebrities, but they come to watch the show. People came to hear what he had to say, likely to poke fun at home, or just because they were curious. He ministered both privately and very publicly, in parades and on hill and lake sides.

So, my response is that, no, churches should not be self-indulgent or materialistic. However, it is appropriate to recognize how to be in and apart of the secular world, in order to convey The Message. That may well involve an intriguing social media presence, community events, concerts and attractive programming. It also involves our being responsible individuals as we minister on a personal level, to those that these factors draw in.

I have to agree with him.
Something that I have wondered about for the last 5 or 6 years has been the development of disciples. Mainly the discussion of the transformation that happens in a christians life that takes them to a curious by stander to an active follower. What this author hit on could be some of the things that hold us back.

What confuses me to no end are families that have kids that have gone in different directions. For example. There is a family that goes to our church. All three of their boys were in the youth group (same time as I was) the oldest went on to college and had a family and is active in the church, the middle son never went to college, doesn’t have a job and I haven’t seen him at church in 3 years (not that any of that is terrible, just different then his other brothers) then the youngest son preached a couple of times in high school, went on to bible college, and now is a minister at a church in Tennessee.
It is weird to me to see that these guys all had the same upbringing, same parenting style, same youth group, and yet they all went in different directions. That just does not make sense nor is it predictable. And I think that is the major thing here, you cannot predict what people will do. The only thing that I can pick up from all of this is serving. I have seen students (specifically talking about high school students) that got involved at a young age and served tend to be ones that stay involved.

I do get nervous talking about this stuff, mainly because people can get on you for wanting to define what a devoted servant of christ is etc…I guess i am just speaking out of pure curiosity.

So what you are saying is that this whole attractional/missional debate has a lot to do with how well a church disciples?

My problem is with that line of thinking is that largely Mike is only talking about the community-wide gathering time. Discipleship is always going to be hard to quantify during those times. Discipleship has always more effective in more personal situations. But I don’t know that it is a strike for or against any one way of doing a church gathering time.

I think Mike takes an easy and overgeneralized punch at the church unfairly. It is easy to Monday morning quarterback and say everything we did has not created the results we wanted. While this is true, I have to believe that the intentionality of those leaders hearts to create these styles of worship and church atmosphere was good. In some cases, people who had been wounded by rigid styles of church found these more simplified churches very healing.

The church is a fragment of the entire argument of why people aren’t going to church. Church isn’t part of the centralized culture anymore period. This generation has the highest rate of broken families ever! Culture has pushed things like sex, drugs and drinking and made them cool to do.

To say the church didn’t try to be the antithesis of those movements would be unfair. Also, the segments of the church were reacting to what they viewed as old-wine skin groups not wanting to change, so they attempted to forerun in a different direction.

Does all of it work? Nope. But instead of griping about it, what is the solution to take the present issues at hand and either change or make them better?

i can say that what he said is true for the “Western Church”… you know…the 1st world countries who’s power is in their currency and their government.

churches outside of Canada, US and Europe though are very different. i know coz i grew up in both parts of the world. they seem to understand the sense of urgency to be a disciple and to go and make disciples. 3rd world countries have a sense of desperation about them… and because of that… they give ALL to Jesus… even to the point of being martyred.

I agree with what he said, and think the crux of the matter is in the disciple making. The greatest failure of attractional or needs based church has been in its failure to understand the church as a sent people, and that happens only through discipleship.

So if all the church does is provide activities at its building and fails to capture a sense of sentness into the world, that our identity as Christ followers is one of being poured out for others over having our own needs met, it is not surprising at all that the church would decline. A church that isn’t strong on mission too easily devolves into a spiritual social club.

Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing that.

So the missional church is that much better at creating disciples? I guess I haven’t seen that because even a missional church has a weekend gathering that might not be as flashy as an attractional church but it is still a program based event.

Why the distinction between “Attractional” and “Missional” based on the style of the weekend gathering? I think every church should be “attractional” (to the extent that they care deeply about conecting with the surrounding culture in order to build relationships and share the gospel) AND “missional” (to the extent that they are intentionally “equipping the saints” to minister to others as Jesus’ hands and feet)… but it is all a loss if we are not RELATIONAL (loving God, loving people) and DISCIPLE-MAKING (depth way beyond evangelism). And I think you are obviously right, Tyler, to point out that that process must take place within community (i.e., not just on Sunday mornings). Once again, a thought=provoking post. Thanks brother. God bless.

I won’t comment directly on what Mike wrote. I’s rather read the whole book and see how he expanded on that thought before comment.

My thoughts: I don’t think attractional and missional are polar opposites – and they do exist in the same church. I think its unfair that all churches one would consider attractional have been painted with the same brush as if that is their goal: big worship, big events, big programs, big capital campaigns. Sure these things exist, but they exist because somewhere down the line attractional was mission. Love your friends, let them see the difference, bring them to church.

Conversely, many missional churches use attraction to bring people to church. Controversial series, compelling personalities, good music, coffee.

Both models can fall in love with their programs and perpetuate them far beyond their usefulness.

Forget the tags for a moment and ask, “Am I living Jesus’ priorities in my life? Do I love Him by loving others? Am I in ministry because it make me feel like I’m doing God’s work, or am I doing God’s work?”

What else matter?

wow, so harsh. i don’t think he’s “griping” about it. i would imagine the whole point of the book is to offer a different perspective and pragmatic solutions to “self-indulgence, materialism, and indifference to the poor and marginalized.”
Seems like a renewed calling for focus on discipleship and social justice to me.

Tyler didn’t give us the book, he gave us the quote. From that quote, I give my commentary. =)

i think the missional church IS better at creating disciples. because it’s focused outward and not inward. because it’s HARD. harder than a consumer-istic type of environment. you know, the environment with four $3000 guitars on stage (i specifically pick this example because i love nice guitars). i think serving and communing with the poor/disenfranchised lends itself to discipleship more so than just intellectual learning. although, ideally, you’d have/need lots of both?

good point.

coincidentally, PBS is airing a Religion & Ethics piece about Ginghamsburg’s work in Sudan. (Mike Slaughter, the author, is lead pastor @ Ginghamsburg UM)

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/

He’s also on twitter: @RevMSlaughter

As someone who has been critical (at times, unfairly) of the attractional church model, I think at the core of what Mike Slaughter is writing about is in worshiping the success of the attractional, megachurch model and idolizing it as something we wanted our churches to become.

While the snippet from the book could be used for an attractional vs missional argument, I see the takeaway from it lies in who we are serving. The attractional, program-based church does a fantastic job of meeting the needs of its membership. They have the buildings and the staff to pull off programs such as Celebrate Recovery well whereas a missional church that rents space or meets in a home couldn’t do at all. However, at its core, the attractional church puts the focus on self. It’s catering to what (the church perceives) people wanting. On the other hand, the missional church is on task to serve others and be (very) relational. It’s more active than passive. When someone leaves a missional church, where a heart to love God and love others has been instilled, then it’s impossible to hear excuses (or reasons, depending on your viewpoint) for leaving such as: I’m not getting spiritually fed…the music is too loud or not contemporary enough…i feel lost like no one knows my name…now that my kids have gone to college, I just don’t feel as connected, etc.

The theology/ecclesiolgy/missiology are distinctly separate and that is more the issue than the actual model. When viewed in these terms, I can see a future where the attractional church can become more missional as well as the missional church becoming more attractional.

I can’t speak for all missional churches, but I can speak for mine. Outside of discipleship and mission, there would be no reason to be a part of our church. We don’t have worship sets, our sermon times currently are an hour of discussion getting into what a text says about how we move our lives. Our whole philosophy is to be as deprogrammed as possible because most of Christian life is best lived outside of programs. We embrace a very minimalistic ecclesiology for the sake of people realizing their sentness.

I guess I should be a little more clear. I see the central message of Jesus being love God and love others. These are accomplished by reordering our lives from our natural means which is me, then God, then others. Jesus teaching puts me down the ladder in terms of how I orient my life. So having a set of things that appeal to my tastes, my preferences, etc is antithetical to a discipleship movement. It’s not to say that we don’t have those things, but the missional church’s focus on outward movement is a very healthy and natural part of discipleship that is too often missing in other churches I’ve been a part of. Note that when I say mission, it’s bigger than just evangelizing, but has to do with an entire way of being about loving our neighbors, doing good in our neighborhood, etc.

It’s not that attractional, or seeker services, or needs based approaches can’t do this, it’s just that they have to push that much harder against the grain of our wiring which says worry about ourselves first.