This post is somewhat of a follow up to this post and my experience last week at the Exponential Conference.
There has been this debate/conversation in the church world over a philosophy of doing church. It typically is cast as an either or. You can either be an attractional church or missional church.
I have always wondered, “But shouldn’t we be attractive to those not in church?”
And at the same time I have wondered, “Jesus certainly said to GO, so we need to live missionally as well.”
Two things really helped clarify a distinction that we have to be careful about:
In The Tangible Kingdom, Halter and Smay present there alternative church lifestyle as A way and not THE way.
The real meat of the book comes at the end where they describe the kind of life that creates incarnational communities. They offer a different way because of the central question to the book (in my words):
Does the way we typically do church where so much focus is on the Sunday service prohibit or limit our ability to actually be with and minister to people?
Their answer a lot of the time is yes.
So, their focus has been on getting their faith communities to be with people and use Sunday mornings mainly for the purpose of vision casting and encouragement but not outreach. Outreach is what happens when life touches life in a conversation or an act of service.
Unlike so many books that advocate this, they do not tell everyone that is involved in an attractional form of church to leave do what they do. Instead, they encourage anyone that resonates with what they say to experiment within their context.
And then a second clarifying thing: This past week at the Exponential Conference, Alan Hirsch said something that really turned a light bulb on for me. He said that a better word for “attractional” is “extractional,” because that’s the danger of only focusing on Sunday morning. People are extracted from their mission field to spend more time at a church building.
If I’ve learned anything in planting Suncrest-East it’s that people naturally want to make church about a building or place, and it’s not! So the tension I wrestle with is this: How do we gather for the sake of cooperate worship and teaching without making it all about Sunday morning?
And this: “How do I as a pastor, not just work in the church and on the church but live missionally?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Ah, the question that has been on my mind as soon as I got wind of the missional ideas– is it possible to be a missional worship pastor, when so much of a WP’s time and effort goes into making the gatherings attractive and excellent? Or I guess the bigger question, how does the missional lifestyle play out in other staff/leadership roles?
Doug – I am always wrestling with that question. Primarily because we avoided the whole: ‘attractional’ all about Sunday when we launched…and we’re still that way.
Here’s where we are at right now: we have gone simple. Really simple. We don’t have the lights & the flash of a traditionally EXTRACTIONAL church…but we do it well. Sunday is really a Gathering & we’re highly participatory.
We have gone with the mindset of if we want to reproduce – we have to make it easily reproducible & highly mobile. We want our people to be able to start a Gathering wherever is natural for them (bars, restaurants, the YMCA, etc) So where we put most of emphasis is equipping people to live missionally – which means for me: lots of coffee & texting. Instead of hiring a worship guy – I hired a community pastor. Instead of throwing a bunch of money @ advertising (which we may end up regretting) – we have underwritten neighborhood parties that our people throw where they live.
As a pastor – I have approached this thing the Eugene Peterson way from Contemplative Pastor. It’s slower. It’s not as sexy. And it’s going to scare away a good chunk of churched folks (believe me – I know that well)…but what we have found is that this way is connecting & our people are becoming their neighborhood chaplins.
Wow that was long – but that’s where I am in on this wrestling match.
Thanks Greg and Kevin.
Greg that is so helpful and fascinating. I love to hear how it is actually working in the real world because so much I hear is philosophy.
This is the core idea that our youth leaders honestly believed:
“If we can reach the popular kids like star quarterback or a cheerleader, than we would have big numbers.”
Unfortunately one of the leaders who felt this way was also an elder.
I can’t really describe my frustration at that whole mindset. Not that I didn’t want to reach quarterbacks, but talk about your “attractional” mindset.
Good post Doug.
tim