Attractional Vs, Missional Continued

Apparently my comment was too long as a comment, so I'm just continuing Dan's topic as a fresh post. I’ve thought a tremendous amount about this issue in recent years, as we followed a purely attractional model for a long time. Here a few thoughts…

Philosophically, the purely attractional model has been fueled by the underlying thinking that conversion is really the big goal: attract them and get them to make the decision. While I think the “decision” is important, the end goal is to help people become disciples, which I understand to mean finding a new way to see, be, and live. If we are going to attract people, more thought has to be given to what it means for them to be with us after we attract them.

I also think the purely attractional model has suffered from a bait and switch problem. In attracting people with hip worship and tips and tricks sermons, we have often inadvertently given the impression that Jesus exists to be your accomplice in the pursuit of happiness (as defined by the American dream). Then when we try to call these people to face their hearts and lives, or to live in sacrificial love for the good of the world, they’re thinking, “But I thought it was all about me.” Inherent in the Good News is the good news that it is not all about me, so something bigger than me has to be in the picture from the first day we attract people. One of the fringe benefits of our church’s radical commitment to our brothers and sisters in southern Haiti is that if you walk into our church you hear right away that people here are chasing something beyond themselves.

On the other hand, in all the craze about becoming missional, a lot of people have interpreted “missional” to mean “just get your church doing stuff for people outside the church”. This sometimes fails to address either the reality that the mission must come from hearts in the process of being transformed by love, or the idea that serving people still fits into the larger picture of God’s redemption of all things. If we are not fueled by honest love, nor pulled forward by redemptive hope, we may just serve for awhile and burn out.

I’m no expert, but where I’ve settled in is this:
1. I’m okay with attracting people to our church.
As Hirsch points out, these will mostly be M1/M2 people who have had some kind of church/Christendom exposure in their life. My Muslim neighbor is unlikely to just walk into our church. But I’m even okay with attracting these people with some relevant sermons, some great music, etc. But these have to be things done in a way that serves our worshipping community. So I might say that I’m okay with attracting people with the things that are naturally attractive about our church.

2. I’m looking to attract people who find two things attractive that the attractional model has tended to keep in the closet.
The attractional model has had relevant sermons, great music, dramas, video, and high-impact children’s ministry as its primary calling cards. What it has left in the background is what I’ll call “the felt sense of God’s presence”. I think there was a fear that the reality of the Holy Spirit in the midst of a church service might scare people (and it might with Americans, if you’re planning on having several people speak out in tongues, or planning on slaying people in the Spirit when you gather). But I will say that in the last four years in our church, the felt presence of God during worship has played a significant role for most of those who have come to Jesus. I think the seeker/purely attractional approach has neglected to address the rampant spiritual hunger of the human heart, the desire for transcendence, for spiritual reality. Many people will be responsive to the presence of God, so in our service we have a time where we slow down, worship, and tell people to find God. We say, “You can sit, you can stand, you can kneel, but find God this morning, because He’s here looking to find your heart.”

The second thing that has often been kept in the closet is precisely mission. This may have made sense with boomers (though from a Kingdom mindset was probably still wrong). But it is a fatal mistake with current generations. Starbucks draws people in by selling them Ethos bottled water, and their purchase helps pay for clean water wells and filters in poor countries. The world has gotten smaller, and people want their lives to make an impact by making the world better—and we happen to be in the change-the-world-business (at least theoretically). Of course, I’ve seen some seeker churches in my area try to go missional to play the attraction angle of caring about the world—ooh, bad call. But if we actually do care about the world, current generations will find this attractive, and the more radically we care about the world the better.

3. I’m inviting people less and less to “accept Jesus” and more and more to come know and follow him.
We’ve ditched the bait and switch. Yes, Jesus will help you with your marriage and your finances and raising your kids, but in a sustainable way if you let him change you, and if you let your life get caught up in the redemptive adventure he is unfolding in the world. He hasn’t invited us to get saved and pick up our free pass to heaven, he’s invited us to come become real and more whole human beings, like Jesus, and to join his effort to see the light supplant the darkness. If I invite people to something less than this in my efforts to attract them, then I am inviting them to something less than Jesus is… Hmmm.

That’s it… this is just our journey here at LifeSpring. I hope these thoughts are helpful for you guys. We are still a work in progress.