In Part 1 we looked at the nature of and the motivation behind the so-called "attractional church," perhaps the most prevailing mode of church in the evangelical landscape. Attractional churches are generally motivated by getting as many people through the doors and into a weekend gathering, ostensibly so that as many people as possible will hear about what it means to have a relationship with Jesus.
After covering some of the difficulties with the attractional model -- namely, the slippery slope toward works-based or gospel-deficient teaching and the sad reality that, fifteen years after this mode's rise, the research indicates it has not succeeded in its aims -- we held out the hope of a missional church as a possible reformational alternative.
It is important at this point to remind ourselves that the current emphasis on "going missional" is not, strictly speaking, really a church model, as if it only involves overhauling one's programs or aesthetics or teaching style. The churches who "do" missional well, are missional in nature and personality. It is a way of being the church, not just doing church stuff.
Nevertheless, this missional adherent at least is not suggesting any sort of ecclesiological anarchy. So what are the qualities of a missional church? What makes it different, specifically, from the prevailing way of doing church?
I have constructed a chart that I believe highlights some key contrasts between the attractional and missional ways.
I'm going to begin elaborating on these contrasts, beginning with the first two, but first a couple of disclaimers are in order: 1. One intrinsic problem with creating a contrast like this is that it
can communicate an "us vs. them" sentiment, which is not really what I
had in mind (honestly). It can also communicate a missional ministry
philosophy and practice as merely a reaction to another form, and while the missional movement's reformational approach will often find itself in rebellion against some aspects of "cultural
Christianity," most missional pastors and adherents I know do not exist to be what other churches are not. 2. Secondly, the missional paradigm I'm presenting here represents a specific stream
of worship models within the missional movement. This chart highlights essentially
what missional means for my particular community; it isn't necessarily meant to illustrate the
broad spectrum of missional ecclesiology.
Disclaimers, out of the way, let's begin unpacking the highlighted contrasts . . .
Church as Place vs. Church as People
This is a tricky charge to make, because nearly all pastors and their congregations -- attractional, traditional, missional, what-have-you -- believe and teach that the church is not a building, but the people who fill it. I know full well that "The people are the church" is not revolutionary thinking and that nearly every minister I can think of would wholeheartedly endorse it.
However, we are talking about practical methodology in this instance, not ideal theology. The nuts-and-bolts working of the attractional model is such that, for whatever intellectual assent is made to the fact that the church, like soylent green, is peeeeople, the emphasis and focus is inevitably on making the machine go. Many attractional churches exist primarily to put on the best weekend worship service possible and the bulk of the Monday to Saturday work of the church leadership is poured into service planning with the aim of creating the best quote-unquote "worship experience" ever. Many attractional churches include in their list of expressed values "Quality," by which they mean that their worship gathering will be done with excellence rivaling the best theater show or Hollywood production and that the facilities will be extremely consumer-friendly.
None of those are necessarily bad things. Until they take over the life of the church leadership and ministry. Many attractional churches exist solely to put on an effective weekend service and to supply a positive experience for anyone who enters the building. The gap between congregant and pastoral staff grows, because the staff is too busy keeping the machine running to interact personally with the congregation. Community life actually suffers because nearly all of the energy is being poured into the community gathering.
This is how the attractional model functionally treats church as a place.
The missional model, on the other hand, values the worship gathering (and even the quality of the experience therein), but as it does not see a worship service as the great hope of life transformation, but rather its congregants living lives of fragrant witness among their tribes, there is more training for people to see themselves as the church in motion, and the pastoral staff is freed up to spend less time pouring into a church service and more time into caring for and ministering to a church member.
This crucial shift in how one views the weekend service (which will be unpacked to greater degree when we get to the event/assembly contrast in the chart) leads into the next contrast:
Seeker Targeted vs. Seeker Mindful
The attractional model is the natural child of the seeker church movement. The impetus behind this movement is good; it is evangelistic-minded. It takes Jesus' profession that he has come to seek and save that which is lost very seriously.
The problem lay mainly in determining what Church is and what its gathering is for. The attractional model is primarily seeker-targeted in that it says churches should primarily be about accommodating the lost and seeking and therefore the worship gathering should be about making them feel comfortable. Thus follows the attractional shibboleth "relevance" and all the bells and whistles that are meant to make church feel less "churchy" and more . . . well, like what someone might encounter on TV or at the movies.
In many attractional churches this has effectively turned the worship service into a sales pitch for cultural Christianity with an unchurched person as the main audience. Someone may quibble with whether this is really true or not, but I've seen it and I've worked it, so I know it exists. And I hear from too many other people around the country about their own experiences, so I know it's widespread.
In our missional model, however, we do not view the church as existing to acclimate the unchurched to church culture. In our particular community, we present and seek to live out the gospel every time we meet, realizing that it is what the lost need to hear. So in some respects this is being very seeker-targeted. But the weekend worship service, for instance, is not designed with lost persons as the main audience. First and foremost, we believe worship is for God. So the music, for example, is specifically and intentionally God-centered. We are singing to tell God how awesome he is, not to let attendees feel comfortable with our lack of churchiness or know that we are up on the latest pop songs.
This ties in, again, to the contrasting visions for the weekend gathering. We will -- again -- unpack that contrast later, but our missional model does not view the worship service primarily as the way to reach the unchurched. It can and does do that, but we view it primarily as the gathering together of the community of believers to reflect God's glory and hear his word proclaimed. We believe this is the most biblical way to conceptualize a worship gathering. To put it another way, our missional model is seeker-mindful in the brief gatherings of our community but seeker-targeted in our day to day lives outside the four walls of the church building.
These are the first two contrasts in our Missional and Attractional chart. There will be more elaboration to come in subsequent entries here, and of course more unpacking can be done in response to questions/criticisms in the comments section.
Jared Wilson is the pastor and co-founder of Element, a missional Christian community in
Nashville, Tennessee, and an award-winning writer whose articles, essays, and
short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
Jared's first book, The Unvarnished Jesus, releases Fall 2009 from Kregel.
A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, he lives outside
Nashville with his wife and two daughters.
Encounter Jared's passion for the ongoing reformation of the evangelical church
almost daily at www.gospeldrivenchurch.com.
I like your writing but perhaps you can break it down into smaller chucks and units. It is hard for some of us to digest. I think you made many great points only quite a few to ponder. best wishes.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
