Any consideration of the so-called "attractional church" must consider the recipient of nearly all its energy and resources -- the weekend worship service.
In this series I have been highlighting contrasts proposed between the attractional church and the missional church by the following chart:
In this installment, I am briefly exploring the 14th, 15th, and 16th contrasts as a way of demonstrating the (practically) diametrically opposed paradigms of each model for their worship service vision.
Worship as Attraction vs. Worship as Reflection
I have previously suggested that the raison d'etre of the attractional church is to get as many people as possible through the doors and into a worship service so that they may (ostensibly) receive information on how to a) have a relationship with God or b) live a Christian life. This is a good and sincere motive, and plenty of seeker churches and their attractional worship services have planted seeds for the salvation of sinners.
But all too often this mindset leads to a "whatever it takes" blurring of lines between who is being glorified in our worship. A former church of mine played a song by folk-rock artist Ben Harper called "My Own Two Hands." The inclusion of this song is quite in keeping with the approach this church takes to the worship service: it was added because a) it is a mainstream song that can connect with an unchurched audience, and b) it shared some of the themes of that morning's message. But as our congregation watched and listened to our worship musicians singing an ode to the potential of humanity (the lyrics include the line "I can change the world with my own two hands . . .") the question occurred to me (and several others) "Who exactly are we worshiping?"
This has very little to do with style -- I don't happen to believe that style is neutral, but that is a subject for another time -- and everything to do with the intended audience of a worship service. For the attractional paradigm, the audience is the unchurched congregant and the disillusioned Christian congregant, so nearly every aspect is tailored for comfort, enjoyment, accommodation, and -- way too often -- entertainment. One church I read about recently played Australian rock group Jet's paean to one-night stands, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?," for no apparent reason other than that it's a rockin' song they hoped people would enjoy hearing.
More and more attractional churches are banking on video presentations, elaborate stage sets and props, larger and more polished bands, less God-centered songs, programmed lighting effects, lasers, fog, giveaways, gourmet goodies and beverages, and numerous other enticements to make church seem less like the stereotype of church. To be clear, not all of these things are bad. But the indiscriminate and thoughtless incorporation of them is.
In many missional churches, by contrast, the worship in the worship service is clearly and intentionally about and for God himself. The audience is not anyone in the pews, Christian or not. The audience is God. The music is chosen based primarily on what most makes most of God. It is not arranged with a singing congregation out of mind, but it is not arranged for the singing congregation but for the One they will be singing to. In this mindset, worship is then not a malleable creative element designed to attract a particular churchgoing demographic; it is a reflection of the goodness and glory and grandeur of our sovereign triune God.
These disparate mindsets affect the tone of preaching in worship services, as well.
Preaching as Application vs. Preaching as Proclamation
In the attractional church, the messages are predominantly of the "life application" variety meant to make the Christian walk seem more practical or relatable or appealing. In the missional church, the messages are predominantly explorations of what God has done.
This is not to say that applicational preaching cannot or does not contain any proclamation, or that proclamational preaching cannot or should not contain application. In fact, the best preaching contains both proclamation and application. The difference lay in the amounts of each and, again, the primary intention of the message. In short, the typical applicational message tends to over-emphasize our good works while a good proclamational message emphasizes God's finished work.
I will explore this discrepancy more fully in the next installment in this series, but the essential difference between applicational preaching and proclamational preaching depends on how much the preacher wishes to make of the gospel. Proclamational preaching makes much of the gospel, believing that proclaiming the finished and sufficient work of Christ for salvation is, as Paul says, "of first importance." The applicational preacher either presupposes the gospel or relegates it to the conclusion of his message, believing that of most importance is exhorting the congregation to live in more Christlike ways.
To be clear (again): We should be exhorting our congregations to live in more Christlike ways. But if the emphasis of our preaching is on being more like Jesus and not on the good news of grace despite our not being able to be like Jesus, we end actually achieving the opposite of our intent. We inadvertently become legalists, actually, because we are more concerned with works and behavior than Christ's work on our hearts. The great irony is that despite hoping to win the unchurched with the message of the good news, we end up enticing them with a Christian form of self-help or behavior modification, neither of which has ever saved anyone.
The proclamational preacher, though, preaches the texts of Scripture with God as the subject and the gospel at the forefront, and he does so without shame, trusting not his words or his demeanor to win souls, but the work of the Holy Spirit.
How a church approaches these two primary elements of a worship gathering (not to mention how they approach the sacraments) stems from and feeds its view of the worship service in general.
Weekend as Event vs. Weekend as Assembly
The attractional church puts huge stock in the weekend service to do lots of work. Many churches direct most of their operating budget towards the weekend service. Most of the staff is on hand to carry out the diverse attractions of the weekend service. Many pastors spend the bulk of their time preparing for the weekend service, leaving the actual pastoring of the church to support staff. In many churches, the weekend is the only official thing they do!
This approach is symptomatic of many of the claims previously made about the attractional church and featured in the above chart. If evangelism for the attractional church happens "inside," then a lot is riding on the weekend service. If the church exists to attract an audience, then a lot is riding on the weekend service. If growth is numbers and cultural relevance is the name of the game, a lot is riding on the weekend service. It is no wonder, then, that the attractional church is ever attempting to outdo itself (or the church next door), to "think outside the box" and take the weekend event "to the next level." Innovation becomes a core value because coming up with the next new thing (or latching on to the culture's next new thing) is paramount to the attraction of the weekend event.
The worship service has become an idol.
In many missional churches, the weekend service can be an idol too. But the temptation is less common, because the service is not seen as an attractional event meant to pack 'em in, but an assembling of the community to worship corporately and receive teaching from Scripture. Evangelism for the missional church mostly occurs "outside," so while the missional worship service can and often does contain some attractional elements, it is not designed to attract people outside the community to the church but to direct people inside the community to God and to their neighbors. To put it another way, it is not an advertisement for the church but an adoration of God.
I will once again cop to broadbrushing. There are plenty of self-proclaimed missional churches whose worship services are designed to be quite "attractional," and there are plenty of unapologetic attractional churches who feature God-centered worship music and more proclamational preaching. Certainly there is overlap. False dichotomies must be avoided, and my aim here is not simply to suggest an absolute either/or but to bring to the fore opposing mindsets and to propose that the difference in these mindsets matters. It matters greatly.
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.
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