If you keep up with Christian leadership literature, you know that for the last few years there’s been a rivalry of sorts created between “attractional” churches and “missional” churches. The idea is that we need to get away from the old attractional model and move toward a more missional model.
You see, in the attractional model, we invite people to the building. And we plan the worship service to be great — wonderful preaching, fabulous music service, greeters in the parking lot and foyer, and maybe even a coffee shop for those who come early.
In the missional model, the church is about leaving the building and going into the community to do good works and preach the gospel. Some churches encourage their Bible classes and small groups to meet in coffee shops — to let our light shine in the world. Some church plants have gone so far as to buy coffee shops in the city to interact with the unchurched and bring them to Jesus.
The contrast is particularly plain in church plants. An attractional plant will send out flyers, rent a space, and offer an encouraging, uplifting worship service, with child care. A missional plant will more likely meet in a home, apartment, or coffee shop. The members will work in a local homeless shelter or offer hot cocoa to residents waiting in line for the stores to open on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving when stores open at 4 in the morning with especially good sales). They’ll speak about Jesus to neighbors and co-workers, but will disdain marketing methods such as mail outs. They look for a more authentic experience in a small, intimate setting, as this is how many of the early churches described in Acts were founded.
Recently, Dan Kimball published an article on this subject. Now before we go any farther, I have to introduce Dan Kimball. He’s the author of the seminal The Emerging Church as well as several other books on the emerging church. Kimball helped introduce the evangelical world to the emerging church movement. The Emerging Church is not so much about theology as about how to appeal to young people who’ve grown up in a Post-modern world. It’s very much about evangelism, but it’s an attractional model customized to the current culture of young people.
In his article on attractional and missional churches, Kimball writes,
Not long ago I was on a panel with other church leaders in a large city. One missional advocate in the group stated that younger people in the city will not be drawn to larger, attractional churches dominated by preaching and music. What this leader failed to recognize, however, was that young people were coming to an architecturally cool megachurch in the city—in droves. Its worship services drew thousands with pop/rock music and solid preaching. The church estimates half the young people were not Christians before attending.
Conversely, some from our staff recently visited a self-described missional church. It was 35 people. That alone is not a problem. But the church had been missional for ten years, and it hadn’t grown, multiplied, or planted any other churches in a city of several million people. That was a problem.
Another outspoken advocate of the house church model sees it as more missional and congruent with the early church. But his church has the same problem. After fifteen years it hasn’t multiplied. It’s a wonderful community that serves the homeless, but there’s no evidence of non-Christians beginning to follow Jesus. In the same city several megachurches are seeing conversions and disciples matured.
I quote Kimball because I’ve been wondering the same things. There are countless books — many very well written and quite thoughtful — on how to be a missional church. But when these books give examples of what they consider the churches truest to the mission, they refer either to experimental efforts that are just beginning or small churches. I keep looking for the missional church that not only serves the needy but also converts the lost.
So far — and the evidence certainly isn’t all in yet — the evidence suggests that the kind of missionality the theologians and consultants recommend isn’t very effective evangelistically. And yet … and yet their doctrine of mission is spot on. Matthew 25 really does say that we’ll be judged based on how we treat the needy. Jesus really did preach that we should salt and light. Peter really did say that we should do evangelism through good works.
(1 Pet 2:12) Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
So what’s the answer?
[For those who accuse the emerging church movement of not being concerned with evangelism, ask yourself: why is one of its foremost leaders so concerned about evangelism?]
Kimball's criticism of the small missional churches misses a fundamental point of their mission; i.e., they don't exist to grow themselves but to grow the Kingdom. They may well have engendered far more Kingdom growth than Kimball's attractional approach, but the growth has occurred in scattered locations instead of being pulled back into their outpost. Thus, the student who is engaged in a coffee shop book study may choose to follow Jesus – but in another missional group meeting in another coffee shop, or in a more traditional church near his apartment. And the missional church that first engaged him celebrates! Even though their institution may not grow, the Kingdom does, and that's what counts. Indeed, many missional churches (i.e., true "cell" churches) choose cellular division so that once they reach a critical mass (35-50 typically), they split up into new missional plants meeting in new places.
Ironically, however, while Kimball or I can point to missional plants that have not grown (though promoting Kingdom growth), being missional in this manner can actually be quite "attractive" though not "attractional." By modeling a community of faith, missional churches can be very attractive to a world that is tired of hypocritical churches that are all talk/evangelism and no action/service, and that fulfill the Sermon on the Mount/Plain by loving the unloved, accepting the unaccepted, and practicing peace, community, and creativity.
So I do not accept your argument that the "evidence suggests that the kind of missionality the theologians and consultants recommend isn’t very effective evangelistically." Perhaps the growth in Kimball's attractional model started with seeds planted by more missional outreach. As noted, most missional devotees don't suggest that theirs is the only model for being church. Thus, they celebrate when anyone they engage chooses to follow Jesus – whether with them, in another missional outreach, or in a more traditional church model. So until someone conducts an exhaustive study of all the influences on new Christians, the evidence cited doesn't really exist.
Pingback: Attractional vs. Missional: Alan Hirsch Joins the Conversation « One In Jesus.info