One In Jesus

Okay … I’m going to do something that may prove deeply stupid. It won’t be the first time, but sometimes you just got to try things. I’m going to offer a series of examples of missional efforts by an attractional church using my own congregation as illustrations.

Now, I’m not going to tell you about the ugly side of my church. I mean, like every church with a lampstand from God, we have problems. And it would be wrong to talk about most of them here. Hence, this won’t be balanced. And it wont’ be fair.

Just know this: we’re not perfect, we don’t have it all together, and we are not the model church by any means. We do some things well; some not so well. I’m going to share the good parts and hide the bad parts. It’s just the nature of a public blog that I can be honest but I can’t be completely honest. Continue reading →

Now, what does this mean for the contemporary church? What does Alan Hirch’s teaching mean for a Church of Christ’s leadership? Well, let me suggest a handful of thoughts —

I’ve spoken to a surprising number of preachers who struggle with younger staff ministers who want to abandon the attractional model. The older staff members have led a church of 50 to grow to 500 using the attractional model, thousands of lives have been touched, missionaries have been sent, fantastic benevolence programs have been developed, converts have been baptized, and the congregation is indeed a city of lights built on a hill. They are astonished that their younger staff members look down on all that God has done in that place!

They have conversations filled with buzz words and precious little communication —

“What’s wrong with being ‘attractional’? Should we be unattractive? Isn’t Jesus attractive? Why wouldn’t we want to be attractive?”

“Are you saying that we aren’t ‘missional’? We’ve baptized hundreds, as have our missionaries. We’re making a difference. We have countless volunteers on fire for Jesus!” Continue reading →

[Very occasionally, I move a comment from a reader to the main posts, to make certain the readers who only subscribe to the posts read it. This comment by Charles McLean takes the discussion in an excellent direction.]

[The last post] is an enlightening and challenging post.  It is the worst of worlds: a profoundly disturbing idea which rings true at a deep level.  It suggests to me that we must move well beyond any change of methodology to reach the majority of lost people in our communities.  As gut-wrenching as it has been for some congregations to embrace something as internal as a new song list, this problem suggests change on a different order of magnitude.  What’s the problem with “change agents”?  They aren’t moving fast enough or far enough. Continue reading →

A fuller version of the same presentation may be found here. Continue reading →