Attractional Vs. Missional
February 27th, 2008 | by Scott |I’m down with the Missional scene. I really am. We own candles. We have friends on our street.
I have the cover art for “The Shaping of Things To Come” as a tattoo on my right shoulder-blade.
Heck, I’ve been emergent since November. I have as much missional street cred as Bruce Pearl has restraining orders.
I’m teaching a class on Wednesday nights on being a Missional church. We have traced the postmodern shift in our society. We have noted the differences in the generations and delved into the negative perceptions that the younger generations have of Christianity in general and Christians in particular. I’ve channeled McLaren and summoned Kimball.
But now as we move into the question of what we do with this transition from the Modern world to the Post-modern world I come up on a larger issue within the missional discussion:
Does the attractional vs. missional question have to be an either/or?
Do we miss a fuller presentation of the Good News if we focus on one over the other? Is there any value left to being attractional?
One of the reasons I ask is more of a pragmatic nature: for all the talk we do of missional living we do so within the constructs of brick and mortar, or location and geographical identity. It seems that we are kidding ourselves greatly when we simply dismiss the attractional approach when that is our starting point for so much of our ministry.
And is that necessarily a bad thing?
I have more to say about this but would appreciate your feedback before I say more.
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15 Responses to “Attractional Vs. Missional”
By Shane on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
No, it’s not always a bad thing. But if you actually want to get through to a self-absorbed culture (young and old) that living for the sake of the stranger and of the world, I think you do need to abandon the attractional bit completely. That doesn’t make it easy. We’ve tanked the brick and mortar and tried to be as unappealing as possible (okay, I am kidding a bit), but we still find ourselves readier to invite than to serve, to speak than to listen, and to befriend than to recruit. That said, while I think it might be possible to be missional and attractional in a less consumer driven society, our particular consumer driven society makes that next to impossible. It’s like giving promoting that you serve alcohol to alcoholics as a way of getting them to their first AA meeting. It’s a bait and switch. You get people together on the basis of what they like and their felt needs, it’s a hard sell to then turn around and say that we are a community that is about forming you into someone that meets the needs of others. Can it be done? Possibly. Can it be done here in N.America? I think not.
By Scott on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
I hear what you are saying but with there still being such overlap between modernity/postmodernity is there still a segment of our society that, though consumer driven, might like and respond to the more attractional model.
I agree whole-heartedly that missional is the way to go and that attractional has seen its better days. However, is it now completely without merit?
By Jeff B. on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
As I understand the terms, the two are mutually exclusive. Both refer to opposing views of what our task is as the church. Are we called to bring people to our geographical identity or our spiritual identity? Missional = going to them in order to share/be/show the good news. Attractional adds an unnecessary (and often crippling) step — Go to them IN ORDER TO GET THEM TO COME TO US so that they can HEAR about the good news.
Perhaps I misunderstand the terms, but I had our entire outreach team read The shaping of Things to Come, so I qualify as an expert.
btw — I used caps instead of italics ’cause I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to do italics, not because I’m yelling at anyone.
By Scott on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
I agree that we run a major risk at creating a schizophrenic approach to ministry but playing these two off of each other. But can they co-exist as a multi-faceted approach to ministry?
And if not, why are we not blowing up our buildings, dissolving everything that doesn’t pertain to the overall mission and really do what we are talking about?
I think, overall, my question emerges from the realization that, for most of us, we are trying to do just that: accommodate both the attractional and missional.
I don’t believe that attractional needs to be go to them in order to get them to come to us but could instead be seen as an “attractive” opportunity to fulfill something in people who might respond positively to that approach.
By Scott on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
Or maybe better said, can the idea of being “attractive” be redeemed within a missional context?
By Jeff B. on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
To that question I answer a cautious yes. No matter what we do, it is part of human nature to want our ideas and associations to be “attractive” to others. So we put a picture on the wall to cover up the stained wallpaper. We change our church name so as to avoid the unattractive baggage of our denomination. We do things to hide our wrinkles so that we are not characterized by them.
We also do things to accentuate the areas where we are most blessed. We have our best singers and musicians responsible for the musical portion of our worship. We have our best speakers give homilies and sermons. These things make us attractive and I think we’d be denying what is natural if we minimized our blessings and advertised our wrinkles. That’s just foolish.
However, we must be careful that our attention to being “attractive” doesn’t turn into an attractional approach, as it often does. Also, as Shane mentioned, we live in a consumerist society with a bunch of felt needs addicts (myself included). Our attention to attractiveness can very easily become a well-intentioned feeding of the addiction, which could thereby cripple our efforts at being missional.
By Scott on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
That’s correct. Being attractive, or rather striving to be attractive, can be a dangerous pursuit.
But if part of being missional is to be incarnational then the idea for a physical presence becomes more of a likelihood as the church bears fruit.
There will be a time where a building makes sense for The Grove. A time where a physical location helps perpetuate the very idea of incarnation. A sacred and holy space, so to speak.
And if that is truly what it taking place then attraction is likely, if not assured.
Now, that begs greater problems and frustrations down the road, granted.
By david on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
i’ve wrestled with this question for a long time. i’m still not completely settled (isn’t that necessary to be “emerging”?). but where i am right now is that there needs to be room to be both attractional and missional. it would seem that both have something tasty to offer the church.
There really doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the idea of a church being a place to bring people to meet Jesus. Biblically, unbelievers have gathered with believers and have been present at their worship gatherings since the beginning. In 1 Corinthians, Paul even instructed the Corinthians to give consideration to the unbelievers among them as they worshiped.
This is just an aside, but the majority of times when the New Testament uses the word “preaching”, it’s referring to the communication of the Gospel to unbelievers… not the “giving of meat” to believers.
lots more of my thoughts on this issue here
feel free to delete the link if you feel it inappropriate!
By Shane on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
A location and a building, perhaps. But do we select that location and building on the basis of how we best meet our own needs and the perceived needs of those that will join us, or do we select a location and building that best fits our outwardly-focused mission? Do we lock ourselves into an approach where we need to bring people to us or will we make decisions that help us to conceive our church as a people being sent out? You have to approach location, space, and cost of buildings the same way you do ministries and programs. Sometimes the difference may seem subtle, but my hope is that if we ingrain missional instincts into our congregation and hit them with missional implication every time they have choices to make. Our instincts are so attractional, there will never be a time when we can stop countering them or they will take over. My instincts tell me that whatever building/space a missional church occupies, it needs to be a space that is in some way a counter-narrative to the http://theworkofthepeople.blogspot.com/2008/01/bathroom-plasmas.html
By Scott on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
Ah, the plasmas over the urinals rock. And since we are real men and pee standing up that’s even better.
Right, everything feeds back into the mission. And you bring up part of my struggle here. To be truly missional runs so counter to my instincts and, honestly, my self-preservation as a minister that it is hard to fully wrap my mind around it. And if we are honest, very few churches are close to being missional.
It’s a paradigm shift to move away from building as a necessity to ministry and toward an “expediency” for some of our ministry.
But, with that said, all that we do should be “attractive.”
Luckily, I found Hirsh give a deeper understanding of his coining of the phrase attractional:
“I think the use of the term attractional is a tad ambiguous, but because I am partly responsible for introducing it into the broader conversation I have to stick with it. What I am trying to get at in using the term attractional is what I call the missionary mode or primary posture of the church in relation to its context. An attractional church is one whose primary stance towards those it seeks to reach is couched in the expectation of a come-to-us mentality. And this expectation as it plays out in the US, Europe, Australia, etc. was basically formed in a time in history where the church had a central position in the culture and people naturally came to church to be cared for, to hear the gospel, and to participate in the community life. The problem is that adopting such a mode is at the cost of fundamentally altering our understanding of ourselves as a ‘sent’ people. (Incidentally, the word missio, from which we get our word mission, comes from the Latin word meaning sent.) And this is further exacerbated by the fact that we live in what historians and theologians rightly call a post-Christendom era. In other words, an attractional church can work in a Christendom context, but in a missionary context it actually undermines our efforts to reach people meaningfully with the Gospel of Jesus. It is literally out-moded! A ‘sent people’ no matter how you configure it implies a going of sorts. And when combined with the other primary theological metaphor in the bible of how god reaches the nations, namely the Incarnation, it clashes head-on with the primary expectation built into attractional forms of church. Hence the conflict–they are basically two different conceptions of church vying for our loyalty in our day.
But another ambiguity can be explained by saying that while a more missionally defined church moves from a come-to-us mentality to a go-to-them mentality, nonetheless all expressions of church should be attractive. That is, we should always be culturally compelling. Don’t mistake not being attractional for not being attractive.”
By Scott on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
David, thanks for your contribution to the discussion. With that overlap of modernity/postmodernity I’m reluctant to just jettison everything.
It seems that there are multiple entry points for people to come into and meet Jesus.
By Shane on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
but only attractive in a counter-cultural way. it isn’t attractive from within the attractional framework and you cannot work from within that framework and still be missional. you are just an attractional church that is enamored with missional ideas–which isn’t all bad…these ideas have to take root and percolate a bit before they can change water into coffee (ok, that metaphor went too far, but it is fun to think of faux edgy wannabe-missional-but-still-attractional-types with their candles and Starbucks, etc.).
By Scott on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
Right. I couldn’t imagine moving in the direction we are moving here if it was a well-established church. Being just two years old and with a shared understanding that the traditional model doesn’t work is sure a positive step toward going “full mocha.”
By Dave on Mar 1, 2008 | Reply
Jesus attracted lots of followers as He was going…
I think the danger is attractionalism - believing that if you change the way you do church you will somehow appeal to unbelievers and get them to come to church.
I posted on this last week…http://missionalchallenge.blogspot.com/2008/02/danger-of-attractionalism.html
Let me know your thoughts!
By Scott on Mar 2, 2008 | Reply
Dave, I think that is the distinction that I was trying to hit at. It’s not a bad thing to attract but when that becomes your mission, or even a major component, rather than a result then you have problems.