In our last post, we contrasted the prevalent model of attractional church with the missional mandate that Christ has bestowed upon His people. Many have better termed this model exemplified by Jesus the missional-incarnational model after His attempt to reach mankind through His incarnation. In His attempt to bring His message of love to us, God actually became one of us to meet us in the midst of our fallenness and sin. As Eugene Peterson paraphrases John 1:14 in The Message, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” At the incarnation, God chose to send not a representative to us, but came Himself in the form of a humble man, with “no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him” (Isaiah 53:2). In so doing, He demonstrated sincere affinity and identification with us in His attempt to draw us to Him.
It is this same missional-incarnational approach that we as the church must adopt in relation to our culture today. As Jesus said in John 20:21, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Just as Christ stayed not at a distance but “moved into our neighborhood,” so we as His followers must incarnate Christ to a watching world by being directly and actively involved in the lives of those we seek to reach.
Yet too often, the church prefers to be sequestered and removed from our culture, believing that mission starts in the barns rather than the fields. We’ve built for ourselves some very nice barns we meet in on Sunday mornings, with their high quality sound systems, heated baptistries, and Disney inspired kids areas, but as Neil Cole points out, such an approach to evangelism is as foolish as the farmer who builds a barn and calls the crops to come in. God never intended for the seeds of His love to be stored in barns on Sunday mornings, but seeks for us to sow His message in the fields at large, dirtying our hands in the soil of those far from Him.
We all likely agree with these concepts, but have you and I both missed this call to the fields? Christ has commanded us to “go, and make disciples of all nations”, but has this missional mandate fallen on deaf ears? After his extensive polling of American Christians, George Barna reported that the typical American Christian will die without leading a single person to Christ in their lifetime. Sadly, I must completely agree with the validity of Barna’s conclusions as I look at my own life and the lives of other Christians I know. The fact is unarguable: without drastic changes in my life, I fear that this lack of fruit will be my fate and perhaps yours.
We must not postpone our obedience any longer. We must act, and quickly, if we are to be the “salt of the earth” as Christ has called us to be. He has called us to be agents of His grace, peace, and light to the world, the “sent ones” who change the landscape of our culture through the message of His love. By God’s grace, may we realize this noblest of callings our Leader has given us.
In our next post, we will explore what such a missional-incarnational approach might look like in our day.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Attractional vs. Missional church
In our last post, we explored the “crisis of relevance” the American church faces today in both attendance and influence. For the church to remedy these failures, what must our response be? Quite simply, the church’s age-old model of “attractional evangelism” must be exchanged for a more organic and Biblical model.
What is the attractional model of evangelism? As one might expect, the attractional model of church concentrates its evangelism efforts on trying to attract unbelievers to the church. Most pastors today spend their entire week wracking their brains, tweaking their sermons, and improving their programs in an attempt to make the church’s ministries attractive and relevant to those outside. Yet this attractional model is always built on the idea that if the church makes its services interesting enough and compelling enough, unbelievers will be drawn to Christ. The weakness in this approach, however, is that unbelievers must come to the church if they are to find Christ, a “bitter pill” that many are unwilling to swallow.
This attractional model that the church has long operated by must be replaced by a missional model if the church is to remedy its “crisis of relevance” today. The missional model simply attempts to take the good news of Jesus to the culture where people are at, rather than waiting for them to come to the church. A missional model of church, then, will often not take the traditionally recognizable form of a church with its Sunday morning service in a special building set aside for that purpose. Rather, it seeks ways to bring its community into the midst of those outside the church. The missional model often rejects the traditional Sunday morning expression of church as a service one goes to (witness the expression “go to church”), but believes the church to be a body that one experiences in the context of daily living.
In centuries past, the attractional model was quite adequate and effective, as church was the center of culture, church attendance was enforced by the state, and all were assumed Christian by birth. Yet in today’s multicultural and postmodern society, the effectiveness of this model has long since passed. The idea of “throwing a party and expecting the world to come to it,” an accurate summary of the attractional model, is fraught with difficulties today for several reasons.
First, the attractional model expects unbelievers to engage us on our turf and become one of us if they are to hear the message of the gospel. In fact, some have said that the attractional model might better be termed an extractional model, as new converts are expected to be uprooted from their existing lives to join a Christian subculture on Sundays. The attractional model requires those who would hear about Jesus to come to the church and engage us in our cultural zone if they are to follow Christ. For most unbelievers, such a proposition is very alienating to say the least. To expect those who “don’t like church” to come to Christ through such a model is folly in the highest degree. Should we not rather take the gospel to them rather than force them to come to us?
Second, the attractional model is not the New Testament model of evangelism. From Jesus to Paul to the early church, we see an active missional model embodied, with the good news being brought to those far from the Father in the midst of their cultural setting. From the church’s earliest beginnings, an active missional model was embodied and practiced as the early believers took the message of Jesus to the streets, engaging the culture on their turf and in their terms with the Gospel. Such a model was common even to the life of Jesus, who repeatedly crossed cultural barriers to take His Kingdom to tax collectors, prostitutes, Gentiles, and demoniacs, to name but a few. Most importantly, Jesus refused to assimilate these new followers into the Jewish subculture from which He came, but rather sent them back to their own people and culture to share what He had done in their lives.
Clearly, the “come and see” approach to evangelism that is so common in our day must be exchanged for a model more in line with that practiced by our Leader. In our next post, we will explore further what the example of Christ teaches us about what it truly means to be missional in our day and age.
What is the attractional model of evangelism? As one might expect, the attractional model of church concentrates its evangelism efforts on trying to attract unbelievers to the church. Most pastors today spend their entire week wracking their brains, tweaking their sermons, and improving their programs in an attempt to make the church’s ministries attractive and relevant to those outside. Yet this attractional model is always built on the idea that if the church makes its services interesting enough and compelling enough, unbelievers will be drawn to Christ. The weakness in this approach, however, is that unbelievers must come to the church if they are to find Christ, a “bitter pill” that many are unwilling to swallow.
This attractional model that the church has long operated by must be replaced by a missional model if the church is to remedy its “crisis of relevance” today. The missional model simply attempts to take the good news of Jesus to the culture where people are at, rather than waiting for them to come to the church. A missional model of church, then, will often not take the traditionally recognizable form of a church with its Sunday morning service in a special building set aside for that purpose. Rather, it seeks ways to bring its community into the midst of those outside the church. The missional model often rejects the traditional Sunday morning expression of church as a service one goes to (witness the expression “go to church”), but believes the church to be a body that one experiences in the context of daily living.
In centuries past, the attractional model was quite adequate and effective, as church was the center of culture, church attendance was enforced by the state, and all were assumed Christian by birth. Yet in today’s multicultural and postmodern society, the effectiveness of this model has long since passed. The idea of “throwing a party and expecting the world to come to it,” an accurate summary of the attractional model, is fraught with difficulties today for several reasons.
First, the attractional model expects unbelievers to engage us on our turf and become one of us if they are to hear the message of the gospel. In fact, some have said that the attractional model might better be termed an extractional model, as new converts are expected to be uprooted from their existing lives to join a Christian subculture on Sundays. The attractional model requires those who would hear about Jesus to come to the church and engage us in our cultural zone if they are to follow Christ. For most unbelievers, such a proposition is very alienating to say the least. To expect those who “don’t like church” to come to Christ through such a model is folly in the highest degree. Should we not rather take the gospel to them rather than force them to come to us?
Second, the attractional model is not the New Testament model of evangelism. From Jesus to Paul to the early church, we see an active missional model embodied, with the good news being brought to those far from the Father in the midst of their cultural setting. From the church’s earliest beginnings, an active missional model was embodied and practiced as the early believers took the message of Jesus to the streets, engaging the culture on their turf and in their terms with the Gospel. Such a model was common even to the life of Jesus, who repeatedly crossed cultural barriers to take His Kingdom to tax collectors, prostitutes, Gentiles, and demoniacs, to name but a few. Most importantly, Jesus refused to assimilate these new followers into the Jewish subculture from which He came, but rather sent them back to their own people and culture to share what He had done in their lives.
Clearly, the “come and see” approach to evangelism that is so common in our day must be exchanged for a model more in line with that practiced by our Leader. In our next post, we will explore further what the example of Christ teaches us about what it truly means to be missional in our day and age.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Failure of the American Church
There's no denying that the American church faces a crisis of relevance in this day and age. Currently, attendance at American churches today is rapidly dwindling. According to George Barna, the number of adults in American who no longer attend church has almost doubled since 1991, even though the adult population has grown 15% over that time. Adult church attendance in the USA is at only 18% and is dropping lower each year. By the year 2025, the church will have lost half of its market share in the United States. Clearly, interest in church these days isn’t what it used to be.
But why? Amid today’s culture with an unprecedented openness to spirituality, should our churches not be bursting at the seams with new attenders? Sure, some of our churches might be still be growing, but the vast majority of that growth today comes from transfers within our same Christian subculture rather than from new conversions. Why are so many interested in spirituality today, but so few are interested in attending church?
Dwindling attendance isn’t the only problem besetting the American church today. Despite the church’s best efforts, the cultural chasm between itself and contemporary culture grows larger with each passing year. Barna’s recent research shows that the major influencers of American culture today are law, music, movies, TV, internet, family, and books. Among the second tier of influencers, schools, peers, newspapers, radio, businesses appear. Consistently, surveys show the church appears among those institutions with little to no influence in today’s culture. It seems that the gap is growing larger between a godless culture and an insulated church who isn’t quite sure how to respond.
In the face of such a dire situation, the church instinctively responds by simply tinkering with the same model it’s always used; attempts are made to improve the sermon’s relevance, expand the children’s programs, rev up the worship band, and add more outreach events, for instance, in response to this dilemma. Yet in the face of its rapid decline in influence and a fluid, postmodern society, is simple tinkering on the old attractional, “come to us” model of church still the answer to our ills? Is more of the same still the answer, or is an entirely new paradigm of church needed in our day if we are to bridge the ever-enlarging gap between ourselves and the culture around us?
We will explore this answer in our next post.
But why? Amid today’s culture with an unprecedented openness to spirituality, should our churches not be bursting at the seams with new attenders? Sure, some of our churches might be still be growing, but the vast majority of that growth today comes from transfers within our same Christian subculture rather than from new conversions. Why are so many interested in spirituality today, but so few are interested in attending church?
Dwindling attendance isn’t the only problem besetting the American church today. Despite the church’s best efforts, the cultural chasm between itself and contemporary culture grows larger with each passing year. Barna’s recent research shows that the major influencers of American culture today are law, music, movies, TV, internet, family, and books. Among the second tier of influencers, schools, peers, newspapers, radio, businesses appear. Consistently, surveys show the church appears among those institutions with little to no influence in today’s culture. It seems that the gap is growing larger between a godless culture and an insulated church who isn’t quite sure how to respond.
In the face of such a dire situation, the church instinctively responds by simply tinkering with the same model it’s always used; attempts are made to improve the sermon’s relevance, expand the children’s programs, rev up the worship band, and add more outreach events, for instance, in response to this dilemma. Yet in the face of its rapid decline in influence and a fluid, postmodern society, is simple tinkering on the old attractional, “come to us” model of church still the answer to our ills? Is more of the same still the answer, or is an entirely new paradigm of church needed in our day if we are to bridge the ever-enlarging gap between ourselves and the culture around us?
We will explore this answer in our next post.
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