Attractional Vs Incarnational

If Jesus were alive today and his mission was still to ‘seek out and save the lost’ what might he do?…

Would he hire a building, set up a sound system, develop a music team, drama team, and then do local letterbox drops advising people that they could come and be part of his church on Sunday? Frankly I don’t believe this approach to mission would rate a blip on his strategic radar. The so called ‘attractional’ mode of mission centres its focus on the church service and is dedicated to producing an event that people will want to come to. The theory goes that the more professional the service is, the funkier the music, the better the coffee, and so on… the more likely the punters will come, hence the term ‘attractional’. As such the success of mission in this mode is almost always measured by the number who attend on Sunday. While a small minority of larger churches do experience some success with this approach, the overwhelming majority of smaller churches attempting to be Hillsong clones continue to haemorrhage members every week because they cannot offer the same quality of music, preaching or other services that their mega-church comrades down the road are able to provide. ..

Was it ever Jesus’ intention that non-Christians should seek us and desire to attend our worship events? Or didn’t he say quite clearly that it was his calling, and now ours to ‘seek out and save the lost’ to ‘go’ to their world and enculturate the gospel there. Little Bo Peep evangelism (leave em alone and they’ll come home) is fast running out of steam as the Christian story ceases to be the dominant framework for people to interpret their spirituality.

By contrast the incarnational approach to mission is refreshingly simple. It requires us to live amongst the people in our communities, love them, share the good news of the kingdom both in action and in speech and then as people become followers of Christ to form up indigenous communities of faith that reflect the specific context. This requires no great resources or buildings, no slick marketing plans and no highly talented people. In incarnational mission the gatherings exist to support the believers as they move out in mission rather than being seen as the place to bring people to. While attractional churches will continue to dominate the landscape of the Christian world, I strongly believe that hope for the future lies increasingly with an incarnational approach to mission that takes both gospel and context seriously and sends Christians out as missionaries rather than calling people to come and attend church.