Missional and Attractional Church

There's a big debate going on about missional and attractional church... kind of the way of looking at regular church or emerging church, but not quite:

For instance Tylers 'My Problem with the Missional Church', Jonathan Brinks 'Missional/Attractional Debate' and others around the net.

This article started off as a comment on Tylers article, but is now expanded.

It seems that in some ways people are using the word missional to be emerging church and attractional to be regular church. Missional because the emphasis is on going out to the world and attractional because its attracting people to some sort of programme or event. I certainly have problems with the programme or event oriented groups who call themselves churches and who pressurise people to attend some sort of Sunday gathering. I've just been thrown out of a fellowship group for vigorously disagreeing with this approach.

However, I think I really have problems not with the word missional or attractional but with the word church. Most of the time I read in scripture the word church referring to all the followers of the Way in a town or city. So… everyone who follows the Master in a town or city or village is part of the church in that town, city or village. Whatever you do or don't do on a Sunday or other day of the week with other followers doesn't stop you being part of the church in that area.

When we use the word church attached to a congregation – be it missional or attractional we somehow elevate that structure and give it power. That power can and does get abused. The ‘church’ then wants to own every gathering of followers of the Way that it can – the ‘house groups’ are house groups of such and such a church… the mother and toddler group is the mother and toddler group of such and such a church. Now I know that the so called attractional churches are criticized [as I said, I have done it myself] for being programme orientated, and this is a valid criticism, but the real problem is the understanding of structure rather than dialogue.

What do I mean by that? I mean that if we truly saw the radical shift of our Lord from a special priesthood to a priesthood of all believers, everyone with direct access to our Father, then we would see structure in radically different ways. Whether missional or attractional the structure would be eclectic – there would be may different expressions of the body of Christ [which we might call the church] in our town, city or village. Those expressions would be administratively light, led, not by some sort of hierarchical leadership, but by the Holy Spirit indwelling each and every follower of the Way.

What would this look like in practice? It might mean there are many house gathering of believers in a town… and members of them might go to different congregational meetings on a Sunday, or not if they don’t meet God through singing songs and listening to a talk… the congregational leaders would have a lighter job as they were responsible for what happens on a Sunday, not all the other activities of the church… the church being the sum total of all believers in that town.

Maybe too… we would see people less tied up in activities to keep some kind of Sunday Club running through the week and therefore more time to spend with those people who don’t yet love and follow our Lord. Maybe then the church in that town, city or village would be both missional and attractive.