Should the church be missional or attractional?
Yes, I hate both of these ugly-sounding words, but Scot McKnight’s new review of a book on the subject relates to something that I talked about in my sermon on Sunday:
Right now the United Methodist Church is wringing its hands about how to make the church grow. That’s the subtext of so many clergy meetings I go to. Apparently we’ve decided that the Bible isn’t good enough for us, so we talk about the latest strategies and tactics and trends from the world of marketing and business.
I’m not saying that we have nothing to learn from that world, but that shouldn’t be our starting point.
“How do we make the church grow?” is the wrong question? The right question is “What is God calling us to do? How can we do God’s will? How can we be faithful to our Lord?” Answer those questions and I suspect everything else will take care of itself, right?
Here are McKnight’s words from his review of a book by Michael Frost:
Frost is getting after the “attractional” model of church: make your church attractive, attract people to the church, and get others to participate in the attraction.
This membership pays for the place so membership matters. Attracting members matters so much many churches have adapted and adopted market strategies. But Frost knows that the next generation knows marketing from missional, and it wants little part in the marketing and is up for the challenge to the missional.
The gospel is about the Story of Jesus, and in the center of the Story is a cross, and cruciformity is hardly attractional. It costs us everything.