Attractional & Missional Churches

By Brian Vaughn, Pastor of FBC Lometa

 

Attractional and missional church models have often been deemed to be adversarial in nature.[1] The attractional church’s focus is to draw people in, using programs and events to attract individuals to the church.[2] On the other hand, the emphasis of the missional church is sending people out, encouraging the members to engage with those in the communities and live out the gospel every day.[3] This raises important questions about the direction of church ministry requiring in depth analysis of both sides. Comprehensively researching attractional and missional church models points to using elements of both to create a balance between outreach and discipleship. This paper argues that the most effective and biblical form of church ministry is a church that incorporates both attractional and missional models, as combining the strengths of both approaches can create a balanced strategy for outreach and discipleship that meets the needs of both the church and the surrounding community.

Comparing and Contrasting Models

Both sides, whether missional or attractional agree on at least one thing. The church in America today is hurting. America has gone from, in 1991, 45% reporting reading the Bible at least once a week to as low as 24% in some demographics.[4] Only about 17% of adults attend church each week. That leaves over 250,000,000 adults not in church each week.[5] According to Hornsby, “A growing movement of churches is offering people a refreshing, relational, and relevant church experience. Because of their ability to attract large numbers of people to their places of worship, these churches have been defined as attractional.”[6] Over the years, as time has passed, and culture has changed people have become more and more apathetic to the church in general. The church began to look more and more like something of the past. It didn’t resonate with the people of today. It began to feel like the church was there to serve only those who stepped foot in the walls and began to care less and less about what happened outside the walls. The attractional church model’s goal is to remedy this.[7] Where the attractional church can be described as widening the church by numbers, the missional church can be described as deepening the faith of the church itself.[8] Wilson suggests that the metric by which we should measure our churches shouldn’t be numerically based but grace based.

The Attractional Model

The attractional church focuses on offering a “refreshing, relational, and relevant church experience.”[9] Having a refreshing atmosphere allows the visitor to feel at home when they enter into the worship service. To accomplish this, the attractional church treats the worship service like the showroom floor of a dealership. They want the worship experience to be enjoyable and comfortable. You don’t want to have any aspects that may spoil the experience. Some examples of things that could do this are long sermons, awkward announcement periods that droll on, odd worship sets, or sermons that offer no hope or relevance to everyday life.[10] The goal is to create a good and lasting first impression. Everything from the physical setup of the worship center to the prayer at the end of the service should be organized to be appealing for everyone. It should make you want to stay and never leave.[11] For a worship service to be relational there should be a fostering of personal relationships between the members. The focus on relationships has to be intentional and has to be guided. Hornsby gives a list of a few ways to do this “Keep hate and resentment out…, See Friendships as a covenant…, make maintenance a priority…, Make faithfulness and honesty your hallmarks, and have continuous fellowship.”[12] Finally relevant the service should be designed to leave the members feeling fulfilled. It should be relevant to their daily lives and be a place that they feel understood.

The Missional Model

The “Metrics of Grace” as he refers to them are, “1. A growing esteem for Jesus Christ, 2. A discernible spirit of repentance, 3. A dogged devotion to the Word of God, 4. An interest in theology and doctrine, 5. An evident love for God and neighbor.”[13] These five metrics can be linked to what Andy Stanley refers to as the “Five Faith Catalysts” in his book, Deep and Wide: Practical Teaching, Private Disciplines, Personal Ministry, Providential Relationships, and Pivotal Circumstances. The goal is to have a worship service that harbors a love for Christ and the Word of God. By building an atmosphere of esteem for Christ you are building a congregational awareness of God in everyday life. Having a true heart for repentance keeps the church humble and willing to help those who the world may deem less. This leads to a love for God and neighbor. A missional church desires to live out the Word of God through service to the community.[14][15]

Biblical Precedents

Mark Driscoll gives us a quick summary distinction between attractional and missional church structures as well. In an attractional church, the focus is to bring people in by meeting their needs through programs. For the missional church, it desires to send people as missionaries into their own communities to build relationships.[16] In the book of Ephesians, Paul writes to a church divided by Jew and Gentile, by Jewish law and Pagan ritual.[17] In Ephesians 4:11-16 it says “And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness. Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head — Christ. From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part.”[18] In this Paul addresses the need for the local church to grow and mature into Christ’s likeness.[19] The attractional model, with its focus on having an inviting, program-centered view, makes it easy for people to connect and grow. It isn’t the programs in and of themselves that make mature believers; rather, it is the connection and growth together that harbors an environment encouraging deeper engagement and maturity. Sharing experiences and feeling fulfilled through met needs allows for growth beyond what any program could achieve on its own.[20] Along with growth and maturity Ephesians 4 calls for the church to equip and build up. The missional model focuses on just that. Building a church culture that desires to go out into its community and meet the needs of the people and the community itself.[21]

In Conclusion

In Simply Christian ,N.T. Wright says, “ ‘The Body’ is more than merely an image of unity-in-diversity; it’s a way of saying that the church is called to do the work of Christ, to be the means of his action in and for the world.”[22] This notion wraps up the need for the church to fulfill all that it is called to be, which includes both the connection and maturity of attractional churches and the equipping and building up of missional ministry. With inward connection and growth and outward engagement the church lessens the chances of tipping the scale of imbalance to one side only. Throughout Scripture, there is support for a blended focus. Passages such as Acts 2, that focuses on the early church’s communal life and its outreach to the world, and 1 Corinthians 9, 6 Paul calls to become “all things to all people”. These scripture help to build a biblical foundation for churches to connect deeply within while still reaching outward into the world. My research suggests that a blended view, which combines missional equipping and outreach with attractional connection and growth, aligns more fully with the standards set by Scripture than either model alone. By maintaining a healthy balance the church body is better equipped to be the united Body of Christ. Through nurturing discipleship and spiritual growth with engagement in reaching out into a lost world, thereby fulfilling the Biblical calling of the Great Commandment and The Great Commission.

 

 

[1] William R. McAlpine. Sacred Space for the Missional Church. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011), 2

[2] Billy Hornsby, The Attractional Church: Growth Through a Refreshing, Relational, and Relevant Church Experience (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group Publisher, 2011).

[3] Jared C Wilson, The Gospel Driven Church: Uniting Church Growth Dreams with the Metrics of Grace. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2019).

[4] Jared C Wilson, The Gospel Driven Church: Uniting Church Growth Dreams with the Metrics of Grace. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2019), Ch 1.

[5] Billy Hornsby, The Attractional Church: Growth Through a Refreshing, Relational, and Relevant Church Experience (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group Publisher, 2011) Ch 1.

[6] Billy Hornsby, The Attractional Church: Growth Through a Refreshing, Relational, and Relevant Church Experience (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group Publisher, 2011) Ch 1.

[7] Paul Mueller “Some Thoughts about the Attractional, Sending, and Engaged Church” Missio Apostolica 19, no. 2 (November 2011) 124-126.

[8] Andy Stanley, Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2021), 108.

[9] Billy Hornsby, The Attractional Church: Growth Through a Refreshing, Relational, and Relevant Church Experience (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group Publisher, 2011), Ch 1.

[10] Billy Hornsby, The Attractional Church: Growth Through a Refreshing, Relational, and Relevant Church Experience (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group Publisher, 2011), Ch 3.

[11] Andy Stanley, Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2021. 167.

[12] Billy Hornsby, The Attractional Church: Growth Through a Refreshing, Relational, and Relevant Church Experience (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group Publisher, 2011), Ch 6.

[13] Jared C Wilson, The Gospel Driven Church: Uniting Church Growth Dreams with the Metrics of Grace. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2019), Appendix 1.

[14] Billy Hornsby, The Attractional Church: Growth Through a Refreshing, Relational, and Relevant Church Experience (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group Publisher, 2011), Ch 3.

[15] Andy Stanley, Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2021), 111.

[16] Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2006), 26

[17] Lynn H Cohick. The Letter to the Ephesians. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. (Grand Rapids, MI: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 11.

[18] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), Eph. 4:11–13.

[19] Lynn H Cohick. The Letter to the Ephesians. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. (Grand Rapids, MI: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 376.

[20] Andy Stanley, Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2021), 99-108.

[21] Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publisher, 2006), 26.

[22] N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York: HarperOne, 2006), 145.

 

 

*The views expressed are those solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Pastor’s Common