The second feature is Missional Misgivings by Dan Kimball. In this article Kimball raises the question of whether there is the evidence to support the claim that the missional model is working.
What I found particularly interesting about Showtime was how they sought to move from anonymity to community. This seems to coincide with Conrad's point that we've made the kingdom of God an individual matter with community implications when in fact it might just be about community with implications for the individual.
Kimball's article is helpful in opening up the debate about how attractional and missional could, maybe even should, co-exist. I know some people see missional as a replacement for and a more authentic expression of true mission than the attractional model, but the bottom line is that the attractional model, however flawed it might be, does have a track record of seeing people come to faith. And whether you are a missional advocate or an attractional advocate isn't this one of your primary goals?
I guess I might just be odd in that I am committed to discovering a missional model for the local church that enables everyone to be involved in ministry and mission, incarnating the gospel in every area of community life, and I'm committed to wanting the local church to be attractive as a place to explore the questions we have and the solutions the bible offers. I don't see these as incompatible either/or's rather both/and. Mission with incarnation is just a show a and the first article tells us all we need to know about how potentially dangerous that can be.
2 comments:
"I don't see these as incompatible either/or's rather both/and."
I think it's a pendulum and, for right now, for a lot of pastors and church models it has swung too far toward the attractiveness and needs to be balanced with relationship. This is clear by the majority of church resourcing conferences in the past 15 year being heavily focused on business models and attraction based structures.
I agree that they are compatible, but also have to be balanced…eventually, things will get too sloppy and careless, and there will be a swing back toward excellence in organization, but right now they seem to have gotten to performance based and impersonal…thus the word “organic” being used in every other article (i'm guilty of that one)…just some thoughts..
...i linked your OpEd piece to http://www.newchurchreport.com to share with others - thanks for the insights!
Hi Scott,
With you all the way. I think there's a big clue in the use of the phrase "performance driven" to describe the problem one church faced with it's model.
It hints at the fact that any model can be driven by things other than the gospel, and that's not a good sign.
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