I am trying to understand what it means to be truly missional in today’s world. I consider it a huge topic. The following excerpt from BlahOnline is a good starting point for this discussion. He starts by saying that one of the flaws of today’s church is that it is “attractional”:
By attractional, I mean the church plants itself within a particular neighbourhood and expects that people will come to it to meet God and find fellowship with others. There’s nothing unbiblical about being attractive to unbelievers. There was certainly an element to which the early church was attractive to the wider community (Acts 2:47), though there is much more evidence that the church was reviled and avoided in its early days. Nonetheless, when I say it is a flaw for the church to be attractional, I’m referring more to the stance the church is taking in its community. By anticipating that if we get our internal features right, people will flock to our services, the church betrays its belief in attractionalism. It’s the “If you build it, they will come” mentality. How much of the traditional church’s energy goes into adjusting their programs and their public meetings to cater to an unseen constituency. The emerging missional church recognizes is compelled to move out from itself into its community as salt and light…
The Come-To-Us stance taken by the attractional church is unbiblical. It’s not found in the Gospels or the epistles. Jesus, Paul, the disciples, the early church leaders had a Go-To-Them mentality.
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One response to “Becoming Truly Missional”
I find it very interesting that many of the churches that I have known include a missional philosophy in their values or their mission statements. But, I have seen very few of these actually create an environment where the missional values can be effectively lived out. What usually happens is the time and resource requirements placed upon the people in order to support the attraction oriented portion of the church are so intense, it makes missional living very difficult at best.
Knowing that many local congregation include missional living as a core value shows me there are many sincere believers who are truly searching for the life that God intended for them. A life which is characterized by a significant impact on the world around them.
What then is our response? I believe it should be characterized with the same heart that Jesus had for the city of Jerusalem when he wept over them for they were like a sheep without a shepherd. He had an intense love for them, an intense passion to see there lives restored, and an intense vision to see salvation come to them. We also through love for others around us and the body of Christ, passion to the call God upon our lives, and vision to the path on which God has placed us can see many fulfilled in Christ as we endeavor to live truly missional lives.