By Trevor
In class, we are continually learning about the necessity of a church to live missionally and that an unhealthy church is one who does not live missionally. Karl Barth said that if a church is living without a mission it is a dead church and Hugh Halter also says that if a church lives for its members, it should be dissolved. I don’t agree with this.
Granted I understand that a church is to live missionally and it is the prominent biblical model of church. But I have a very hard time saying that a church that is not living missionally is a dead church or needs to be eliminated. For even Christ says to his disciples, “whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40). Granted that church is not living missionally which maybe it should be, but maybe it is also the rock of faith that its members depend on. Maybe it’s the community of faith that helped a member deal with a suicide in the family, or supported a member’s family when they lost their job. Regardless it is still working to further the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit is still working through it. Even though it may not be reaching out incarnationally or maybe fully engaging in an attractional model, it is still has a pastor and a congregation which I’m sure are figuring out the best way it knows to live in a community of believers.
Whether we have missional churches or missionally dead churches we still have churches; and I think we should be wary of accusing those who are in the same ministry as being “Dead.” If our goal is unity of the Christian church, the last thing we need is more division by declaring good churches and dead churches.
Most of the time this approach fails and instead we end up creating “church connoiseurs” where already Christians come because we provide better entertainment.
I like what you’re getting at Trevor. I think it’s true that the everyday, simple, neighborhood, Sunday-service-based church can still serve a purpose in it’s community. But isn’t doing something like helping a member or a family through the loss of a loved one “living missionally”? I think that it certainly can be. Churches will – or should very much attempt – to meet the needs of the people in the community through the love of Christ, and there are thus so many ways to do this. I believe being a “missional church” can be a much broader idea than we think.
A lot of this goes with a misunderstanding of what’s meant by “attractional”. In Portland, we have a number of new church plants established in the last year or so – most of them “launched” by announcing a service and emphasizing what happens in that service. Not all bad, but when our focus is on stylistic choices in our Sunday gathering, well, that tends to be what we call “attractional” thinking that somehow what we do when we’re gathered is going to convince people who don’t believe to come.
Most of the time this approach fails and instead we end up creating “church connoiseurs” where already Christians come because we provide better entertainment. It’s putting our focus on that sort of “attractional” that many of us in the missional community speak against. And I can tell you, I have a number of skeptical friends in Portland that could not care less what our music or sermon was like, and so the question in being missional is how is Jesus attractive to them?
A couple of possible re-dos – One is, we are not necessarily calling churches dead (although Barth did use that language), the hard reality is churches are dying. Closing twice as fast as they are ones being started. Secondly, I think we tried to make an emphasis that we are not describing a model. Attractive is good – right? Extraction is not so good.
I agree with what you are saying trevor. I have been pretty uncomfortable the last few days in class when we get on the topic of all of these “things” that the church “needs.” It is very easy to say what things could be better, but how does that look practically? I don’t understand why a church can’t be both attractional and incarnational. Just because the worship band is attractive doesn’t mean the church isn’t doing good things in the community and working toward the goal of loving god and loving one another.
Trevor,
I agree with you that there does not need to be more separation and division in the church. I think that calling a church dead and then turning away from them is not the answer the the problem of the attractional church model.
I do think that people do need to speak out against the attractional church model though and help the churches that use this model to realize their mistake and help them change into a missional church. Although we do not want division, we also can’t simply accept something that is not what God intended. So there needs to be love, but change also.
Hi Trevor, I’d like to give you a little feedback. I agree with you that unity in the church is an important thing and I hear what you are reacting to in a church being labeled a dead church. We believe in the resurrection and that Jesus picks the most bizarre of situations to accomplish what Jesus wants, so in this regard I’m with you.
However, I don’t think unity in the church is a reason to not call churches that are hellbent on being inward focused towards maturity. I’ve worked at a church like this, and it’s hard for Jesus to really break into anything when everyone thinks that church is about them and Jesus just seems to agree with everything they already believe.
So that begs the question, how do we tell churches that have become just about themselves and in so many ways fallen away from the core of the way of Jesus, that they are wrong while also believing in church unity. I have some thoughts but I’m not sure that promoting unity is really done by pulling punches when we’re way out of line with a central part of the Jesus story.