The Attraction (and Failure) of Attraction

I've begun reading a good book (well, good so far) called "Introducing the Missional Church."  I've read plenty about this subject before, but do not claim any authority on it what so ever.  I do find this book to have a practicality that has been missing from others that I've read.  I'd like to share some of it, and hear from you your thoughts on what it means to be the church.

The first part of the book addresses the issue of what missional church and living is, mainly by addressing what it isn't.  What they don't do is define "missional church."  The authors do this for a very specific reason:  Too often, churches are looking for the next thing that is going to finally get their churches to grow.  We look for a definition and format, because for too long churches has believed that if it could just get the right stuff going on at the church, people would be interested and come.

We call this the attractional method of doing church.  Often, you'll hear the example from the movie Field of Dreams, where Kevin Cosner's character hears a voice tell him, "If you build it, he will come."  Cosner's character ends up building a baseball field in his cornfield, and mystically, dead famous baseball players come out of the corn to play ball.  Too often, churches just think, "If we can get the right ________________ (music, youth ministry, pastor, building), then people will show up."  Pastors, too, fall into the trap of believing that if their churches could just get their acts together, people would come to church.  This way of thinking used to hold true in North America, even recently. 

Now, because it held true didn't make it good.  Many have found two main problems with the attractional church.  First of all, when you set out to attract people to church, you set up an expectation that you will continue to "attract" them.  Will this church continue to interest a person enough to keep them coming?  If not, what will need to be changed or started to keep it attractive?  The attractional model ends up creating consumers of church rather than disciples of Jesus Christ. 

The second problem of attractional church is the underlying assumption that the goal for the church is to get more people in the walls.  When we seek to get people into the walls of the church, we inadvertently teach that coming to church is the goal of the life of faith.  In their book Reveal, Bill Hybels and the people of Willow Creek Community Church share that they found a plateau in the spiritual growth of many of their people that happened when they maxed out on attending church functions (a brief and albeit crass summary of their in-depth study).  Some churches who have thrived as attractional churches are looking at their churches as seeing the same plateau.  Churches around the country, in large cities and rural communities, are realizing the same thing:  something's wrong.

The missional mindset (or "imagination", as the authors of ItMC put it) is not an answer to how to get churches to do the right stuff.  It's about opening our eyes to see God working around us, and finding ways to get involved.  It's not about creating a utopia, it's about living faithfully in our communities, living as though, as Brian McClaren puts it, that we are blessed in order to be a blessing.

This challenges me as a pastor, because I have had a tendency to not be involved in my community, often seeking how I can make my church more attractive.  I realize that God has not called me to a life in the church, but a life as a part of The Church, the Bride of Christ, in the world.  I do this not with a picket sign, but with a shovel or rake.  I do this not with words of morality, but with words of love.  I do this not as I build a relationship to share the gospel, but as I build a relationship to live out the gospel for my sake, not the sake of some poor soul who needs it.  I NEED IT!

So, as my family and I head up to the great northwest of Indiana, we look forward to not trying to be attractive (well, DeAnn can't help it, that's her God-given gift), but to live the kingdom life in our community.  What about you?  What's God doing in your community, and how will you get involved?