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But as I am pondering what posts I will write next, several are coming to mind:
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2) Is some of the "missional" discussion an Emperor With New Clothes?: I truly hope I am wrong about what I am sensing about this and I may very likely get some argument back. But the more I probe leaders and churches who are crying out that "attractional" churches are not effective missionally - but then I look into their actual churches and fruit of "missional" churches, I wonder if the argument against "attractional" churches is not as valid as being spoken about. We use the term "missional" in our church, so I am not against the term at all. I fully know missionary work takes time and is not an overnight thing. I also know that we cannot be counting hands raised in a worship gathering as what we use for numbers etc. But what I am finding interesting is stories like when I was with someone who is in a large city and they were saying that the post-Christian young people of that city would never be drawn to big churches or an attractional model. Yet, very close right there in the same area is a large megachurch whom is seeing younger adults raised entirely outside of the church and who had negative feelings of Christianity - put faith in Jesus and now are disciples of Jesus.
Most of the people I hear talking about how "attractional" model doesn't work in our emerging culture, are usually from very small churches or house churches who often have been in existence for several years, not just new ones. Yet usually, in the very city or town they are from - there are fruit and stories of dozens, hundreds and even thousands in some cases of very post-Christian, postmodern thinking people who normally would have nothing to do with Christianity or church becoming disciples of Jesus. In a future post, I would like to define what I mean by "attractional" and will flesh this out further. I am not by any means talking about big church vs. small church as their is beauty in both large and small churches. This isn't a big vs. small church discussion at all. I am talking about the specific theories of the "missional" and "attractional" terms and what non-Christian emerging generations will or won't be drawn to and how disciples are made - not in China and not how in the early church it happened (although of course we can learn from those examples), but how the Holy Spirit can use local churches here in the USA in our emerging culture here and now ro create healthy disciples from those who were outside the church and even negative against the church and Christianity as so many are today.
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