Missional is Not a Tame Lion 3

Michael Frost, in his new book, Road to Missional, The: Journey to the Center of the Church (Shapevine), offers yet another — but highly suggestive if not provocative — observation about why “missional” is not the operative principle in our churches today:

It’s my educated guess that a great deal of the excesses of the traditional attractional church derive from the assumption that church membership is the chief goal of the mission of the church. … This explains the various stunts and tactics [giving away money and gifts and TVs and even cars!] used by churches to essentially bribe people to attend or to bribe existing members to bring newcomers.

Frost is getting after the “attractional” model of church: make your church attractive, attract people to the church, and get others to participate in the attraction.

This membership pays for the place so membership matters. Attracting members matters so much many churches have adapted and adopted market strategies. But Frost knows that the next generation knows marketing from missional, and it wants little part in the marketing and is up for the challenge to the missional.

The gospel is about the Story of Jesus, and in the center of the Story is a cross, and cruciformity is hardly attractional. It costs us everything.

What happens to a local church when it surrenders the attractional model to the missional model (which will also be one that focuses on fellowship and gatherings)?

But we have branded things: Frost says “I like Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, John Piper, Mark Driscoll.” That is, we’ve personalized it all; we’ve heroized it all; we’re taking sides in it all; we’re telling people which team we are on. The gospel, I repeat, is about Jesus and any fandom is a denial of the faith.

Church attendance and the attractional model pays the bills; it brings in a crowd; it costs the pew-sitter nothing. The cross is costly, as is true gospel grace.

We take customer satisfaction surveys; but do we ever take a survey of faithfulness to the gospel? How would we measure such a thing? And, would that attract people?

Our task is to bear witness.