4. The Significance of the Scales
There is something significant to take away from understanding these scales as Christs Ambassadors. If we simply do evangelism as outreach across the lines of E0-E3 it will not be enough. At best you will only effect a few people over a lifetime let along the 4-5 years you might have with students on a campus. If the reason the church exists is to make disciples then we have to look at this calling from without the framework of the current church model. The current church model and methods iare linguistically, socially, and culturally removed from the rest of the society, so much so that it has it's own language, culture, and expected social and ethical barrier. What once was a good model for the believers and those called into ministry has now been left behind and is very distant from the potential believer. As Chi Alpha missionaries it is important to understand that ministry is not taking what you have done and replicating it somewhere else. Nor is it taking what you have seen and doing it somewhere else. We don't want to replicate what currently has brought us to the statistics we have already looked at.
Currently the American culture, as well as American college campuses, are now a post-modern culture. This means most people live in the P-2 and P-3 area. The only way to reach P-2 and P-3 people will be through a missional
incarnational approach. That is to say as ministry is not an event or something we do, but who we are. This means we must live missionally as our primary way of life strategically seeding the Gospel where the P-2 and P-3’s are rather
then trying to break them into and assimilate them into our culture. No one building, small group, or organization can reach its city or campus for Christ in modern day America. We must think missionally and strategist working together to cross all cultural barriers to get the job done. So what does it mean for us as Chi Alpha missionaries? It means that we are not on campus first an foremost to build an organization or to try to get people to come to a meeting. The build it and come approach to ministry is the approach and mindset that is hindering the call of God to go forth and make disciples right now. Therefore, as we look to the campuses we must be aware of bringing the wrong assumptions with us concerning how we approach reaching the people we are called to. The approach in ministry that seeks to get people to come to its main events or meeting is called the attractional church model. It is one that church has been using since Constantine.
When we use the word attractional we are speaking of an approach to church that pours a disproportionate amount of time and resources into the corporate worship service to create a place that nonbelievers will want to come to and be exposed to the truth of Jesus. Her, the church takes on the role of a vendor of religious goods and services. Further, the term attractional describes our missionary stance in relation to our context. In other words, when we operate from an attractional paradigm, we are asking those outside the church to come to us rather than seeing ourselves as the missionary people of God who are sent to others. We are asking them to scale the cultural barriers that lie between where they live and where the church exists. In a very real sense, we are asking those outside the church to become the missionaries. Consider the missional problem of the attractional model below.
Currently the American culture, as well as American college campuses, are now a post-modern culture. This means most people live in the P-2 and P-3 area. The only way to reach P-2 and P-3 people will be through a missional
incarnational approach. That is to say as ministry is not an event or something we do, but who we are. This means we must live missionally as our primary way of life strategically seeding the Gospel where the P-2 and P-3’s are rather
then trying to break them into and assimilate them into our culture. No one building, small group, or organization can reach its city or campus for Christ in modern day America. We must think missionally and strategist working together to cross all cultural barriers to get the job done. So what does it mean for us as Chi Alpha missionaries? It means that we are not on campus first an foremost to build an organization or to try to get people to come to a meeting. The build it and come approach to ministry is the approach and mindset that is hindering the call of God to go forth and make disciples right now. Therefore, as we look to the campuses we must be aware of bringing the wrong assumptions with us concerning how we approach reaching the people we are called to. The approach in ministry that seeks to get people to come to its main events or meeting is called the attractional church model. It is one that church has been using since Constantine.
When we use the word attractional we are speaking of an approach to church that pours a disproportionate amount of time and resources into the corporate worship service to create a place that nonbelievers will want to come to and be exposed to the truth of Jesus. Her, the church takes on the role of a vendor of religious goods and services. Further, the term attractional describes our missionary stance in relation to our context. In other words, when we operate from an attractional paradigm, we are asking those outside the church to come to us rather than seeing ourselves as the missionary people of God who are sent to others. We are asking them to scale the cultural barriers that lie between where they live and where the church exists. In a very real sense, we are asking those outside the church to become the missionaries. Consider the missional problem of the attractional model below.
In the graphic above we have a church stepping out of it's culture and doing an evangelism outreach. This particular outreach will cost the church $15,000, which raises some eyebrows, but because people want to reach people for Jesus they decide to go ahead with the event. Well the church does the event and in this case the outreach actually works and they actually reach a man from an E-3 cultural zone. However, the man they reach is a homosexual and on top of that he is Jewish. This tells us this that culturally he is as far away from the environment, culture, language, and activity of the church as any Muslim in Saudi Arabian. However, this man makes a decision to follow Christ. The Christians that led him through a sinners prayer admately want to see him plugged in and insist he comes to their church. So after they prayed with him they handed him so information and they went back to the church when the outreach ended. The man who mad a decision for Jesus at the event immediately leaves his cultural environment from which he is from and is extracted and assimilated back into the culture of the local church or ministry. When he shows up everyone who participated in the outreach is very happy and from the pulpit the Pastor announces what a great success the event was and in doing so justifies it's cost making everyone very happy. Before we proceed with our analysis of this story. Do you think this was a win for the kingdom?
The above story seems like a victory all the way around. Unfortunately when you examine the story closer you begin to see the flaws not only in the attraction model the current church is using to reach people, but in the culture it creates concerning evangelism.
The attractional church model brings with it some huge assumptions concerning evangelism and how to influence a culture for Christ. First, it assumes that the local church culture is where people (of God) need to be. It reasons to itself
that it must gather people to their church and in doing so this is what evangelism means. However, assimilation in
programs and relationship is not the same as intentional discipleship. Second, it places the burden of conformity on the new convert. Its methodology is to bring a convert from his culture back to church and assimilate that person as
quickly as possible to the church activities, social standards, ethics, mindset, and language. Third, It leaves the culture to itself. The assumption of extracting a new convert and bringing him back to our church comes with a huge flaw in our thinking as far as spreading the Gospel. Because it only seeks to gather a man and not redeem the culture from
which he came, there is no opportunity to multiply the kingdom.
Many of us, even Chi Alpha missionaries are familiar with this kind of ministry model. However, as we see it is very important not to bring these types of assumptions to the missions field when we look out at our campus. Yes, we want to be attractive, but we do not want to be attractional. The consequences of these assumption are to costly for the kingdom.
What are the consequences of the assumptions that we bring in real life?
Attractional models are purely gathering models. Their main focus is to get people from where they are in our community to where we are so they can help them. While, in this case, we do make a convert from the outreach event, our primary objective is to get him as quick as we can back to the church, or main meeting and assimilate him into the our culture. However, this assumes that it is better for a new convert to be involved in a church rather than for us to be with them where they are. That assumption only works if discipleship is the primary reason you gather as a believers, and that the discipleship includes living out the primary objective for which the church exists.
When we create a cultural that is extractional in ministry it brings with it a problem that most Christian do not think about. That is to say that when we do an event as evangelism, we often only consider the length or cultural distance
we have to travel to get to the people group we are trying to reach. However, what we do not consider is the cultural distance that one has to go in order to come from where they are to us.
Attractional ministry places the full burden of change, meaning learning the culture, the language, ethical system, social system, and relational burden of the church completely on the new convert. Furthermore, If the new convert doesn’t feel right about such a drastic change in his life and leaves the church, the culture of the church deems that man as walking a way from his faith, when in essence it could have been culture shock. Sadly this has nothing to do with the new convert’s spirituality; it could simply be because he was the only Jew in the church.
Attractional ministry is also extractional. By extracting the man completely from his culture we also miss a great opportunity to reach the culture and seed the Gospel into a new community of people that are lost. When a new convert comes back to the church and stays we know statistically that if he remains in the church that within three years of him becoming a believer he will no longer have any significant relationships outside of the church. In
other words, the window of opportunity to reach the culture from which he comes from will be closed as well as any relationships he had. This is a serious problem since we also know that the Gospel spreads relationally. If we cut off the outside relationships people have, in affect we cut off all opportunity for kingdom growth. This goes to show we do not understand the bigger principle of growth that Jesus and the apostles exemplified for us. That is to say that it’s not just about redeeming individual people, it is also about redeeming the culture. This is a serious flaw in the attractional model of ministry and shows the model to be one that is purely a gathering mechanism. It also shows us that the attractional model is an extractional model.
Unfortunately, America and college campuses now are post-modern. This means they have rejected Christendom at the center of society. Thus, the decline of American church attendance. However, if we are realistic we will acknowledge that the influence of the local church in America rarely reaches outside of itself and hardly has any meaningful cultural value in the broader community it lives in. We see that if everyone lives in the scale of the
E-0 scale, then the attractional model works. However, America doesn’t live there anymore thus as missionary we need to be aware that taking those attractional principles to the missions field is simply doing church for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
This
brings to light some real questions, “Can we build real life changing relationships in
Christ if we remain so distant from the people in the culture?”, “Are we waisting our
time continuing to do evangelism the way we are?”, and “Is the mega-church extractional
model really the right model for all the churches?”
The above story seems like a victory all the way around. Unfortunately when you examine the story closer you begin to see the flaws not only in the attraction model the current church is using to reach people, but in the culture it creates concerning evangelism.
The attractional church model brings with it some huge assumptions concerning evangelism and how to influence a culture for Christ. First, it assumes that the local church culture is where people (of God) need to be. It reasons to itself
that it must gather people to their church and in doing so this is what evangelism means. However, assimilation in
programs and relationship is not the same as intentional discipleship. Second, it places the burden of conformity on the new convert. Its methodology is to bring a convert from his culture back to church and assimilate that person as
quickly as possible to the church activities, social standards, ethics, mindset, and language. Third, It leaves the culture to itself. The assumption of extracting a new convert and bringing him back to our church comes with a huge flaw in our thinking as far as spreading the Gospel. Because it only seeks to gather a man and not redeem the culture from
which he came, there is no opportunity to multiply the kingdom.
Many of us, even Chi Alpha missionaries are familiar with this kind of ministry model. However, as we see it is very important not to bring these types of assumptions to the missions field when we look out at our campus. Yes, we want to be attractive, but we do not want to be attractional. The consequences of these assumption are to costly for the kingdom.
What are the consequences of the assumptions that we bring in real life?
Attractional models are purely gathering models. Their main focus is to get people from where they are in our community to where we are so they can help them. While, in this case, we do make a convert from the outreach event, our primary objective is to get him as quick as we can back to the church, or main meeting and assimilate him into the our culture. However, this assumes that it is better for a new convert to be involved in a church rather than for us to be with them where they are. That assumption only works if discipleship is the primary reason you gather as a believers, and that the discipleship includes living out the primary objective for which the church exists.
When we create a cultural that is extractional in ministry it brings with it a problem that most Christian do not think about. That is to say that when we do an event as evangelism, we often only consider the length or cultural distance
we have to travel to get to the people group we are trying to reach. However, what we do not consider is the cultural distance that one has to go in order to come from where they are to us.
Attractional ministry places the full burden of change, meaning learning the culture, the language, ethical system, social system, and relational burden of the church completely on the new convert. Furthermore, If the new convert doesn’t feel right about such a drastic change in his life and leaves the church, the culture of the church deems that man as walking a way from his faith, when in essence it could have been culture shock. Sadly this has nothing to do with the new convert’s spirituality; it could simply be because he was the only Jew in the church.
Attractional ministry is also extractional. By extracting the man completely from his culture we also miss a great opportunity to reach the culture and seed the Gospel into a new community of people that are lost. When a new convert comes back to the church and stays we know statistically that if he remains in the church that within three years of him becoming a believer he will no longer have any significant relationships outside of the church. In
other words, the window of opportunity to reach the culture from which he comes from will be closed as well as any relationships he had. This is a serious problem since we also know that the Gospel spreads relationally. If we cut off the outside relationships people have, in affect we cut off all opportunity for kingdom growth. This goes to show we do not understand the bigger principle of growth that Jesus and the apostles exemplified for us. That is to say that it’s not just about redeeming individual people, it is also about redeeming the culture. This is a serious flaw in the attractional model of ministry and shows the model to be one that is purely a gathering mechanism. It also shows us that the attractional model is an extractional model.
Unfortunately, America and college campuses now are post-modern. This means they have rejected Christendom at the center of society. Thus, the decline of American church attendance. However, if we are realistic we will acknowledge that the influence of the local church in America rarely reaches outside of itself and hardly has any meaningful cultural value in the broader community it lives in. We see that if everyone lives in the scale of the
E-0 scale, then the attractional model works. However, America doesn’t live there anymore thus as missionary we need to be aware that taking those attractional principles to the missions field is simply doing church for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
This
brings to light some real questions, “Can we build real life changing relationships in
Christ if we remain so distant from the people in the culture?”, “Are we waisting our
time continuing to do evangelism the way we are?”, and “Is the mega-church extractional
model really the right model for all the churches?”