Comments on: The Prodigal’s Home & The Attractional Church

By: Interview with The Hopeful Skeptic « A Living Alternative Our Missional Pilgrimage

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:39:26 +0000

[...] Previous Post – The Prodigal & the Attractional Church [...]

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:06:23 +0000

Thanks Ed. Means a lot from you!

Peace,
Jamie

By: ed cyzewski

ed cyzewski — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:05:20 +0000

Jamie,
Thanks for widening the conversation instead of narrowing it. I find this really helpful.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:18:44 +0000

Thanks Josh. Much appreciated.

Peace,
Jamie

By: Josh Morgan

Josh Morgan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:15:59 +0000

Very well said. I’m linking to this and commenting in a post on my blog Thursday.

By: A Tribal Alternative » The Right Kind of Attractional Church

A Tribal Alternative » The Right Kind of Attractional Church — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:53:45 +0000

[...] The Prodigal’s Home & the Attractional Church [...]

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:49:56 +0000

Todd, that is really exciting to hear. Keep us posted!

Peace,
Jamie

By: toddh

toddh — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:48:01 +0000

Jamie – yes, agreed, missional must be primary or then you haven’t really changed much at all. We are on the journey of figuring out what that looks like in a largely attractional setting.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:03:10 +0000

Hey Todd,

Thanks for sharing your story. It is great to hear what churches are doing to reach their communities. I agree with you that missional and attractional are not mutually exclusive. However, I think I would go so far as to say that missional must be more primary, even formational to any attractional component. However, this is costly, as it requires us to put everything we do up for evaluation. Worth it!

Peace,
Jamie

By: toddh

toddh — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:53:07 +0000

The church that I work at tries to embody a missional mindset while still being a kind of traditional, attractional church. It has about 500 attenders on a Sunday, and has a staff of about 8 people. We run a lot of programs when it comes down to it, probably like a lot of churches our size. One of the programs we run, though, is a once-a-week after school program for the middle school across the street. It is completely free for the students and does not have any “religious” content. It is simply offered as a service to the school and surrounding community as a safe, fun, and welcoming place for the students.

It is still a “come to us” kind of program in that it is offered in our facility. But it is also a partnership with the school where we are allowed to give announcements for the program and we fit in with the rest of their after school activities. We don’t offer the program as a bait-and-switch sort of thing, or as an attempt to gain more members. It’s just something for others to benefit from. We have a few other things we do that end up having a kind of missional flavor to them as well. I think the point is that missional vs. attractional should be a false dichotomy. Attractional churches could have a missional mindset – the two are not mutually exclusive. It just depends on whether or not you are willing to give yourself away on behalf of the world.