As
the church we will never be able to out-Disney Disney, but that is not to say
that many churches will not try. This
past week in my travels I passed a church that had a large children’s
building. It was the typical big-box,
ugly, metal building but was decorated to attract children and likely their
families to the church. Emboldened on the building were the words, “iKids
Worship, Fun, Games.” It was less like
Disney than a Crazy Ed’s fireworks in Tennessee from 45 years ago. It is attractional ministry geared for
kids. I have no doubt that the church
and the leaders are faithful sincere people and they are motivated by a high
commitment to Christ and His Kingdom.
The attractional model of ministry is the template that dominates our
churches. It goes something like this: have
a space, put together excellent programing and gathering events, draw a crowd,
preach to the crowd, hope the crowd grows, expand and repeat. It was what I was raised on and taught. The variation between highly traditional and
highly contemporary churches is not that great; it is more a matter of style
and preference. The growth strategy
that 60 years ago attracted youth to the church basement for the “World’s
Longest Banana Split” (a bunch of ice cream in a rain gutter) is the same
strategy that has an arcade, climbing wall or bowling alley in the youth
center. Please do not use the argument
of pragmatism, “We can attract more teens with the new stuff.” If numbers are the matrix I can get more teenage
boys with free pizza and wings served by Hooter girls than you can with a climbing
wall and have a devotional afterwards.
Here
are three failures of the attractional model for the church:
#1 It is non-biblical.
We
need to distinguish between non-biblical and anti-biblical. For this case non-biblical will mean those
things that are neither commanded, nor forbidden, nor even mentioned for the
church in the Bible. Examples of such
things would be printed Bibles or even buildings for that matter. Anti-Biblical things are those specifically
forbidden, such as sexual license or suing fellow Christians. Jesus never commanded His people to go build
a facility and then attract people to come.
The great commission is rather specific about the means by which the
church fulfills its command.
Non-biblical things are not inherently evil-I believe air conditioned
and heated places for worship are good things.
But what we have to a great degree done is completely ignore the
Biblical model and rely solely on the non-Biblical, attractional model.
#2 It is non-effective.
In
the big picture the attractional model is non-effective. If the goal of the Christian community is to
be salt and light in the world the American church is failing. I hate to use this term but it is the one
that works best: We are losing market share for the hearts and minds of
America. According to the Washington
Post it is predicted that the number of people who identify as Christians (just
over 250 million) will remain the same for the next 30 years. During that time people who identify as “no
religious affiliation” will nearly double from just over 50 million to over 100
million.[1]
While church attendance numbers are
reported to be holding their own it is doing so in a population growing away
from the Christian faith. I personally
doubt that attendance is static; my observations convince me that attendance is
in decline. Most of the “growth” that is
occurring in the American church is transfer growth. People move from a church that has air hockey
in the youth room to a church that has a climbing wall in the youth
building. The shift is from the church
with a music team on stage to a church that has a concert event every week. The result is the American church is losing
its saltiness and is much less the light of the world. While this may build a few big churches it is pretty
bad at reaching the lost, but is best at producing nominal Christians.
#3 It is non-disciple making.
Finally,
the attractional model is not good at making disciples. If a disciple is a person who loves, follows
and lives like their master our churches are not making disciples of Jesus. For
a generation we have been spending massive amounts of time, energy, effort, and
resources on building these attractional churches. We should assume that the result would or
should be evidence of discipleship. The
evidence points in the opposite direction.
The use of porn by Christian men mirrors the national average and the
use of porn by Christian women is actually higher than the national average for
women.[2] The divorce rate for nominal Christians is
about 20% above the national average.[3] If you compare the states with the highest
numbers of churches and the churches with the highest number of out-of-wedlock
births you find that the Bible belt is also the Un-wed mother belt.[4] In fact, no state in the Bible belt is in the
bottom half of the nation in the rate of out-of-wedlock births. Perhaps to attract people to our weekend
services we have offered a cheap grace.
We have enough of the Bible to preach against porn, divorce and sexual
promiscuity, but not enough discipleship to avoid participation.
I
do not have all the answers; I may not have even one answer. But I do know that denial is never a good
solution. But pretending that if we were
able to out-Disney Disney and draw larger crowds we can fulfill the great
commission is simply denial.
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