Here’s an interesting video of a conversation between Ed Stetzer and Dave Fitch — two guys who both love Jesus and both love the church. It’s a little long-ish, but I think it’s very worthwhile. They talk about some of the stuff we’ve been talking about around here lately.

A Missional Conversation (Part 1)

Here are some of my thoughts (in no particular order):

I love Ed’s perspective that missional isn’t about our own preferences but about getting on board God’s mission.

I love Dave’s perspective on incarnational evangelism as opposed to what we’ve traditionally known as evangelism. I’m writing a lot about that in the next book.

I also love how Ed nails down the fact that movements like attractional and missional often end up spending too much time and energy recruiting other Christians to their model.

I also really like how they both challenge the assumption first stated by Frost & Hirsch but echoed in lots of places (including on this blog) that ecclesiology simply flows out of missiology which flows out of Christology. There’s a lot in that idea I like, but I have some reservations — maybe some of the same reservations Ed and Dave have.

Your thoughts?

We took a stab at trying to define “attractional” church. Personally, I wonder why we feel the need to add -al to the end of everything these days, but there it is. Attractional. Missional. Incarnational.

Anyway….

The term “missional” is being used a lot nowadays, but very few people know what it means. It’s become kind of a junk drawer for everything people would like to see fixed in local churches. Some people talk about adding culturally relevant music to their Sunday morning gatherings and say it’s important because they’re trying to be “missional”. Others talk about serving the poor as a way of being “missional”. I have a friend who is not planting a church; he is planting a “missional community”.

It seems to me, though, that a group of people who are committed to joining God on his mission to redeem and restore the world might do things like…I don’t know…gather together regularly to worship corporately and learn from one another and encourage one another and pray for one another and other things that might look an awful lot like…I don’t know…a church.

Has missional become the new inconceivable (“You keep using that word — I do not think it means what you think it means”)?

What is a missional church?

We covered this territory back in March of 2007 when I was reading a book called The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. It’s come up again in light of our recent conversation. Plus, we’ve added so many new readers to this blog in the last two-and-a-half years, it might be beneficial to revisit topics like this every so often.

JamesBrett has been hinting around this thought, but let’s go ahead and state it explicitly. There is a movement among church leaders towards a more incarnational approach to ministry and away from an attractional model of ministry. In other words, these leaders believe we ought to do less “inviting” and more “investing” — less “come and see” more “go and do” evangelism.

At least, I think that’s what the whole attractional vs. incarnational thing comes down to. Am I missing something.

Let’s start with this question: Why is attractional so bad?

Well, perhaps we should try to arrive at a definition of “attractional” for those who haven’t read Frost & Hirsch’s book. So, okay…two questions:

1. What is an attractional model of church? Did my description above get it right, or did I miss something?

2. Why is that model so bad?

My heads up agent just alerted me to the fact that Christian Book Distributors has the book on sale for $11.99 now — which is almost as cheap as I can get it from my publisher!

Here’s the link if you want to get some early Christmas shopping done.

Oh, and if you order it, you can mail it to me before December 11. I’ll sign it and send it back before Christmas. How about that for a deal?

Every generation it seems wants a silver bullet. They want the secret formula for instant church growth. Do this. Say that. Play these songs. Preach those sermons. And…voila! You’ll be doing four Sunday services just like the big boys do!

Yeah…it doesn’t work like that.

The most effective strategy (ironically, it’s the most biblical strategy as well) for evangelism will always, always, always be one-on-one, one person telling another person what God has done in and through his life.

Sorry.

Jesus told his followers to be witnesses — to just get out there and tell folks what they’d seen and heard. And that’s precisely what they did. Theologian Michael Green says the message of the gospel spread in the first century like gossip over the back fence. That’s how they turned the world upside-down in a generation.

At North Point – perhaps the most innovative and techno-savvy church I know – they call that strategy “Invest and Invite” (I know — how lo-tech can you get?). Regular members just invest in other people and wait for an opportunity to invite them to a church event. That’s it. No smart lights or high-speed internet connection needed. Andy Stanley isn’t even involved in most of it.

It’s old school and unsexy, but it works to the tune of, like, 500 baptisms per year at the Alpharetta campus alone. And it’s worked consistently like that for the last decade.

If any other church had a program that boasted numbers like that, we’d be knocking down their door, begging them to put it in a box and giftwrap it for us. If First Baptist of Podunk, Utah, had a Halloween Trunk-or-Treat Hell House Extravaganza that brought in 500 new people each year – if Trinity Presyterian of East Bumble, New Mexico, came up with a personalized automated email marketing software that got around all those pesky spam laws and guaranteed you one new member for every 25-30 current members – we’d be screaming to the top of our lungs: SHOW US HOW TO DO IT! WE DON’T CARE HOW MUCH IT COSTS!

But this? This involves things like people…having conversations…with other people…who don’t go to church. And that might be…uncomfortable.

Give us doorhangers to hang on people’s doors. Give us postcards to mail to people’s homes. Give us clever slogans we can put on our church marquees. Better curriculum. More creative programming. Cooler music. A better website. Give us a spiky-haired preacher wearing a long-sleeve striped shirt untucked and $300 jeans.

But please do not ask me to go next door and ask my neighbor if he needs help with anything. And, if you do, you better pray he doesn’t ask me anything about Jesus or God or the Old Testament or gay marriage or why I voted the way I did.

I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time among the cool churches (you know…Willow Creek and Saddleback and North Point and all their buddies who make fun of churches like yours). I’ve gone to their conferences and listened to their pastors. Some of those guys are my friends even.

And, while I have some pretty serious reservations about some of what they’re doing (especially video church), you can’t deny the fact that they do evangelism pretty well. These churches baptize hundreds of people each year by creating a safe place for people to bring their spiritual questions and explore their faith. They’ve figured out ways of presenting timeless, biblical truths to people in timely and relevant ways.

But I’ve never one time heard anyone in a church that’s really evangelizing the lost say, “It was Vacation Bible School that really put us over the top.”

Can we be honest about something? You may (like Jeff told about in his comment) have gotten saved at a VBS in the 70s, but it rarely works like that anymore. More often than not, (like Iz said in his comment) VBS is just free babysitting for people who already attend church somewhere.

I’m not saying it’s wrong or bad or evil. I’m just saying it’s not outreach. Or, if it is, it ain’t working because these churches have been teaching kids the motions to Father Abraham the whole time while the percentage of Americans who self-identify as “Christian” has steadily declined.

In the past quarter century, the combined membership of all Protestant denominations declined by 10 percent, while the national population increased by nearly 30 percent. In that same time period, the average size of the average church in America dropped 10 people. In an average year, half of all churches do not add one new member through conversion growth. Most churches average one new convert per year for every 85-90 regular adult attendees.

I may never ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery or fly o’er the enemy, but I know the Lord’s army (“Yes, sir!”) isn’t making much progress here at home. At some point, don’t you think we ought to look at this honestly and say, “Maybe we should stop what we’re doing that isn’t working and try something else”?

This is a consistent problem that isn’t just limited to VBS. It applies to Sunday School and door knocking and a whole host of other things that used to work but don’t anymore. Why do we have such a hard time admitting that something doesn’t work anymore? And what do we do when it stops working?

It’s November, and the dog days of summer are a distant memory now. So, I figure that gives us a chance to discuss something in a calm and reasonable manner. At least that’s what I hope.

I’d like to discuss…Vacation Bible School.

It’s no overstatement to say that Americans may very well constitute the largest unchurched people group outside of India and China. As many as 240 million Americans are unsaved, unchurched and unevangelized, and that number is growing.

Now, I understand that the best programming in the world can’t lead a person to conviction and conversion – people have this notoriously stubborn thing called their sin nature and, when it gets combined with their free will (sorry, Calvin), it makes them so hard to convert that only God himself can do it (sorry, Arminius).

I also understand that the effectiveness of our evangelistic work is terribly difficult to guage. A lot of good, no doubt, takes place beneath the surface, as the seed of God’s Word penetrates the soil of a human heart, germinates and begins growing long before any visible shoot appears. When a person comes to faith (or when faith comes to a person – whichever you prefer), rest assured much work has been done – seen and unseen – to prepare the soil, sow the seed and cultivate things before any harvest is reaped.

That’s extremely biblical language for evangelism, by the way. Jesus taught in an agrigultural context, so that’s the metaphor he used. I have never been a farmer, so it feels strange for me to use that terminology, but there it is. I trust you can understand the word picture.

So, having said how difficult I know it is to measure the effectiveness of our evangelistic attempts and having said how our best attempts to evangelize others could never make someone get saved, I still believe we ought to be rethinking some things when it comes to sharing the message of Jesus with those who are currently outsiders to the Christian faith.

For example, Dr. Ed Stetzer of the North American Mission Board has done a ton of research on how churches conduct outreach. He found that the number one outreach program – used by nearly 85 percent of Southern Baptist churches in 2008 – is…Vacation Bible School.

Eight-five percent. Vacation Bible School. Really.

Of course, having grown up where and when I did, I have fond memories of Vacation Bible School. Puppet shows. Memory verses. Booster, booster, be a booster and all that.

But can someone tell me honestly why in the world we need 85 percent of the 42,000 Southern Baptist Churches in America (that’s 35,700 churches, btw) doing VBS?

Does your church sponsor a VBS? If so, can you help me understand why?

It’s hard to believe I wrote this four years ago. So much has changed since then, and yet so little is substantially different. I thought it might be appropriate to re-post this as I sit and stare out at a rainy Veteran’s Day.

——————–

Today I flew home from Denver and had a strange experience in the Atlanta Airport. A group of military personnel were flying out — maybe 40 of them. As they walked through the airport in a group, people started spontaneously applauding. I saw young men slowly turn red and break out grinning in spite of themselves. I saw young women staring intently straight ahead lest they turn to look and catch someone’s eye. They looked sheepish and humble. There was no strut in them, but there was the unmistakable tinge of youthful embarrassment.

I normally walk through the airport quickly and with my head down, but I stopped and watched and clapped my hands along with everyone else.

Well, almost everyone else.

There was a family who did not applaud. They had dark skin. They looked Middle Eastern. The children started to applaud, but the adults quickly stopped them. The adults didn’t look angry or frightened; they looked sad.

I stood there for a moment and thought about what was going on. And I found myself conflicted.

There was a part of me that wanted to clap and shout and go pat those young men and women on the back and say how proud we are of them, and how we’re all praying for them. There was another part of me that wanted to yell, “Don’t go! Stay here with your moms and dads and husbands and wives and kids!”

Of course, I respect these young people and their willingness to put their lives in harm’s way to protect innocence and spread freedom and democracy around the world. I believe we are a safer nation because of our military, and I want to honor that — especially the weekend of Veteran’s Day.

But there’s so much about the whole “military mindset” that I don’t like. I realize I am woefully unqualified to speak on this, and I want to learn to speak more intelligently about this subject. As a starting point, I want it to be known that I have tremendous respect for the military and want to show proper respect, but I also have some major qualms about exactly what it is we’re supporting.

I don’t like the fact that we take young people and program them to stop thinking individually — breaking them down and re-training them to practice group-think. At its worst — in scandals like Tailhook or Abu Ghraib — it takes on a distressing kind of mob-mentality that leads to grotesque violations of human rights. I sometimes wonder if boot camp itself isn’t a violation of human rights.

And I don’t like the fact that these young people are trained to kill. To some extent, they are taught to stop considering the value and dignity of human life and see only targets. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that’s stuck in my head. It’s simplistic and reductionist, but I can’t stop thinking about it. It said something like: “Maybe when Jesus said we should love our enemies he meant we shouldn’t kill them.”

I understand the biblical arguments for the Just War theory. I’ve always considered myself a Just War advocate — in a true Augustinian sense.

I also understand the biblical arguments for Pacifism. I was raised in a church that had strong roots in the pacifist movement. From earliest childhood I was taught how to explain the phrase “conscientious objector”.

I understand the arguments for Pre-emtive War — though I must admit I find very little that is biblical about them.

I don’t mean to start a new thread here to unpack all of this. But I wanted to share with you my feelings that afternoon as I watched those young men and women — so full of youth, so full of promise, so full of hopes and fears and anxiety. I don’t know if they’ll come home or not. I don’t know if they’ll kill anyone or not. I don’t know if their mission will be successful or not. I’m not even sure if this whole thing is necessary or not.

I’m sure there are folks who have thought through those questions. I remain unconvinced of a lot of the answers I hear coming from various sources, so I’ll continue to search out the wisdom of God on this matter.

Until I figure it out, though, that’ll be me in the corner listening to the sound of my own conflicted applause.

Perhaps a little historical context is in order. Beginning nearly a hundred years ago as the women’s suffrage movement, feminism has perhaps been the most influential cultural development of the past century. A direct line can be traced from suffrage to prohibition in the 20s to the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s to the women’s liberation movement of the 70s.

Men have had to change the way they think about women, and – perhaps more importantly – women have had to change the way they think about themselves. And, in the process, regardless of how you feel about the word “feminism”, it must be conceded that valuable and legitimate contributions have been made.

Ironically, the contemporary feminist movement has its roots in Evangelical Christianity. Most of the early pioneers of women’s suffrage were committed Christians. It was because of their religious beliefs (not in spite of them) that they worked towards greater equality for women.

Susan B. Anthony, for instance, was a committed Christian, having grown up in a Quaker family that instilled in her a strong devotion to Jesus and, as a result, to the pursuit of justice. She campaigned tirelessly for the abolition of slavery and for the full citizenship of black people — including their right to vote. This was in the 1820s, by the way. She also argued in favor of co-education, claiming that women were able to learn just as well as men. She worked for child labor laws and for the rights of women in the workplace. She was also staunchly opposed to abortion — which is, sadly, a stance that few feminists share today.

However, she realized that her opinions would never be taken seriously until women had the right to vote. And so she devoted the next half century to the women’s suffrage movement.

If feminism is defined as “a belief in and commitment to the full equality of men and women in home, church, and society” (this is from feminist theologians Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty), it would seem that feminism is rooted in a value system drawn from a Judeo-Christian worldview — which places men and women on equal status and stresses the inherent dignity of each human life.

Historically speaking, the ideas and ideals of Christianity and Feminism have hardly been mutually exclusive. That’s a fairly recent development. In fact, a good case can be made that one (Feminism) initially grew out of the other (Christianity). It seems now that most Feminists aren’t very fond of most Christians and most Christians are afraid of most Feminists.

Why do you suppose it’s so hard to get the two sides together now?

The other day, Brent (who is a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech and a he**uva Methodist Pastor) wrote this: “By the way, I strongly reject that there are any interesting or meaningful innate differences (aside from sex organs) between men and women. I believe it’s socialized and acculturated to the extent that it may as well be biological, but it’s not. In other words, women are not innately more or less anything than men. And vice versa… except physical strength, but that goes back to differences in reproduction, from what I understand.”

Yesterday, Smockity Frocks (who has a real name and so many children she might just live in a shoe) wrote this: “Maybe I am oversimplifying this, but how about the fact that women have breasts and a uterus? That makes us perfectly suited to nurturing tiny, helpless babies. Men have test…osterone which makes them suited to defending nursing mothers and babies from savage beasts and marauding raiders.”

So, are the differences between the genders simply physical, are those differences thrust upon us by the expectations of our culture, or are there innate differences in the way we’re wired?

I stumbled across some research that may be helpful here. Mark S. George is a neuro-psychiatrist who co-authored the book The Neuroscience of Clinical Psychiatry: The Pathophysiology of Behavior and Mental Illness. As you can tell from the title, it’s a real page-turner.

Dr. George actually conducted brain scans of both men and women as they recalled a range of emotional experiences. He didn’t expect to find major differences. He didn’t even set out to distinguish between the men and the women. He was studying the response of human brains to various emotions — not the difference between male and female response. However, the differences, in his own words, “were so huge that I hesitated to report them.” In his experiments, melancholy feelings activated neurons in an area eight times larger in women than in men.

Sandra Witleson, a research scientist from Canada, did studies to determine the location of emotions in the brain. Again, she wasn’t trying to see how men and women respond differently to emotions — just trying to figure out where in the human brain emotions are triggered and stored. She showed emotionally charged images to the brain’s right hemisphere (by isolating the left eye and left ear). Then she reversed the experiment, showing the same images to the left hemisphere. From MRI scans, she found that a male’s emotion is located in two areas of the right hemisphere only, but a woman’s emotion is located in various regions of both hemispheres.

Of course, we could make a “chicken/egg” argument out of this. Did the brains come this way (nature), or were they shaped this way (nurture)?

I vote for nature — which is the chicken (or is it the egg?) — and here’s why. Recent studies of fetal development show that around 16 weeks into the development of a male fetus, the chemical hormone androgen washes over his tiny, little brain. When that happens, many of the fibrous connections in the corpus callosum (the communication link between the two sides of the brain) begin to dissolve. Because of this, approximately 80% of us boys are only able to use one half of our brain at a time.

A female fetus does not experience this androgen wash, so she is born with the interconnecting fibers intact. Most females, then, can retrieve and store information simultaneously. Drs. Sally and Bennett Shaywitz, professors of neurology at Yale University, say this is why women recover more fully from a stroke or a brain injury than a man.

So, maybe the differences are all in our head after all! But does this have any practical implications?