The theme this week is missional church. I am kicking it off by pointing to a hot blog post from last week. David Fitch hosts a very important conversation, having picked up from Bro. Maynard. I wish it wasn’t so personal – ie – Mark Driscoll and mega church attractional model vs. emerging/missional/monastic/house-church model ala Allelon (USA) and Forge (Australia) but at the heart of the conversation is a few key questions:
Obviously the cost factor ratio favors emerging/missional startups (inherited churches cost between 100k and 1 million to start) but how do these new organic communities sustain themselves financially?
How do we measure their success without resorting to the old systems of measurement (bigger is always better)?
How long do they need to start bearing fruit? And what does that fruit look like?
Do mega-churches attract primarily de-churched people?
Have a read and join the comments over there. If you are new to the conversation, remember the emerging church world is now a vast world with models still very traditional in structure (paid professionals, buildings, attractional-based sunday service) and much of it very organic, centrifugual, embedded, and missional.
Related: Andrew Hamilton (Forge National Director) on Incarnational vs Attractional
Technorati Tags: emergent, emerging church
“Regarding emerging churches/Emergent Village, I don’t believe they intend to plant church communities that would lead to converts”
well then they are wasting their time and energy…no matter what semantics you put on it…we are called to the great commission, every one of us.
Hi Mark. Sorry i missed you in Perth last month.
Hey – i am not really asking about whether Mark Driscoll’s observation is correct – i know there are plenty of emerging churches that will disagree strongly. i would also.
rather, the post is about incarnational vs. attractional, trad. vs. missional and Forge/Allelon are the models, not emergent village which actually has a lot of traditionally structured churches with paid pastors.
I know plenty of emergent types who are focused on reaching people for Christ, and thank God for them, and hope they have great fruit.
Andrew why is there such a propensity to set up an antithesis between categories among the missional crowd. I hear emergent writers constantly setting orthodoxy and orthopraxy in opposition and I wonder why you think this occurs so frequently.
I think Driscoll would respond that churches can be both attractional and incarnational. Why not be both missional and traditional? I do not see the need for an either/or here.
Well two things, I believe that the Bible shows that orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy.
Secondly what is the Biblical mission of the church?
Church Style Conversation…
I’ve been engaged in an email conversation with Gavin Knight and Mike Brantley regarding Conventional (Attractional) vs. Missional (Incarnational) church styles. Mike posted our dialog on his blog. It’s long and I would not expect anyone to read it all