Global Church Reform – the absurdity of the ‘Attractional’ church model in 2010
February 1, 2010
Being in Malaysia at the WWSE conference has given me a small insight into what is happening to the church globally. I believe the church is going through a reformation of sorts, on many levels. Scripture engagement is playing a huge part in that. In fact, Scripture engagement may be the most important element.
Phylis Tickle suggests in her book The Great Emergence that every five hundred years, the global church goes through what she calls a giant rummage sale. Effectively it examines itself, biffs out the bits that are no longer relevant for the times and brings in new ideas and theology. She suggests that the church is right in the middle of this rummage sale right now.
I agree with her. Everything points to this – at least in my small part of the world. Church numbers are declining, the number of non-church going Christians is climbing, and Bible ownership, readership and literacy is rapidly falling.
To my surprise, I discovered at WWSE that the Bible engagement crisis may not simply be a ‘Western’ problem. A pastor from Indonesia came up to me and asked for help. “For what?” I replied. “My people all own Bibles but not many are reading them,” he said.
I met others from SIL who are not translators, nor administrators, but Scripture Use workers. One in a Pacific meeting I attended worked in PNG. His problem the same – not many Christians in his remote region are reading the Bible.
This problem is epic.
At that same Pacific meeting on the last day, Darrel Whiteman from the US shared how global mission, particularly to those of other faiths, is changing. This was something that came out strongly at the conference in the ‘marginalised peoples’ track. Missionaries are concluding that the traditional model of evangelism is not terribly effective. Why? Because it’s based on extracting the person from their culture, ‘civilising’ them or ‘Westernising’ them, then discipling them towards the Christian faith. The problem with this is that the person has been removed from their culture, thus making it extremely difficult for them to adapt, especially if the concept of family is a strong element of their former culture.
He argued that this is not Biblical. Gentiles didn’t have the become Jews to enter the Kingdom of God.
The new model is based on the person accepting Christ remaining in their culture (1 Corinthians 7:17). They can still live in their culture and be Christian. They make some obvious changes to their life, but allowing them to remain as they were when God called them is the key. Is this ‘concept’ simply discipleship? Is true discipleship something the church has lost over the modern era?
I was speaking to an American woman involved in mission in Africa. She said these ideas are revolutionising global mission.
I think this same concept can be applied to reaching the emerging generation in post-modern Western societies. The problem is that the current church model relies on attracting people into church. Effectively, we’re asking people to leave their culture and enter one unfamiliar to them and adapt to it to become Christian. In 2010, this sounds absurd, doesn’t it?
Yes, it is absurd, and in my view, and generally speaking, it no longer works. I believe the reformation happening is about the church going to the people, rather than vice versa. The church might argue that this has always been the case, but evidence suggests otherwise. The church model today is very much attractional.
So, God is doing some cool stuff – changing approaches to mission, changes approaches to scripture engagement and more. But there’s a lot of work to do. I can’t help but think God is calling parachurch organisations to lead the way in this reformation. I can’t help but think that God is calling the Bible back to the centre of the church. Just like in the last reformation.
