Attractional Church is Extractional Church

Attractional Churches = Extractional Churches

This equation is not a unique idea to me but rather was mentioned by Alan Hirsch during a recent conference.

Missional heads have used the term 'attractional' to describe the majority of churches and their operations to 'attract' people into their buildings with programs and 'outreach' events. The saying goes, this consumerist mentality is killing the organic nature of our church 'growth' models.

Rather than using the word attractional perhaps a better word is in fact 'extractional' in that we extract people from culture, have them do all the cross-cultural work to learn what it means to be a right-wing bible thumping movie hating Christian. Continue reading

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Book Review: So Beautiful by Leonard Sweet

Divine Design for Life and the Church

As a viral blogger with TheOOZE they send me books and I read them. Nice setup if you can get it. This edition I am happy to read through 'So Beautiful' by Leonard Sweet. (As an aside i think it's pretty funny that a missional guy like Sweet is published by the David C. Cook who also put out books by Tim LaHaye.... :rollseyes:)

Read the first chapter here.

Check out this quick youtube preview:

Continue reading

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Alan Hirsch Recap May 12 – Edmonton

This is a summary of a recent Alan Hirsch conference held in Edmonton for the C&MA. The two day affair certainly left its mark on those who engaged the topic (and less so for the select gray haired folks sleeping or reading emails).

After one of the days I asked Alan a question, "how do you take a missional message to the most right-wing conservative attractional churches in the entire country, isn't it frustrating?"

He humbly replied part of it had to do with calling, I for one would get frustrated. Nonetheless, Hirsch provided a challenging summary to a group of evangelicals, some searching for answers, others still skeptical about this whole 'missional movement'.

For us there was little new, but for the rest, as Hirsch put it, "we already know the answers." Continue reading

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