Who needs another church?

“If we come to plant a church in a particular area, we’re not perceived as doing anyone any favors. But if we’re starting a café, an Internet launderette, or a day-care center, we’re seen as bringing something of intrinsic value to the community. We’re serving those to whom we’re sent.”

That’s from Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, authors of The Shaping of Things to Come.

We may be excited to plant a new church in Helena, but do you think the people of our community will be excited as well? Will we be seen as bringing anything of value to the neighborhood?

As we think missionally and incarnationally, we must consider our community. What it needs, what it’s lacking, how we can contribute to its well-being. We must ask, “How can we bless our community?”

This is a glimpse of what it means to be missional in our church planting efforts. Attractional thinking says, “How can we package the gospel so that people will come to us?” Missional thinking says, “How can we get involved in what is already going on in the community and bring the transforming power of the gospel with us?”

Again, it's about getting in to the community.

Questions, questions

I’d like to write more about what a missional approach could look like, but first I put the question to you: how can we take a missional approach to ministry in Helena? What would it look like to be incarnational in reaching different people groups in our community?

On a personal level, what kind of people are you connected with? Think about the places where you are a regular, where people know you by name. Maybe it’s at the club or a restaurant, a civic group or service organization, an arts group or a local sports league. Wherever you have connection is where you can have influence, where you can incarnate the gospel of Christ.

Now what could a missional approach look like?

Attractional… or missional?

How do we reach people with the gospel? So many churches have completely bought into the idea of “attractional ministry”—that we just need to do something cool enough, compelling enough, amazing enough, and people will come. We gotta get the hippest music, the coolest video effects, throw the most raging events and people will break down our doors to join us. “If you build it, they will come.”

There’s just one problem: it doesn’t work. Sure, some people will come. But we can’t be hipper than the Wachowski brothers, cooler than Death Cab for Cutie, or as wildly creative as Burning Man. We can’t wow people into salvation.

The alternative? A missional approach. Getting into the community you want to impact, rather than standing on the sidelines trying to pull people out.

Sound intriguing? More later.

In or out

Jesus was always in the midst of the community. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, to hang out with the wrong crowd, to be present in the daily lives of regular people living their workaday lives, their troubled lives, even their decidedly unethical and unholy lives. He got in and they were never the same. Jesus was all about getting in and having influence.

But all too often people who decide to follow Christ immediately get out of the world. Sever all ties. Get comfortably ensconced in the church subculture. And lose influence.

The call of Christ does not demand that we sacrifice our voice in our communities. Rather the call of Christ is precisely the opposite. We are called to influence people in the world in the name of Christ. And this can’t be done without being in the world.

Are you in?