The eCrozier

I want to revisit what I’ve written in the past about the Church needing to move from a Theology of Attraction to a Theology of Mission. A Theology of Attraction holds that if we’re just welcoming enough people will naturally be attracted to us and want to join our churches. Yet, fewer people are attracted to churches these days. This is true regardless of denomination as the Pew Forum on Religion and other researchers have pointed out. A Theology of Attraction waits for people to come to us. We did that for generations. We bought land, built churches, called priests to serve them, opened the doors on Sunday, and we had a sustainable church. Now we sit in our churches looking like some poor guy stood up on a date. And just maybe that kind of sustainable church is never what God had in mind for the Church?

The Theology of Attraction suffers from an insufficient Biblical warrant. Jesus’ call to his disciples was never “come to church,” it was always “go, make disciples.” We need to go where people are. Our current practice is akin to putting an empty fish tank on the beach waiting for the fish to jump into it. To be sure, we should make our churches attractive to people by strong curb appeal, trained greeters at our doors, worship that’s beautiful, and preaching that compellingly tells the good news of God’s one-way love in the cross of Jesus. Still, that’s insufficient as a full response to Jesus’ command to “go, make disciples!”

A Theology of Mission calls us out of the friendly confines of our church buildings so we go to where people live, raise their families, make their livings (or suffer to live), and struggle to make sense of the world. Here is a checklist that will help us all get going:

1. Do you know the neighbors around your church property? Go introduce yourself with no agenda except to get to know them.
2. What do your neighbors need from you? Ask them and then listen to what they say a good neighbor looks like to them.
3. Who is hurting in your community? How do they hope you will respond to their hurt? You can’t do everything, but you can do something.
4. Who are the potential partners in mission in your community? You may find out those partners may disagree with you on some things, but you can find common ground on one thing. Do that one thing together.

In order to invite people to accept the Gospel of Jesus as the Truth that it is, we first have to incarnate that Truth through our words and deeds in our communities. It won’t work for us to sit in our church buildings with a sign out front that says: “We have The Truth in here. Come on in and we’ll tell you about it.” Even if that did work today, it’s not true to the Gospel. Nor can we attract people to our churches by the false promise that if they join us then all their problems will be solved. But we will make disciples by embodying in our communities the truth of God’s unmerited grace in the cross of Jesus. That’s what transforms lives, even our own, for we have no standing to worship Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament on Sunday if we aren’t also serving him on the streets of our communities during the week. People will come, yes they will. But first we have to go.

+Scott