Thanks for this interesting stats for the rest of us. It’s always easier to follow a discussion on ground of "hart" facts, even if they themselves are discussable and should be discussed and questioned. But it’s easier to follow these kinds of discussions than those "it is obvious” and “everyone knows” kinds of discussions.

So more of that, please!

I admit I haven't checked out Pressler and Chaves's full article in JSSR (I'm in a hotel!). But I can't believe that sociologists as careful as they, especially in a peer-reviewed journal, would measure absolute numbers rather than percentages, which means population growth is not a confounding factor. Certainly Gallup has been measuring percentages, not just absolute numbers, for decades.

Also note that over the time that reported church attendance (which is inflated without a doubt) has stayed basically constant, there has been a seismic shift in American Protestant church life from medium-size "mainline" denominational churches to ever-larger evangelical or evangelical-ish churches. This would suggest that, by some measures at least, the megachurch movement has had real "success" in attracting church attenders.

Whether attendance correlates with discipleship in any meaningful way, of course, is quite another matter. I don't share the widespread assumption that America is going to secularize just like Europe—it may or it may not, and there are many reasons to think it will not—but I certainly don't think anyone could look at any slice of the data and think that we don't need radical rethinking of the way we evangelize and make disciples in the United States.

However, let me offer one final observation. I became a Christian in the Boston area in the 1980s. At that time you could quite literally count on two hands the churches of any size, serving white middle-class constituencies, that preached a recognizably orthodox and reasonably evangelistic version of the Christian faith. Today you could count on two hands such churches just in Cambridge, Massachusetts, alone—then you could count such churches in Boston proper, then you could count a bunch more in the suburbs. And then of course you could count the innumerable churches serving various immigrant communities, as well as second-generation immigrant communities, as well as the historically black churches which are thriving every bit as much as they were in the 1980s, probably more so, in spite of flat population growth among the last group's natural constituency. I have very little doubt that there are more people attending churches that seek to make disciples (however successfully or unsuccessfully) in the highly secularized city of Boston in 2008 than there were in 1988. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if attendance on a percentage basis in the suburbs of Atlanta, another place I spent a fair amount of time in the late 1980s, has declined since then. (And one could attribute a fair amount of the church growth in Boston to transplants from less secular parts of the country, and the decline in Atlanta to transplants from more secular parts of the country.) In any case, this hardly adds up to a monotonic pattern of secularization.

In the end, as has been true since the founding of the Republic, counsels of despair or complacency are probably both equally unwarranted, and church life in America will continue to be a crazy quilt of radically different "models" that may well thrive alongside one another.

More attractional or more missional? It's such a ridiculous discussion. Unless you're creating a definition of missional exclusively to exclude big churches, Willow is one of the most missional churches around.

This whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, signifying nothing. Yay for labels! Without them, how would we know whether we were in the "in" crowd?

Helpful stuff Andy. Thanks.

It occurred to me while reading this post that proponents of both the missional and attactional models/philosophies appeal to history for a sense of whether or not their model is "working". For missional folks history seems to indicate that the attractional model is no longer helpful while the attractional folks see the historical trends favoring larger, attractional congregations.

Andy's research (along with Url's commentary) seems to indicate that the historical Rorschach test may only confirm what one already believes to be effective. If effectiveness can be measured in church attendance, than a strong case can be made for the attractional model. However, most us can agree that a large number of people does not indicate discipleship to Jesus. Willow Creek's Reveal study is a helpful example of this.

Does this mean that smaller churches are intrinsically better at spiritual formation? I doubt it. However, the strengths of the missional conversation lie not in its appeal to size but in its theology. The question is not so much, Does it work? but Are our structures and methods in harmony with our theology?

Being careful students of history and sociology will always be important as we discern what the local expression of the global Church ought to look like. Even more important- and here I think the missional folks tend to be very helpful- is the alignment of our methods with our theology.

While I appreciate the effort to put some hard numbers to this debate and think that we need to definitely take the above into consideration...I think it is hard when we are basically equating church attendance with mature discipleship. Isn't this the rub? I don't hear many missional people tying the decline of the church in the West to the decline in church attendance. (Although here it must be said that the last quote is especially telling...if church attendance has not grown at a time when the rest of the population has grown by almost 20% then we are, by definition, "losing" ground...) What I do hear is missional folks questioning whether or not our current attractional models actually yield mature disciples of Jesus. What I and others are trying to get our minds around is the disconnect between a country where 80% of the people claim some kind of Christian affiliation and a country that sanctions torture, abortion, the death penalty, pre-emptive war, where there are tremendous needs in terms of poverty and homelessness, and where greed is rampant and the cause of so much of economic recession right now. The great gulf between Christians and the Christ whom they claim to worship is what lies at the source of this debate, to my mind. I will admit I haven't the foggiest idea how to quantify this and am not trying to dismiss the numbers from our collective evaluation. I just think we need to place them alongside other metrics that may be more useful at determining the success of our mandate to nurture mature discipleship.

Neil Cole has also done some interesting research which can be found here

Maybe the missional/attractional is an unfair distinction. Alan Roxburgh writes, "There’s been a dis-ease in the back of my mind for a while about the directions of the missional conversation in North America. . . it’s too ecclesiocentric. Most of what I read with missional in its title is about the church and making the church work with new formulas and programs. The missional conversation is about what God is up to in the world; church conversations are a sub-set we’ve turned into the main thing."

So what is the main thing? Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost in their new offering ReJesus assert that "Whenever these strategies are not anchored directly in a biblical Christology, they are doomed to limited effectiveness" (43). They go on to insist that Christology determines Missiology which determines Ecclesiology (see chart, p. 43).

Something has to give, at least for me because I am a church planter overseeing a new work that is seeking to be a tangible expression of the Kingdom of God in our context. I hope people are attracted to us because we are missional. That is, we, as a church, are the instrument of God's mission in the world. I hope that we are "equipping the saints for the work of the ministry." I hope that we are able to see our ordinary, everyday lives as being sent by God into the nooks and crannies of this world. I hope that we are willing to learn from each other, offer our gifts, and band together in the common cause of making disciples. I hope . . .

"Eiesland reported that that Southern Baptist megachurch she studied had equal number of persons joining through “baptism” and “transfer of membership” in one year of the megachurch’s growth."

I like the fact that the baptism and membership status= conversion. I've worked for churches who have had people do both and were labeled "convert" only to leave the church and the faith after a month. It seems to me church history already dealt with these two items being the means or evidence of salvation with Unam Sanctum. How'd that turn out.

If you attract through material means, you will have to keep on feeding by material means. Attractional is being seen for what it is- consumerism. Its like the Trojan Horse of a great show with the gospel tucked away inside.

I am part of that statistically slim group of Americans that grew up with no church and no talk of God in my home. My parents believed it was something we'd come to on our own, so they left us to it. After years of rabid atheism and recovery-based pseudo-agnosticism, my conversion to Christianity happened in a church that most people would consider dead or dying. There was an out of tune, robed choir and forty lifeless people in a room that could hold ten times as many. The pastor was nice, but pretty geeky and there were no programs to speak of. And yet, without an altar call, banging music, avant gard art projects any other strategic spiritual trappings, I was changed in a moment at the age of 37. All that to say that programs and definitions are great--but the Trinity trumps human efforts every time. I vote for less programming and more seeking and following the dictates of the Holy Spirit of God.

In sociology, they often have a methodology section at the end of an article. I have put the footnotes to the quotes above on my blog:

The research behind my post at Out of Ur: Missional vs. Attractional: Debating the Research

Andy Rowell
Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) Student
Duke Divinity School
Blog: Church Leadership Conversations

I appreciate the amount of work that went into the literature review and commentary for this article. It’s useful in showing that research could help us understand some critical distinctions between the fruit of attractional and missional paradigms.

However, I wonder if at least one reason why the evidence is mixed/inconclusive is because the available research cited was not designed primarily to answer questions about these two perspectives. We do get some secondary help by seeing church and mega-church trends in various directions. But is it possible that what we would really need in order to evaluate paradigm fruit accurately is research that: (1) clearly defines issues in this particular controversy, (2) is specifically designed to investigate them, and (3) is comprehensive enough in scope to evaluate various methodological models with the same research instruments?

Our questions precondition our answers, and our context preconditions our questions. I’d suggest we need to focus on the critical issues emerging between these two paradigms and ask better and enough questions. We need a valid, ongoing research project that, from the outset, is designed to answer the questions really being asked, so we don’t have to keep asking questions about the existing researches’ answers. Then perhaps we could discuss fruit, instead of holding serial monologues/monoblogues with one side yelling at the other about apples and the other side yelling back about oranges.

If answers are important, how else but by new, targeted, and appropriately designed research are we going to find out answers to such relevant issues as: How many converts in any of our paradigms or models become life-long disciples? Which methodological models for being/doing church yield long-term addition or geometric progression? Are mega-churches and house churches and other models “sheep shifting” more than birthing lambs?

Perhaps CT/Out of Ur would care to sponsor such a project …?

I appreciate Andy's sincere efforts to bring clarity to this discussion. I am, however, reminded of Mark Twain's famous statement on statistics which he attributed to Benjamin Disraeli...

Just a point to remember guys. I don't have an issue with the mega-church per se. I believe that they are carrying the load of mission in this country. My issue if that only 12,500 churches can actually make a mega-church really tick. That out of 350,000 churches in America! Lets get some perspective. God bless the mega-church! But if all persist in trying to become a mega-church (and who has not tried over the last 40 years) then we can expect more church closures. We HAVE to have more than one arrow in our ecclesial quiver.

Also remember, that my claim about shrinking appeal, is linked with the idea of cultural distance (ch.1 The forgotten Ways). That is, an attractional church can have significant impact on those within its cultural orbit, but is increasingly ineffective the further it reaches beyond its socio-cultural settings.

I do think that whether we like it or not, the logic of Western civilization as it currently manifests is increasing post-Christian and secularist. Just look at your most populated areas--North East and North West--these are signals of an increasingly church-less future. They are more secular and more like Europe. Hey, just visit San Francisco and see how the church has all but vacated there. Only a missional approach will work in these places.

So my concern is that all who dismiss the missional approach and require that we simply persist with "tried and true" church growth theory are in the end damaging our capacity to respond to an increasingly missionary situation. Its a 'peace in our time' strategy and its dangerous.

It seems like we are neutering the
"missional" term if we take it and then set it against something called "attractional." This seems to miss some of the deep ecclesiological ideas that were being made in the seminal work that started this whole thing: Missional Church (1998). It's probably unhelpful as well to then take churches and lump them into one category or another. If we think that a megachurch cannot embrace a missional ecclesiology, then we have probably set off in the wrong direction with our understanding of the term "missional."

There is something bigger here than all the research brings out (Brad above has hit upon it). All of this research and discussion is using only one metric of success: attendance/growth. One of the reasons this research is so debated is because attendance/growth only reveals one very small part of the picture.

My professor Reggie McNeal is extremely passionate about developing a new set of metrics for missional churches (I think this is the thrust of his 2009 book). In other words, we can't measure missional success by attendance numbers. We need a whole new set of metrics to determine if we are fulfilling the mission of God.

A few of his suggestions in The Present Future: how many volunteers are we releasing into the community? how many community groups use our facilities? how many hours per week are spent in ministry where they work, go to school, get mail, etc? how many conversations with pre-Christians?

Earl Creps joins this discussion of metrics and suggests: what proportion of our largest group meeting is present because of a significant faith experience rather than by transfer? what proportion of our leadership did we develop here by spiritual formation and leadership training? What would our ministry look like if the pre-Christian community had a representative with veto power on our board? What are the best stories we can tell about the things God has done among us since our last meeting?

This is the kind of hard, missional thinking we need. Debates using old metrics will never end because the old metrics aren't sufficient.

Alan Hirsch, you write, "Just look at your most populated areas--North East and North West--these are signals of an increasingly church-less future." This seems like cherry-picking to me. As I wrote in my comment above, the short-term trend in Boston (arguably the most secular major city in the Northeast) seems quite definitively *away* from secularization, not least among younger adults, at least if you look at church attendance.

Also, I'm sure on a moment's reflection you'd realize you must have mistyped in choosing the Northeast and Northwest as the most populated areas. Population in America has been moving toward the South (-east and -west) for several decades now. In fact I suspect there is a strong correlation between (relative) secularization and population decline—one of the reasons I am not at all sure that America is going to go the route of Europe.

I am deeply grateful for the "missional" movement and have been partial to it ever since the early days of the Gospel and Our Culture Network, but I do find these warnings of impending secularization do not map easily onto the American context and strike me as a bit too close to scare tactics. The reason for changing the way we do church should have to do with the kind of discipleship (or lack of it) we see even in the most churched areas of America . . . or maybe (speaking with the bias of someone who became a Christian in secularized New England) *especially* in the most churched areas of America, where Christianity seems often to exist all too cozily alongside American consumer culture.

Alan,

Thanks for standing up to the table here.

First, I don't think anyone is dismissing the missional approach. This whole thing got going when you posited the missional approach over against the attractional approach. I see no need to approach the issue that way.

Second, latent in your approach, as pointed out by Andy Crouch, is your adherence to secularization theory -- and that USA will go the way of Europe. Know this, Alan: many today are seriously questioning this easy-to-assert theory and are arguing that, in fact, the USA is not going the way of Europe. Your word "shrinking" may come from that theory ... I confess that I don't see it.

Third, I'll make a point again: I know no one who says "we are attractional" in a simplistic - only attractional -- approach. The entire problem here is positing one over against the other. It doesn't make sense because no one is doing that ... unless .... no need to go there. What we've got here is a false (and simplistic) dichotomy.

I think what was really meant by "attractional" was "lukewarm." The more lukewarm a church becomes, the more apathetic and complacent it will become. As apathy for evangelism rises, more folks will sit on their duffs one or three times a week and consider that enough.

My bad; I confined the mission to evangelism. Add "complacency for sanctification/discipleship" as another symptom of lukewarmness.

I believe the "attractional vs. missional" comparisons developed within the missional world and discussion from missional leaders. I don't know of churches who call themselves "attractional" or use that term for themselves. I personally think it is a both world, not one or the other - we are missional and attractional.

The primary "attractional" thing should be the Spirit in us. It is us who will be the salt and light to people whom we will eventually invite to our church meeting whether organic, small, medium, large or mega.

There are a few pieces to this puzzle that, though maybe obvious, have not been stated.

1) Many people I know, including some in my own family, got drawn away from small, local expressions of the Body into mega-churches simply because the leadership functioned with a more skilled, singular, and seemingly undistracted focus to help the spiritually disconnected connect to Jesus. These people weren't "converts" to Jesus, but in many ways they were converts to the mission of Jesus, finally being taught and freed to enact the mission of God in their Christian life. This says more about megachurches and not the attractional model since churches of all sizes can be attractional. But it is certainly an undiscussed component of "transfer membership" and what that metric can mean for the mission.

2) The claim that 78.5% of Americans claim to be Christian is disturbing. I believe it means the American church has failed fundamentally in preaching the gospel of grace in the face of sin. The "good news" of grace is only good news in the face of our dire circumstances that we all find ourselves, our communities, and our world existing in. The good news is that there is hope in all of that. But the truthful starting point is one of despair so that the good news is good! Too long have churches avoided this message and focused on comfort. Any church group preaches the gospel with hands and mouth, no matter how attractional, will end up being repugnant to those "christians" who don't repent of their own sin and who refuse to be on the mission of God. And any non-christian, who is longing for a savior from themselves and for this world, will find their hearts reacting to a God that has given them hope in darkness. The differences, as long as the full gospel is taught, will one of style and target audience.

The difficulty with this discussion is that some of us take questioning "attractional" and "missional" personally. That makes sorting out the real issues here difficult and makes stats useless because we instantly sort out those that support our thinking from those that do (psych tests have demonstrated this).

I live in Canada and we have small churches in rural settings closing almost monthly at present.

…great discussion that more people need to hear and read about, and consider… i linked this article with whole bunch of other articles on the missional debate back to http://www.newchurchreport.com to share it with others - thanks!

It does seem true, as stated above, that the missional leaders are the ones who criticized "attractional" and started the debate. Perhaps attractional is the wrong word. As I read a lot of missional literature, the true concern is Christendom and consumeristic churches. Let's not claim that all mega-churches are consumeristic, but let's acknowledge that a lot of North American churches cater to a consumer society and mentality (this is evident in the large scale production worship of some churches both large and small). Would anyone say that creating a consumer/marketing oriented church is good? Is this the real issue that missional reacts against?

I think the missional/attractional debate is really about 1) is culture shifting or not? Is the new, western, non-Christian generation living by values that will leave "attractional" structures empty or not? and 2) are we creating churches predominately filled with disciples (in process) or people who really admire Jesus but have no real relationship with Him. Some of the discussion that has focused on attendance numbers has highlighted this.

I do think that Christendom and Consumeristic churches is a part of this discussion but fundamentally either the times, they are a changin' or not so much. Either it's about more than attendance, decisions and offering size or it's not.

Willow Creek's willingness to disclose the results of their in-house survey fueled this and they are to be commended for the courage to ask the questions and the courage to share the answers.

Visiting a "mega church" one Sunday I was fortunate to be there when they surveyed their church at all 4 services on their campus. They took the extra brave step of providing a real time sample feedback during the 5 minute survey. Lots of great questions, responses the surprised those answering. Of great interest to me was the question they asked about whether they attended worship anywhere else on the weekend and almost 25% of the sample were also going to church at other churches in the area. Consumers or junkies? Have to admire a church that's willing to ask.

How does "Attractional" vs Missional in the context of spreading the Gospel of Jesus square with Mark 16:15? I distinctly recall him using the action phrase "GO YE into all the world and prach the Gospel to every creature."

Whether "all the world" for you is around the block or across the globe...a flyer in my mailbox advertising your "dynamic worship team" (whatever that means) is not "Going."

A previous poster posited that churches today are providing more comfort than discipleship. More emotion than foundation.

Perhaps we would be wise to obey the great commission without inventing meaningless metrics over which to congratulate ourselves.

II Timothy 4:2-5 would seem to indicate that not only are man's metrics of ministerial success unimportant; but if you are in the ministry, you will meet with failure if you're measuring your progress by man's metrics.

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

And they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables."
-- II Tim 4:3-4

...unless, of course, there is a different agenda at work. Is success now measured by a different yardstick than II Tim 4:8?

Maybe we need both. There are many types of people in the world, and it takes different kinds of churches and people to reach them.

I think there's room for the Megachurch and the house church. It'd be great if they would support each other. I wonder what this argument would look like in China or India - where the missional churches are boasting of great successes and the Megachurch is mostly non-existant (in comparison). I'm pretty thrilled with about any baptism - whether it's in a great big building with thousands watching - or a lake at an apartment complex with a few watching.

Is 41:19-20 I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the LORD has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.

The Lord loves diversity - He plants all kinds of different things in the same place. We're the ones that want everything to be the same. How boring. Why does it have to be this VS that - why can't it be this PLUS that?

Plain water. Living water. We need both.

Jesus used “plain water” in “attractional-izing” the attention of the Samaritan woman. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (Jn 4:7). Beneath the simplicity of His gesture lies the audacity of His act (Jews hated Samaritans, besides, it was a no-no in Jewish culture to talk publicly with any woman), indeed, an act so audacious that it transcended the racial and social prejudices of the time - a good string around the finger for all of us today in the complex world of “attractional-izing” business.

Jesus used “living water” in “missional-izing” the now “attractional-ized” Samaritan woman. Jesus said to her, “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give will never be thirsty; for the water that I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14). It was the “living water” that inspired the woman in her “missional-izing” works later. Many Samaritans in her town believed in Him when they heard her (Jn 4:39).

Courtney’s words have the true ring, “Maybe we need both.” And yes, Joan, you hit the nail on the head, “Trinity trumps human efforts every time...following the dictates of the Holy Spirit of God.”

Let’s always keep in view Paul’s words in 1 Cor 3:6, “I planted, Apollos watered the plant, but God made it grow.”

Just coming off the Christmas holidays and visits with assorted and diverse family and friends, Alan Hirsch's comment about "cultural distance" really hit home with me. These are largely well-educated, white-collar folks, kind and interesting and fun. And they are so far out of the evangelical orbit the church might as well be on Mars. They aren't hostile; they're just in a different world. In my more skeptical moments, I wonder if that's what we're coming to -- a mosaic of groups living in peaceful coexistence. But stories like Joan's give me hope.

My critique of megachurches and this has been backed by studies lately, is that they suck at making disciples who care about social justice. They care about people's souls and being kind and compassionate--but lack an understanding and committment to bringing about social change. Thankfully we have some examples of this changing. I am appreciative for the efforts of Rick Warren & Bill Hybels starting to include social justice.
Peace,
Karl

One thing I am grateful for in the long ongoing pitting of 'attractional' against 'missional' is that it made me think of another approach, one that I think I see as effective in any setting and that is of being 'invitational'. (Maybe I'll write a book some -day on that).

I aim to run church programs, not in a in attempt to 'attract' those outside the church to come, but as an opportunity for those already in to have a place and time to which they can invite the friends they have been being missional with.

When it comes to the life of service we can have I also see being 'invitational' as a great approach, inviting those who are on the journey of growing in Jesus to join with God in what he wants to achieve in terms of social justice.

Grace & Peace,
Chris

I've been pastor of a Presbyterian church for the last 2 years that has been slowly declining for the past 30 years under mainline leadership. We are now planting a new model of church at the other end of our church campus. We want to get new believers directly involved in local mission in the early stages of discipleship; as part of this vision we are starting a local mission agency at the same time as we are planting a new expression of church. Yet we realize that what will attract people to the new thing will be conventional elements like dynamic kids and teen ministries, worship, and, yes branding/marketing. I've read the books and attended the conferences, and have come to the conclusion that one can be authentically missional while using some attractional elements, to God's glory.