People often set up attractional church and missional church as polar opposites. Attractional has a come-to-us mentality. It’s about drawing people to the church. Missional is a go-to-them mentality. We take the gospel to people, meeting them on their terms and their turf.

But biblical missiology contains both elements. Israel was called to live under God’s reign expressed through his law in such a way that the nations would come to find out about Israel’s God (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). During the reign of Solomon the nations do indeed come to marvel at his wisdom and glory. But as Israel rejects her God, instead of being a light to the nations, she follows the ways of the nations. Isaiah, however, looks forward to a day when Israel will again attract the nations (Isaiah 2:1-5). He promises that God’s Servant will be faithful where Israel was unfaithful, becoming God’s light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6). Jesus, of course, is this light: the light of the world, perfectly demonstrating the goodness of God’s reign.

Attracting In and Moving Out

When we come to the New Testament church, people often assume a switch of direction from “drawing in” to “going out.” But in fact the attractional missiology of the Old Testament continues. God’s new covenant people are to be a light to the world, attracting people to God’s reign (Matthew 5:14-16; 1 Peter 2:9-12). What has changed is the center! The center is no longer Jerusalem, but hundreds of small communities of light, littered across the world. We simultaneously draw in (through our community life) and move out (through church planting).

The problem with a lot of attractional churches is not their missiology, but their ecclesiology. Church is seen as a meeting. Attracting means attracting people to an event or even a performance. But biblical mission is about a community life, ordinary life, lived under God’s Word that attracts people to God.

Is your church doing mission for its own glory or God’s? Want a cunning test to help you answer? Check out how much energy and passion (evidenced by money, prayer, interest) is invested in situations in other parts of the world for which you will get no credit. If it is not proportional to what is invested at home, then serious questions should be asked. If our passion is God’s honor and the fame of the Lord Jesus then we won’t be satisfied until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Hab.2:14; Is. 11:9).

This will mean we get involved in planting churches all over the place and supporting other churches to plant churches, even when we don’t get a mention. It will mean sacrificially giving away our best people so that unreached areas of the world will be reached for Christ. World mission isn’t the preserve of the mission agencies; it’s the privilege and responsibility of every local congregation of believers (a.k.a. church).

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The guy I first started church planting with used to tell the story of the first time he attended a church business meeting. He’d recently been converted and was looking forward to plotting the downfall of Satan with the other members of the church. What a letdown! They spent the meeting talking about the restrooms in the church building. Somehow churches have a tendency towards maintenance mode.

The great thing about church planting is that it puts mission at the heart of church. When you’re eight people meeting in someone’s front room—as the Crowded House was once—then you can’t help but be about mission.

But church planting also puts the church at the heart of mission. So much evangelism today is about me doing my thing with my friends. We have evangelistic ministries divorced from the church. This is not the New Testament way. New Testament mission was church planting.

Mission at the heart of church. The church at the heart of mission. Welcome to church planting.

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“I know people do a lot to help me, but I just want someone to be my friend.” So said a single mother in my congregation. At the root of much poverty is marginalization and exclusion. When we think of serving the poor our first thought is often of projects. We assume the thing to do is run a welfare program. But perhaps our first response to poverty as the church is to offer inclusion, to offer welcome, to offer community.

In our book Total Church we argue that two principles should shape church life: gospel and community. When it comes to the poor, too often conservatives do gospel without community, while liberals do community without gospel. We need to both love the poor and call them to repentance. They are often victims, but they are also always sinners in need of the atoning work of the cross.

If you ever want to make other Christians feel guilty, get them to listen to a talk on evangelism. For the majority of us, evangelism is a bit like base jumping—sounds like a great idea, but most of us don’t actually have the guts for it. Whilst it might be true that only a relatively few people are gifted evangelists, all of us can make a significant contribution to the evangelism process. What we need to do is change evangelism from “me doing the gospel thing with my mates” to “us doing the gospel thing with my (soon to be our) mates.” It’s a simple transition, but it makes a world of difference.

Make Evangelism Communal

In that context, I then introduce my friend who’s not a Christian to my brothers and sisters (a.k.a. church). My friend gets to see us hang out, laugh and cry, forgive and serve. He sees the gospel in action and he hears the gospel as we apply it to one another. Evangelism is going on all the time, and all I’ve done is bring my friend into a context where he’s going to be exposed to the gospel. Evangelism done this way changes it from being a big scary monster that makes us want to run and hide into a cute little puppy that we all want to hug.

In our book, Total Church, Steve Timmis and I argue for two core principles that should shape the life and mission of the local church: gospel and community. The content of our ministry is the gospel. It’s a word: gospel means good news. So being gospel-centered means being word-centered. And it’s a word to be proclaimed: gospel means good news. So being gospel-centered means being mission-centered. That’s the content of ministry. The context is always the Christian community. Ministry is not an event, still less a performance. It takes place in and through the shared life of the Christian community. So whether it’s evangelism or social involvement or children’s work or apologetics or pastoral care or training, these two principles shape what we do: gospel-centered and community-centered.

Ordinary Life

Here’s another way of thinking about it. One of the catchphrases we use to capture our vision is “ordinary life with gospel intentionality” or “ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality.” In other words, what we do is ordinary life together: household chores, trips to the movies, meals, neighborhood volunteering. But running through all these activities is a commitment to speaking and living the gospel. We pastor one another at the kitchen sink. We evangelize by talking about Jesus over a meal.

The Crowded House

People sometimes ask if they can come to see the ministry of The Crowded House. We always warn them that they’ll be disappointed. What they’ll see is not a trendy auditorium or a polished presentation or sophisticated social projects. What they’ll see are ordinary people sharing their lives. They’ll see people going to the local bar together or painting someone’s house or sharing a meal or going to the shops. But I hope after a while they’ll also spot the gospel intentionality as people talk about Jesus—discipling one another and evangelizing their friends.

In future posts on The Resurgence, Steve and I will try to give you some brief snapshots of what that might mean for evangelism, social involvement, pastoral care, discipleship, church planting, and so on.