Postal Discipleship?

HA!

Over the years I’ve received several flyers in the mail advertising a local church, often in conjunction with some kind of special Sunday service or promotion. One church in Minnesota not only sends out flyers every August, they purchase billboards advertising free tickets to our huge, end of summer state fair: all you have to do is come to their service.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the desire to reach as many people with the good news of Christ as possible. I also recognize that lives can truly be changed through receiving a flyer or seeing a billboard advertising a church. However, when a church turns to advertising, it is orienting itself towards an attractional model. What’s the problem with the attractional model? Well, let’s start with who is likely to be attracted: people who already have some desire to find a church. In all likelihood, people who are already part of a church, but are open to shopping for a better option on Sundays. The average agnostic/atheist generally has no receptivity for church advertisements.

But perhaps even more critical to consider, the attractional model is so dangerous because it sort of works, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Disciples of Christ are right to want more people to hear about Jesus and to have their lives changed as they follow him. And the attractional model can get people through the door and into the sanctuary where they hopefully get a chance to hear about Jesus. But then what? Well, a church that lives and grows by the attractional model dies by it. In other words, sure, some first-time visitors may want to come back to the church the following week because they enjoyed the Sunday experience, but what happens when the messages become more challenging? What happens when that feeling that they felt their first Sunday begins to wear off? What happens when they begin to really get to know the other members of the church, and begin to find areas of disagreement?

Yet despite these dead ends, churches call their members to pour their time and energy into attractional strategies like freebie Sundays and mass mailers because they get people through the door. Unfortunately, that’s energy and time that’s taken away from the hard but essential calling of all Christians to live life together, to be present in their communities and neighborhoods not just on promotional Sundays but with their lives, and to, by the Spirit, search God’s Word together, seeking and sharing guidance and healing in these troubled times.

We who love the church need to seek better. We need to take leadership in lovingly guiding our fellow brothers and sisters away from burning finite time and energy on attractional strategies. We need to encourage ourselves and one another with the good news that our faithfulness isn’t measured by how many bodies we can get through our church doors on a given Sunday.

And as we do, may we all be witnesses of the power of Christ’s original call of day by day discipleship.