Living In The Tension: Attractional vs. Missional

When you do church for people who don’t like church, joining Jesus on His mission of helping people who are far from God get close to Him, there are all kinds of tensions you live in and have to embrace.

Some people argue that the way to reach people who are far from God is to be attractional. The idea being that we need to attract non-Christians to our building, through our church services or other programs, and from there we can try to lead them to Jesus. 

Others argue that the way to do is by being missional. That we need to send out the Christians from our building, to serve the community and build relationships, and out there we can try to lead them to Jesus. 

So what’s the best way? It’s living in the tension. It’s and. Every non-Christian God wants us to reach is not the same. And every Christian God wants to use to reach them is not the same. And so we need to do both. If we choose just one, we lose the effectiveness of some of our Christians who just aren’t the “attractional” or “missional” type, and we lose some of the people we could’ve reached but just won’t be reached in an attractional or missional way.