My emerging theory

So here I am at this conference (see post below). I've been through two days of it so far; half a day more. It's being held at and by a HUGE mega-church of the Seeker variety. I'm trying to process what's been said thus far, so what I'm about to write are by no means my final thoughts. I'm just "thinking out loud", as it were...

I've been exposed to a new term: attractional model. Seeker churches are a kind of attractional model of doing church - you do whatever you can to attract people to come and see you (without compromising doctrine, in the view of the church holding the conference) and thereby gain an audience to share the Gospel. It's wildly successful at that, here at NorthRidge: their ministries saw 51 people make a commitment to Christ in the first 7 days of this month already!

But what they're not good at is discipleship or depth of community. The director of adult ministries very candidly admitted that they don't even know how many people are involved in small groups. They know they have a problem. They know their worship services alone cannot accomplish community or discipleship. They also believe it's a challenge common to attractional models (think Willow Creek or Saddleback, for example).

On the other hand, incarnational models of doing church (think emerging or missional) are very good at discipleship and community, and not as good at evangelism (at least compared to attractional models - a lot of this has to do with demographics, but now I'm getting off my topic...).

So I'm wondering: both models can be effective, but is it as simple as this?


Attractional: EVANGELISM and discipleship
Incarnational evangelism and DISCIPLESHIP


More importantly, if this is true (and it's definitely an 'if' for me right now), then why can't the two models work together? Why can't attractional model churches work with or even plant incarnational models to somehow work together? What about the concept of one church and yet multiple congregations? There are a lot of ramifications to this thinking that I've not run through my head yet, but it's a theory I'm thinking through right now, and I'd love it if ya'll would help me...

Hatushili