Some who have been present for a long time are walking away because they want to live more meaningful and missional lives - and they don't think they are getting the help needed from their local congregation to do so.
Some have never come in the first place. Raised by a generation of parents and grandparents who saw the church as irrelevant or dishonest or incompetent, they just never attended. And, the data shows that when they encounter people who do go to the buildings we call "Church" they are not mostly not drawn to become a part.
Across the country and around the world, people who follow Jesus are talking about these realities. As leaders increasingly came to grips with the changing face of things, a growing number of scholars and practitioners begin to document the challenges and to explore root causes and possible solutions. Leslie Newbigin, a long time missionary to India and in his later years a key leader in the Church in the United Kingdom is one of the primary missionary/ scholars who framed the conversation. In the U.S others joined in. George Hunsberger, Craig Van Gelder, and Alan Roxburgh are among those who have and are writing.
The conversation is now popularly framed in terms of attractional and missional congregations. I want to be quick to say that congregations are not one or the other. However, virtually every congregation that is more than 10 years old was likely started from an attractional mind set.
A congregation that tends toward the attractional framing will use its buildings, its relational capital, and its money to attract people to their building so that the teachings of Jesus can be shared by professional ministers. It will be characterized by age-based programs that are designed to meet the spiritual needs of religious consumers. Outreach is framed by the world of marketing, and missions is one compartment of the congregation's life.
A congregation that tends toward the missional framing will use its buildings, its relational capital, and its money to equip those who come to their building to embody the teaching of Jesus in their daily lives. It will be characterized by professional ministers helping individuals and families see mission in their daily life and equipping them to be on mission daily in the world. Outreach is framed by the world of service and love, and all of life is about mission.
Here is the challenge that most pastors face. Everything I've written to this point - we get. I rarely find anyone who argues that the attractional model works any more or that it is what Jesus intended. The Senior Pastor of one of Houston's largest churches recently lamented - "How did I get to be 60+ years old at the pinnacle of what I believed to be success and am now realizing that we've got to go another direction entirely? And worse, how do I tell my congregation that I'm not equipped to help them go in another direction?"
For nearly a decade Mission Houston has been experimenting with a spiritual formation process that actually results in missional living by those who participate. The work I was doing as Pastor of Harbor Church was one of the seed beds of this experimentation and the work that Ken Shuman and I did with a host of other leaders was another of the seed beds of this work.
Today we call the work Faithwalking. What we are doing is not new. In fact it is a recovery of what is very, very ancient and referred to as "the care of souls"combined with a blending of spiritual formation practices that come from divergent streams of the Church around the world.
Faithwalking started with 18 people from the private sector in September 2007. From the beginning, the end game was missional communities with our homes as the base from which we live missionally in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and other places where we had continuously sustained relationships. We took a "try a lot of things and keep what works" approach and made modifications to the process a number of times. The result is that today, we can virtually promise that if a person will engage deeply in the 18-month process that we offer, he/she will be on a missional journey of unparalleled proportions.
In 2010 our Board and staff went through a long (nearly nine month) discernment process. We came to believe that while we will continue offering Faithwalking to individuals in the private sector, we are being led by God to also begin offering Faithwalking to and through local congregations who are committed to making the transition from the attractional model to the missional model of doing congregational life. The pastors of Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, Fellowship of Cinco Ranch, First Christian Church, Sterlingwood Baptist Church, and Calvary Community Church are a part of this pilot project, and the feedback from these pastors has been overwhelmingly positive.
So, as we look to 2012 we hope to have 4-6 additional congregations who will engage the Faithwalking journey. It includes an intensive three-day weekend, followed by a 26 week small group process that focuses on getting breakthroughs in your personal relationships. This is then followed by a two-day weekend retreat that helps participants answer the questions, "What is the mission of God and how do we join Him in that mission?" This retreat is also followed by a small group process that is aimed at forming missional communities.
We are praying daily for God to match our heart and passion with the heart and passion of a growing group of congregations who want to pioneer the development of missional congregations in the greater Houston area.
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