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The Attractional Church The Attractional Church !1 !2 The Attractional Church Growth through a Relevant, Relational, and Refreshing Church Experience Billy Hornsby !3 Copyright © 2011 by Billy Hornsby All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. FaithWords Hachette Book Group 237 Park Avenue New York, NY 10017 Visit our website at www.faithwords.com. Scriptures noted KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Scriptures noted The Message are taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scriptures noted NAB are taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C., and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. Scriptures noted NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Scriptures noted NKJV are taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers. Scriptures noted NLT are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 6089. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America First Edition: February 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 !4 FaithWords is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The FaithWords name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data !5 DEDICATION TO ALL PASTORS WHO LABOR TO FULFILL THE CALL OF GOD ON THEIR LIVES, TO CHURCH PLANTERS LAUNCHING OUT TO FULFILL THEIR DREAMS TO DO SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT FOR GOD, AND TO OUR FAITHFUL LORD FOR HIS ETERNAL MERCY AND GRACE TOWARD US. TO CHARLENE, MY WIFE WHO HAS BEEN MY INSPIRATION. THE LEAD TEAM AT ARC FOR THEIR COMMITMENT TO DOING CHURCH IN AN EXCELLENT WAY. !6 !7 Contents Chapter 1: A Model for Growth Part One: Becoming an Attractional Church Chapter 2: The Calling of Your Church Chapter 3: The Showroom Floor Chapter 4: First Impressions in the Soybean Field Part Two: The Experience of the Attractional Church Chapter 5: Environmentally Friendly Evangelism Chapter 6: The Power of Relationships Chapter 7: Meeting God Chapter 8: Aftertaste Chapter 9: Telling Your Story Part Three: The Work of the Attractional Church Chapter 10: Reaching Beyond the Church Walls Chapter 11: Permission Evangelism Chapter 12: Inreach - A Church That Looks Like Jesus Chapter 13: Your Church and the Tree of Life Part Four: The Ministry Philosophy of the Attractional Church Chapter 14: Doctrine, Interpretation, and Preferences Chapter 15: Leadership Styles Part Five: Getting It Right Chapter 16: Twelve Characteristics of the Attractional Church Chapter 17: Doing It Right but Not Growing? Chapter 18: A Wonderful Future for Your Church Appendix A : Planting an Attractional Church Appendix B: Twelve Characteristics of the Attractional Church Leader Appendix C: Vision and Performance Survey Notes About ARC !8 Acknowledgments Chapter 1: A Model for Growth Part One: Becoming an Attractional Church Chapter 2: The Calling of Your Church Chapter 3: The Showroom Floor Chapter 4: First Impressions in the Soybean Field Part Two: The Experience of the Attractional Church Chapter 5: Environmentally Friendly Evangelism Chapter 6: The Power of Relationships Chapter 7: Meeting God Chapter 8: Aftertaste Chapter 9: Telling Your Story Part Three: The Work of the Attractional Church Chapter 10: Reaching Beyond the Church Walls Chapter 11: Permission Evangelism Chapter 12: A Church That Looks Like Jesus Chapter 13: Your Church and the Tree of Life Part Four: The Ministry Philosophy of the Attractional Church Chapter 14: Doctrine, Interpretations, and Preferences Chapter 15: Leadership Styles !9 Part Five: Getting It Right Chapter 16: Twelve Characteristics of the Attractional Church Chapter 17: Doing It Right but Not Growing? Chapter 18: A Wonderful Future for Your Church Appendix A: Planting an Attractional Church Appendix B: Twelve Characteristics of the Attractional Church Leader Appendix C: Vision and Performance Survey Notes About ARC !10 Acknowledgments John Bolin who worked with me on the original idea for this book and for his creative touch. Lynnmarie Cooke for her very hard work editing the first copies. My staff at ARC for helping me develop successful church planting systems that inspired this book. Gayle Bennett for all her work editing and helping me with the final copy. Maurilio Amorim and Shannon Litton at A-Group for believing in the project. Troy Parker, for keeping it Biblical. Joey Paul at FaithWords for his encouragement and acceptance of the book. !11 !12 The Attractional Church !13 !14 Chapter 1: A Model for Growth God is up to something great that will change the way Americans look at church. It will impact your church, your family, and this country over the next ten years and beyond. Your children and future generations will be excited about what God is doing! A growing movement of churches is offering people a refreshing, relational, and relevant church experience. Because of their ability to attract large numbers of people to their places of worship, these churches have been defined as attractional. Attractional churches rekindle a love for the lost, the absent, and the unfulfilled among their members, while meeting people’s needs and empowering them for ministry. Is your church an attractional church? Is it refreshing, relational, and relevant? If not, how can it become that kind of church? Your church can be refreshing. Like ice-cold lemonade for someone who has toiled in the hot summer sun, your church can revive parched souls and quench dry spirits. The attractional church is refreshing because people may drink deeply from the oasis of the Spirit. Your church can be relational. Your church can be a place of loving and warm friendships where weekly handshakes and hugs are more than just polite gestures. They are indicative of real relationships based on the love of Christ. Your church can be relevant. Relevance is the cornerstone of the attractional church. Attractional churches make sense and pass the “Who cares?” test. A relevant church’s members !15 believe their problems matter and expect biblical answers. The church ministries relate to members and their real issues. A good word to summarize this refreshing, relational, and relevant church experience is life-giving. For pastors, this could be just another book about how to do church. Or it could contain just the information you need to restore life to your church and your ministry. In the pages of this book, I have tried to capture the hearts of the innovators who make up the lead team for ARC, the Association of Related Churches, of which I am currently president and which I helped cofound in September 2000. They are my friends, my heroes, and my coworkers in Christ who are planting dozens of attractional, life-giving churches around the United States every year. These are pastors who represent the very best of the ARC in their innovation, their passion for people, and their love for Christ. The reputation, influence, and success of these churches make them models for effective local church ministry. A commitment to transformational thinking has given these churches explosive growth and great influence across the country and around the world. With these churches as case studies, we will explore the philosophy, the strategy, and the potential for growth and expansion that exists when their principles—those that bring refreshment, relationship, and relevance to dying churches—are followed. You will learn some profound but easily implemented practices that attractional church pastors use to reach their cities for Christ. Every member of every church can experience life again in church . in the church that Jesus intended for the unsaved world. !16 What Is an Attractional Church? Obviously the attractional church is attractive—so much so that these kinds of churches are growing at a record pace in the United States and around the world. While a number of attractional churches are megachurches, their real success can be measured by the number of souls that come to Christ and the impact the church has on its community. The attractional church model’s unique philosophy of mission and message contributes to its efficacy. Mission: The Field or the Barn? The mission mind-set in the attractional church focuses on the harvest to be reached as much as bringing people into the building. Many limit their Christian experience to church services in the proverbial “barn” instead of the life of the church in the community or the harvest. And though I believe that the focus of the true attractional church should be in the field of harvest, I also know that any harvest left in the fields will be ruined over time. So there has to be a harvest and there has to be a barn in which to put it. Any good farmer knows the importance of the barn; we should too. Attractional churches believe that the harvest exists in cultures that we need to penetrate. We need to establish incarnational ministries within those cultures and effectively gather the harvest into places of worship. This does not interfere with the relational connection of the !17 converts within a given group. The attractional church never loses sight of the souls Christ died for and attempts to reach cultures that the church has neglected in the past.
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