Beyond The “Attractional” Church

I’ve done “Attractional Church” as a model for years. You know the type of church, right? We make it appealing, fun, not offensive, with good music, good coffee, and meetings that don’t lean into the prophetic or the supernatural too much. We use marketing strategies, social media, and hope to keep people engaged and comfortable while they find Jesus sat in the comfort of our attractive church buildings.

But let me be honest—and this may be an entirely personal perspective—I’m done with attractional church. Others may be called to build using this method, but for me, it doesn’t go DEEP enough spiritually. It often starts as Christianity “lite” and continues in that vein all too often.

It often lacks the prophetic, the power, the miraculous, the potency and role of the Gospel’s unavoidable offence, that leads to surrender and repentance.

It doesn’t go DEEP enough relationally. Church must be more than events. Sitting in tidy rows, singing trendy songs, nodding at worthy causes, and critiquing the platform experience as if it were therapeutic entertainment! We need a home, a family, and a band of brothers on mission; not an event, with an audience, and our favourite celebrity preachers.

None of us can thrive without deeply belonging to a small tribe of adventurers who are on a quest to know God deeply, surrender wholeheartedly to the point of personal pain, and who live to selflessly reach a world with a purpose that is beyond themselves!

And I think Jesus Himself was not attractional—He was wild! If you REALLY read all the Gospels, and not just the fridge magnet verses, He was offensive, challenging, countercultural, brave, shocking, loud, enigmatic, mysterious and oh so very supernatural. How can a tame Church represent an untameable God accurately?!

Yes, I’m done with attractional, “lights, camera, action,” concert-style church—it’s time for a RADICAL REMNANT to rise up!!

An extract for The Divine Reset & Beyond: Order Your Copy HERE.

I will not settle for surface faith or shallow worship. I am drawn into deeper intimacy, deeper surrender, and deeper revelation of who He is. “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).

Today, I declare that the depths of my spirit respond to the depths of God’s heart. “Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and breakers have swept over me” (Psalm 42:7). As I go deeper in Him, His presence becomes my refuge and my delight. The more I seek, the more He reveals; the more I yield, the more He fills.

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