Larry Rogier has some good thoughts about attraction:
In part 4 of an interview with Matt Chandler, John Piper makes the following comments in a conversation about the cult of personality, video churches, and the attraction to our churches:
If the attraction to come to your church is your form—that is dress, handsome, articulate, forceful, good music, good stories—if the form becomes the attraction and you know that and you start to work that, that’s wicked.
I have to think this is true from both ends of the spectrum.
Are not the churches with “high standards” who “don’t do entertainment” sometimes just as guilty of using “form” as an attraction as are the seeker churches?
“Come to our church because we don’t have a praise band” seems not all that much different than “Come to our church because we have a praise band.” In neither case is the gospel the attraction.
Should we not give more critical thought to what we lead with?
When “conservative” or “traditional worship” is the first thing people know about your church, or “our pastor wears a suit and tie on Sundays and our girls wear bell-bottom shorts coulottes,” and “We still meet on Sunday nights at the church building,” perhaps there is just as much of a problem as there is with the other end of the spectrum.
If our churches are known predominantly for anything other than the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus Christ, perhaps we are missing the boat. Perhaps we are leading with the wrong thing.
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