How To Make Our Churches More Attractive

While trying, unsuccessfully, to fight, a recent and recurring battle, whenever I fly to Asia, with "jet-lag", I tried to pass the wee hours of my sleepless night by reading.  One article that caught my attention, while working hard to find something that might cause me to drift into a fitful sleep, was about how to make our churches more attractive.  It was entitled, Little Ways To Make Church Attractive and it listed things like comfortable lighting and room temperature, quality acoustics, friendly greeters, name brand coffee, and a bunch of other ideas that probably would make a church service attractive to some.

But, there's a huge difference between making a church service attractive and a church, as in a body of believers, attractive.  And this is something we really need to think about and be careful about.  If, by simply adjusting the thermostat or lighting and changing coffee brands, we can attract people to church--maybe we're really not doing anybody any favors.  Now, please don't think I'm against all the little things and especially the good coffee that makes a church service comfortable and thus, attractive.  What I'm struggling with is the whole idea that our purpose as the church seems to have become making the service attractive all the while failing to dress up who's supposed to be attractive which is the church herself.

So, what is it that makes the Body of Christ on earth, the Church, and specifically, those local fellowships or assemblies, if you will, scattered all over the earth, attractive?  I think its grace.  Yes, I do. Churches who have experienced God's grace because those making up the church have experienced God's grace are very attractive.

I mean, can you imagine what a church would look and be like if it was filled with people who truly understood, realized, and believed they, like the guilty adulterous woman in John 8, had been spared the death and damnation they deserved because they were being treated as Jesus deserved?  Can you envision this kind of church filled with forgiven, broken, being restored, and thus, humbled sinners?  Do you even have a category in your mind for this kind of church?  Can you begin to imagine what a business meeting might look in this kind of church?  How people would treat each other?  Speak to each other?  Love each other?  Disagree with each other?  Well, I can tell you one thing--it would be an attractive church.  And it would be attractive because of grace.  Even more specific than that, it would be attractive because the Gospel of grace is being preached in that church.

You see, for churches to be attractive because they are filled with people who truly understand God's grace toward them and others, they must be churches filled with people who are being shaped by grace as they are hearing the Gospel of grace proclaimed as a steady diet.  As Christopher Ash, writes in his book, The Priority of Preaching:

When Christ builds his church . . . he must first humble pride.  Nothing so humbles pride as the word of his grace, which makes us debtors to mercy alone.  We enter the church with nothing in our hands, but simply clinging to the cross.  Only the word of his grace will do that in us, by the power and mercy of God.  Supremely that is done by the public proclamation of that word in preaching.  What the preaching of grace does is to gather a people who join their assemblies humbled under grace.  Our identity is defined not by our achievement but by redemption, not by what we have done, but by what was done for us, just as Israel was defined as those who were slaves in Egypt and had been redeemed with a strong hand and a mighty arm. . . .Only the preached word of Christ, the word of grace preached again and again, pressed home with passion and engagement, only that word will create God's assembly . . .

Churches characterized by this kind of proclamation of the Word in which God's grace to sinners, is preached, taught, sung, talked about, reveled in, enjoyed, prayed, and applied are deeply attractive gatherings.  A group of people gathered by and humbled by grace would have to be attractive for the simple reason that people saved and then gathered by grace are people who while manifesting the joy that comes from being forgiven, redeemed, restored are also humbled by that same grace.  And I can't imagine anything more attractive than a bunch of gathered joyful and humble people who all love Jesus and because of that really love others too.

And that's why we need our pastors to preach grace, which is just another way of saying we need them to preach the Gospel even to us who know it well.  And if they're preaching the Gospel from the whole of Scripture we will find ourselves being shaped, forged, and recreated, if you will, into the people of God--a people saved, sanctified, and one day, glorified by grace.  This is the feast of grace we need to feed upon Sunday after Sunday as we are transformed only by grace.  We need to be reminded that we truly are sinners who have been completely and totally forgiven, declared righteous, and thus accepted by our Heavenly Father through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  We need to be reminded that the record of our sin has been cancelled and removed by Christ.  We need to be assured that the sins we still remember, God doesn't.

And again, the reason we need to be reminded regularly of this amazing grace--this amazing Gospel, is because it is this Gospel of Grace that, upon saving us, shapes us into joyful, gracious, loving, forgiving, accepting, and attractive people who when gathered together become intensely more attractive as those who are, together, being conformed to the image of Him Who is Grace Incarnate.

So, maybe we shouldn't worry so much about the lights, temperature, acoustics, and the coffee.  Maybe, instead, we should focus on grace, which is to focus on the Gospel of God's Grace, given to us in Christ Jesus, if we really want to be an attractive kind of church.