Shawn - I can see how you would get that from that statement but in my head that’s not what I was getting at…didn’t you crawl in my head? how silly of you ;)

But you also wrote, “Because we’re not supposed to be doing stuff to get the unchurched to come to us - period.”

That reads like a pretty hard break away from anything attractional.

Beyond this issue, I think we are talking the same language, Mak. I also get a kick of how many words and phrases you and I put between quotes! LOL!

Rock on, Mak!

I agree that there needs to be a bit of both - but I’m not talking about ecclesiology so much as missiology and in our missiology, our primary understanding should be from the command to go.

Clearly, we have to have a safe, “attractive” community where we can “bring to” and we should also be “attractive” people, but if our missiology is first attractional, we’re going to get into big time problems as we’ve seen in the past 10-20 years

I get what your are saying about incarnational mission. I excpect you to preach that from your emergent perspective. I don’t think, however, that it is holistic, at least by itself. I think ministry in any context requires a well balanced expression of incarnation and attraction. It’s just how it is. In fact, if I were to push this conversation to the extreme, I’d say that large aspects of incarnational philosophy are inherently attractional in scope. Make sense? The NT is full of examples of incarnational and attractional mission. I personally want to sail between both while making sure whatever it is people are attracted to is honest and based in kingdom values.

I digress … but you raise so many good points in your comment.

I think we can create sacred space anywhere. My guess is that the unchurched generally don’t experience sacred space in any context but in a cathedral it at least feels more sacred automatically.

If we learn anything from this it’s that the human soul years for something set apart, something sacred…which doesn’t necessarily need to be a cathedral.

I also think this is societally conditioned in our culture.

I personally much prefer something more “classically sacred looking” but a coffee shop basement is what we’ve got and we are cognizant of making it a sacred space in the way we live and love in that space.

I hear you and honestly hope this study doesn’t result in a bunch of new building projects that are themed around medieval architecture! I can see that happening too! It would be a parody of monumental proportions!