Dave,

I pretty much agree with your thesis. I'm wondering about alternatives.

A couple of questions: Do you view the Alpha Course in the same way? It seems that community and discussion (and a shared meal) take some of the spotlight fromthe central charismatic male leader, and more so if the talks are done via teams. But is it still "attactional" in your view in the sense it pulls folks to a meeting where everything happens?

Secondly and relatedly, I'm wondering about, by way of comparison, AA's structures and practices and whether you would see them as more missional or attractional. Obviously, the various kinds of meetings are important for AAs, but they lack, by choice, any marketing machine or central charismatic figure. Relatedly, they are as diverse as the population itself.

Such a gut-gripping conversation (Jason's posts, this one, the comments)! On pt. 3), we still tend to think too often in terms of "church planter (singular)." Even when we talk about a church planter "gathering a team," I think we still tend to think about it in the context of the CEO model (who often alone has "the call" and "the vision"), who then goes looking for CFO's and other executives to be on his or her "team" for his or her vision. ____I asked this question in the series at Jesus Creed that was mentioned above: "What was wrong with the 12, the 70, and even Paul and Barnabas, that they had to be called/sent to do missions in partnerships, since we apparently only need solo-calls today?" It's a real tragedy that such 'partnership' calls are practically unheard of today. Despite our own wisdom literature, our overwhelming NT examples, and Dave's important first point, our DEFAULT is solo calls for ministry and missionary work. ____Anyway, I hope we can go farther developing all these thoughts. Jason, thanks so much for helping us all.

I think this is really good. As others have said, the difference b/n a power play and whatever change may happen through authentic interaction is love, which is a case by case, day by day pursuit.

A good friend of mine had a double life exposed a few years ago. He (a PK) was married with two kids for about a decade when it came out that he had been seeing several different women for almost the entirety of his marriage. He had led worship for his church. My point for this discussion is that just before it all came out, I had been reading a lot about addiction and God had me realizing how many idolatrous relationships I had with all kinds of things and people, and the multitude of motives that led me there. Now, almost all of my addictions are socially acceptable, so they lack the shock and awe of, say, a double life. But I was convinced that my personal strategy of choosing a diversity of acceptable idols didn't make them or me any more holy. My friend asked me at one point early on how I wasn't just appalled at him and just rejecting him out of hand. I told him that when I looked at him, I saw myself, which was the truth. There's more, a lot more, to this story, but I know that part of this discussion is that when evangelicals see someone who identifies as GLBTQ, far too few see themselves and their own brokeness, sexual or otherwise. That's part of what I see in Dave's "We all come broken" point.