This response came after reading Gustavo Martin's thoughtful
comment on the last post here from David Fitch. You might want to read that first.  I really appreciate Gustavo and his earnest commitment to the
church and the Gospel!

"Agreed (and BTW – thanks for the interaction).
That being said, I think you may have some misunderstanding of the term
attractional. You might be getting it confused with the term attractive. The
gathered church is to always be attractive and winsome. When most people use
the term “attractional” they are normally referring to the concept of
“extractional” (removing people from their natural sphere of influence for the
Kingdom by eating up all their time with internal church stuff).

I don’t find many people saying that the
church shouldn’t gather nor that she shouldn’t be attractive. What they are
referring to is the endemic phenomenon of people operating under a religious cover
because they go into a building and feeling like they are living out the
reality of Christianity. The analogy might play into this: Just because you go
into you garage doesn’t make you a car.

Your response seems to have more to it than
the simple quote by Fitch. As someone who has pastored a large church for close
to 20 year, I can say that there are moments when you do look up and wonder if
it is doing what you had initially hope it would. The larger a gathering gets,
the more difficult it is to pastor effectively and the more the church
structure requires/eats up peoples time – thus extracting them from culture.
That is the rub.

To be sure, there is a both/and, but the key
is to posture ourselves (regardless of gathering model) in the world in such a
way that we can actually have the margins in our lives to intersect with those
outside of faith in Jesus."

Gustavo also recommended an excellent article by Pope Benedict – I will
include the link here.  It is worth
reading.  It is entitled, The New Evangelization