It has been my joy to have a part in the planting of a number of churches in the United States and in Latin America directly. I have seen a number of models and have observed what is in my estimation most successful.
Since I am not a leader with dynamic or charismatic personality, obviously I have not even attempted to use, as you say, "the current attractional/evangelistic model". I am so "un-hip" that I'm sure I wouldn't know how. If, indeed, that method is flawed (and I believe it is), you are right in that the Holy Spirit can use anything to glorify Christ. Paul in Philippians wrote of people who preached Christ from various motives, but he rejoiced that Christ was preached nevertheless. No doubt these methods that I would never use nor be able to use are being used by God.
Those who know the churches I have participated in planting know that they are all small. None has over 75 members, but there are a number of them. They are of three ethnicities--majority White but with other racial-ethnic groups as well, all Black, and Hispanic. A few were planted as the result of a demographic study and recommendation of a missions committee. None of those, I think, is an effective church that I would lift up as a model to anyone. They became miniature "First Baptist Churches" that maintain the cultural status quo of their communities and do not challenge nor engage the culture.
The most successful church plant I have experienced is the church of which I am now pastor. It resulted when a flood cut part of the church family off from attending what came to be considered the mother church. A somewhat "temporary" effort to continue our ministry to those people "across the water" became in a few months a successful church plant. There was no division, no conscious planning. It just seemed to be a God-thing. Those who are familiar with Calvary Chapel (Southern Baptist Convention--no relationship to a group called Calvary Chapels--we didn't even know it existed) of Parchman, MS, staff-church at Mississippi State Penitentiary, know of its missional nature. Before there were officially Global Priority Churches or Acts 1:8 churches in our denomination, that's what we were. But my point is, nobody did a study and decided that we would plant a church. We just became overwhelmed that there was a need and we must meet it.
When we got involved with African-American ministry, we were approached by African-Americans and were asked to help, sort of a Macedonian call. We responded much as did Peter when he met Cornelius.
Our success in Hispanic ministry came quite providentially, totally unexpected. I am a bivocational pastor-Spanish teacher. In 1998 a Mexican immigrant got lost and came to our door looking for a Spanish mass at a Catholic church 50 miles away. In North Mississippi the odds are very slim n finding any evangelical pastor who speaks Spanish. But he came to OUR door. He was welcomed by people who did not speak the language but who knew a sort of "Pentecostal" language that everyone can understand--"welcoming love". I was introduced to the man and invited him to stay. I did the message and a song bilingually, thinking he would never return. A week later he brought a friend. They brought two more and soon there were 60. The 60 became groups of believers in the towns from which they came. Before they were saved they were meeting together, and soon they became churches and missions in three other towns. Quickly they spread to two more towns. Our only involvement was to fan the flames, to encourage them in their new-found faith and their desire to serve the Lord. Today they have spread to 15 towns. None of them is "impressive" in the way Southern Baptists usually guage success, but they are missional in nature. Some meet in abandoned church buildings, some meet in borrowed church space of other congregations, some meet in houses and are little more than "cells". They are growing, and every time someone moves from them, he/she seems to take the Gospel with them and plant another church in their new locale. Sort of an Acts 8:4 thing--"those who were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word".
From these groups God is raising up preachers. All of them are bivocational, mostly unpaid volunteers. Some of them become their pastors. Some announce that they are "going home" to reach their village in their mother country. That to me, is MISSIONAL.
I'm sorry to tell you that I had nothing to do with it other than by the grace of God being in the right place when God was at work. It would be wonderful if I could tell you that in my God-given ability I had planted all these churches. But the truth is, I was just there and had the joy of watching it and being a part.
Once overseas on a mission "trip" I was asked to go to the gate of a school and announce to the crowd waiting at the gate for admission to our medical clinic that the medicine was all gone and we could see no other patients. I used Acts 3:6 and paraphrased by saying we had nop medicine but I would give something eternal that I had, and I preached to them Jesus. 17 adults and teens from the large crowd raised their hands to announce that they accepted Christ. Truthfully, I suspected that they thought somehow this would get them some medicine we secretly had stored nearby. However, a few weeks later someone in that country emailed me a picture of 17 people lined up for baptism at the edge of a mountain lake near where I preached that sermon of sorts. They didn't tell me they were the same person, but when I counted the number to be 17, I felt sure I had been standing on holy ground that day. A God-moment. And I think that's what real church-planting is.
I now have the title of mission strategist. My strategy is this: do all you can to fan the flames when the fire of God breaks out. Plant seed wherever you can, wherever you happen to be going. When some of it sprouts, cultivate it, irrigate it, fertilize it. The result will be new missional churches.
If planting the seed seems to you to be an attractional/evangelistic model, then do it. That's better than doing nothing as so many of our critics do. I can't say that the Spirit is leading all His people away from planting programmatic churches to a more incarnational expression of the body of Christ, but my viewpoint is that He's doing it that way in my experience. Joe Young
Hermano Jose, the Bivo Joe