Willow Creek: Were they wrong?
Missional, Church Stuff, Evangelism, Culture
Thanks to Scott over at Living Dusty, I discovered this article on Christianity Today’s blog, Out of Ur.
The article cites a study that Willow Creek Church did over the past several years to see which of their programs were best helping people become more committed disciples of Jesus. To their astonishment, not much in their of ministry was helping people to grow deeper in their faith.
Willow Creek’s assumption had always been that the more programs you offer, and the more people attend those programs, the more those people will grow spiritually. What they discovered is that this is simply not true. Here’s what Bill Hybels said at this year’s Leadership Summit:
We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.
I’m not particularly surprised by this. While I love the energy of big churches when they gather together, I also realize that the greatest spiritual growth happens when small groups of believers gather together and when individual believers spend time practicing the spiritual disciplines.
I have to admit, however, I’m kind of proud of Willow Creek for owning up to this. I’m sure it’s not easy to make a discovery like this. But facing honestly the aspects of your ministry that aren’t making an impact, and then making a change, is the sign of a true stretchychurch.
You can also read Greg Hawkins’ (executive pastor of Willow Creek) response to the many comments on the Out of Ur blog here.
29 Oct 2007 markus
Markus Watson
What is this Markus? Mr. “I love big huge churches”? ha ha ha… only I could give you a hard time about this blog post..ha ha ha… love ya man! How are the fires? the media has seemed to not talk about them anymore.
Ironic, isn’t it? Though I don’t think it’s a church size thing. I think it’s a ministry method thing. You big jerk!! Heh… just kidding, bro…
The fires are all mostly contained, and expected to be 100% contained sometime this week. The worst is definitely over. Now comes the clean-up and healing….
And here it begins… my first comment on Markus’ blog :) My opinion of what happened at Willow Creek echoes many of Markus’ thoughts. It’s not a matter of HOW MANY programs you offer, or the attendance at those programs… it’s a matter of WHAT HAPPENS at those programs that will change peoples lives.
Snacks for bible study- $20
Book for discussion- $15
Cleaning lady to clean your house before bible study comes over- $100
Paying your friends to attend so it looks like it’s a better bible study than your husbands- $286.89
Really feeling the spirit lead, making connections with fellow believers and growing closer in your relationship to Christ… PRICELESS!
And that’s all I have to say about that. :)
YEAH!! I LOVE YOU, ROBIN!!
Hey man… here is a blog post I think you should see…and ten I want you to go see the movie and I will here…and then we do a podcast on it? deal?
http://onlywonder.com/wordpress/index.php/2007/10/29/responding-to-the-golden-compass/
sorry forgot to include it, heh…here it is…
I once had a former pastor of mine make the following comment. If a church program / sermon can be edited to remove all references to Jesus and the basic message stays the same, then you don’t have a Christian Church / Sermon. What you do have is a self help / inspirational speaker.
Not that there is anything wrong with self improvement or inspirational speaking, it’s just that its no longer Christian. Not that there is anything wrong with being Non-Christian (as opposed to Anti-Christian).
From my personal experience, the church I go to adopted a program from one of these mega churches. The program was on spiritual disciplines. It was well produced and very well presented. The entire church participated in the program. All bible studies were switched over to this program. All sermons were focused on one of the chapters from the book each week. Each of the chapters focused on very important things.
In the end there were very big problems. Attendance was suppose to climb. But it fell off and has not recovered to pre-program levels. If I was to adopt the language of my Lutheran heritage; the problems were as follows: The Christological principal of biblical interpretation was abandoned and there was no division of Law (the imperative) and Gospel (indicative).
So people would attend the services and the studies and hear that they needed to Fast or Pray or Read their bible more often (Law / imperative). But the problem was most people don’t fast, pray, or read their bible enough. And to hear that they need to do it more often only makes them feel guilty. But the program never followed up with proclamation of the Law with the Gospel. The program should have reminded people that when they didn’t pray, Jesus had gone out into the wilderness to pray. The program should have reminded us that Jesus had spent time fasting in the desert. The program should have reminded us that Jesus had amazed the religious leaders of his time how much he knew and had read the scriptures. The program should have reminded us that all these spiritual disciplines are counted to us as righteousness because of our faith in His death and resurrection (Gospel / Indicative).
I think this is the main failing of the huge programs at the mega-churches. They forget to tell the story of the God who died. They instead want to have a program centered on one target sub-culture or another. In the end I think the mega-church will have to adapt or it will fail. People today see the targeting and marketing of sub-cultures and the self help / inspirational pep talks for what they are. The younger the person is, the quicker they tend to see through the marketing and realize they can get the same thing (self worth, inspiration, community, etc…) elsewhere done better.
The church cannot win a battle with the culture using the weapons of that same culture. The weapon we have is the greatest story ever told. We must continue to focus on that. The one thing we can offer that no one else can offer is a story that makes sense of the world around us and freedom from the guilt each of us knows we carry around. Once these things are communicated we find that we have a group of likeminded people (community) who have been purchased with the death of the Creator of the Universe (self worth) and because of this we respond in love using our gifts to create, communicate, and care (inspiration) for the world around us.
I think somewhere somehow the mega churches have gotten it reversed. I thank and praise God that some of them have the humility to admit it and it looks like they are fixing it.
Good points, Ted! Ironic, isn’t it, that it was a program on spiritual disciplines that ended up failing. But you’re right that so often we tell people this is what you “should” do without helping them either find the joy in doing it or helping them find peace when they don’t do it as well as they’d like or think they should.