From Jeff
This little bit of news was conversation fodder for some of the pastors this week. We thought we'd offer you a chance to comment. (Note: Remember, anyone can comment by clicking the "comments" section at the end of this post.)
The leader of the most influential church in America now says "We made a mistake."
Few would argue that Willow Creek Community Church has been one of the most influential churches both in America and worldwide over its 31 years.
Willow has even had its influence on DBC. Life Groups were introduced to DBC after Jim Johnson and other staff attended a conference there in the late 90s. We are a member of the Willow Creek Association - which basically means we get discounts on conferences, resources, and are sent an occasional ministry training cd. (I have a pile of them in my office if you'd like to borrow one!) We purchase and supply Willow Creek resources to our Core Groups and other Bible study classes.
Over the years, Willow has promoted a vision of church that is big, programmatic, and covers everyone from the seeker to the committed follower. Few could duplicate it. Many have tried. (The vision for Northpoint was even inspired by a message from Bill Hybels, primary pastor of Willow Creek.)
Willow's vision has been heavily influenced by the methods of secular business. Evidently outside Bill Hybels' office hangs a poster that says: "What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?" Directly or indirectly, this consumer oriented philosophy of ministry-church should be like a cafeteria offering a variety of menus for people at all different stages to consume-has impacted thousands upon thousands of churches in America and around the world.
Now, Willow might be rethinking that whole approach.
In a new book titled Reveal: Where Are You? , Willow reports data that is causing them to rethink church. Here's a quote from the back cover: "In an effort to better understand the hearts of people, Willow Creek Community Church undertook a three-year process of study and research to find a way to measure spiritual growth. And to see whether the church was accomplishing its mission of facilitating that growth. To that end, they surveyed not only their own congregation, but also six other churches across the United States." Hybels has called the results "earth shattering."
Basically, the results showed that Willow does a great job with seekers but a poor job with committed followers who are looking for more meat. Willow leaders took that to mean they should up the ante on maturing disciples and make them become "self-feeders." It remains to be seen if Willow will in fact rethink church or go about these new goals in the same old, test marketed, consumer driven way. For me, I could have told Willow their models were incomplete for a whole lot less money than what they invested in their research.
If you'd like to get a synopsis of the research you can watch a video with Greg Hawkins (one of the researchers) here. And Bill Hybels' reactions, recorded at last summer's Leadership Summit, can be seen here. Here are a few highlights from the videos.
In the Hawkins' video he says, "Participation is a big deal. We believe the more people participating in these sets of activities, with higher levels of frequency, it will produce disciples of Christ." The church creates programs/activities. People participate in these activities. The outcome is assumed to be spiritual maturity. However, the study concludes, rather obviously: "Increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone's becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether they love God more or they love people more."
(Photo = Bill Hybels, Pastor at Willow Creek)
Speaking at the Leadership Summit, Hybels summarized the findings this way:
Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn't helping people that much. Other things that we didn't put that much money into and didn't put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.
Having spent thirty years creating and promoting a multi-million dollar organization driven by programs and measuring participation, and convincing other church leaders to do the same, you can see why Hybels called this research "the wake up call" of his adult life.
Hybels confesses:
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.
In other words, spiritual growth doesn't happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. And, ironically, these basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage. We must ask, why is this "earth-shattering?"
Does this mark the end of Willow's influence over the American church? Not according to Hawkins:
Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he's asking us to transform this planet.
Let's hope other churches do the same. For me, it would appear that Willow is just now starting to ask the right questions. It also makes me think about how DBC helps or does not help people follow Jesus. Still, I wonder, is "self-feeding" the goal? What does it mean in reality to "fundamentally change the way we do church?"
We welcome your comments.
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3 comments:
Willow Creek was built on the back of "fundamental change". They re-invented the modern big city church. So I assume making another round of fundamental changes should be right in line with their way of doing business.
It does annoy me a bit that they are acting so shocked. Are they doing that to draw attention to this study, or did they never once suspect that their system had flaws? Even the way they went about determining that the system was flawed (using a massive research project) is part of their philosophical problem. That problem would be the very confident belief that if I control all the inputs, I can control the output. This assumes a perfect church can be formed if all variables are accounted for. I like to imagine "how we could do it better" as much as the next guy, but there are some variables that cannot be controlled.
OK, I just watched the video and I think it is funny in light of what I wrote in the "Baptist Governemnt" article below that Willow took the ground breaking step of "listening to the congregation". Yes, Jeff, the pendulum swings both ways.
I also laughed at the idea of "completely re-thinking the way we do church", "throwing away all our assumptions" and "starting with a blank sheet of paper". That's exactly what Hybels and his team did 25 years ago, so once again they shouldn't act like its that big a deal for them. I guess it shows that no matter how willing you are to throw out all the traditions, you eventually become attached to your own way of doing things, and that becomes the new tradition that somebody else will have to throw out.
Millions of dollars spent on something that doesn't take an Einstein to figure out. How is it that in this modern age, people are trying to figure out how to "do church"? It seemed fairly simple in the first century. Maybe it's because they followed the guidelines that our Lord put forth in His Word. Lost people aren't typically going to search out a congregation to become a part of unless they have first been approached by a member of said congregation.
We as believers are to be light and salt in the world. Those are Words from the mouth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The early church wasn't burdened down with so much programming that they lost sight of their true mission. They were to care for the widows and orphans among them, share their possessions with those in need, preach the Word, teach the Word, witness to their belief in Christ as Savior and to pray without ceasing. But, most of all they were to love one another unconditionally.
If our churches would truly become houses of prayer, we wouldn't have any difficulty knowing how to "do church". God is perfectly willing to show us how to do all that He has called us to do, but it would appear that those "in the know" feel that they must come up with some great, expensive, awesome, mind-boggling, entertaining way to bring people into the Kingdom of God. I would suggest that Dunwoody, Willow Creek or any other church that is struggling with this issue to read and thoroughly study the Book of Acts and then determine whether the Lord's money can be better spent.
By the way, it is a mistake to expect newborn babes in Christ to become "self-feeders" too soon. My two little grandbabies didn't feed themselves when they were first born physically. Newborn babes in Christ need to be instructed in how to feed themselves much like a child is instructed in how to hold a bottle, a fork and a spoon and then in how to use those instruments. You are right that we need to change how we do things. We need to come back to the instruction book written by our Lord and seek His ways and not our own grand plans.
It's very simple. We acknowledge Him in all our ways and He is the One who directs our paths.
Peggy Reams
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