Willow Creek Community Church has been one of the most influential churches in the United States in recent history. The way they have “done” church has been considered so “effective” that people around the world have been flocking to their doors to learn how to do it in their own communities, or countries. Their work on cell groups, spiritual gifting and leadership development has been so influential that their programs have spread around the world.
During my early years in seminary, I had the opportunity to attend many of their leadership conferences. Simply walking into their buildings was mind numbing. As a North American, with my preferences for bigger and better, it was impossible to think that Willow Creek was not successful, and was not “doing it right.”
However, with the release of a multi-year study published as a book, Bill Hybels says:
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.
What is so powerful in the findings of their new research is that they are admiting that they were relying on a highly programmatic approach toward doing church. They believed that as long as you got people to more worship and service events, people would automatically grow in their faith. They inadvertantly created a bunch of consumers that expected the church to do all the work of bringing them to maturity.
Did you see what Hybels said? They need to teach people how to do the spiritual practices more more agressively on their own. This completely squares with a study I’m in on Monday mornings. We are working through Dallas Willard’s, “Divine Conspiracy” where he argues that we have somehow lost our way. As disciples of Jesus, the curriculum we should be following to be Christ-like, is simply to do what Jesus did. This is a plea to return to the simple yet profound spiritual disciplines that have been employed over the ages.
As you watch the video of Greg Hawkins (recommended) it is interesting to see how readily he acknowledges their over dependence on a heavily programmatic approach to doing church. Oddly, and this is seen in Hybels video as well, the solution still seems to be some sort of programmatic approach to helping people be self-feeders. I’m wondering if this will become the next big product/strategy that gets pushed out the door.
Links:
Read Chapter One: Are You Really Making a Difference?
Blogs on the topic:
Willow Creek Repents? - Out of Ur (Christianity Today)
First-Person - by Bob Burney at Baptist Press
Entries (RSS)