A Willow Creek Report Card
October 20th, 2007
There’s an eye-opening article over at Out of Ur that explains why the leadership at Willow Creek church is saying, “We made a mistake.” As we all know Willow has been one of the most influential mega churches in America over the past thirty years. Their original goal was to throw out all the old ideas associated with the historically traditional church in order to “rediscover church”. Over the years they’ve gone to great lengths to emulate a secular business model. Essentially church for them is a product with a wide variety of programs for people to consume.
“Participation is a big deal,” says executive pastor Greg Hawkins. “We believe the more people participating in these sets of activities, with higher levels of frequency, it will produce disciples of Christ.” So essentially the church provides a wide variety of programs. The more that people participate in these programs the more spiritually mature they become.
Not to be a noodge, but wouldn’t you think that after all these years somebody would have tested this theory to see if it actually works long before now? Apparently this thought has only recently occurred to the leadership at Willow. They’ve just released the findings of a ministry wide study to determine which of the programs and activities of the church were actually accomplishing their goal. Know what they found? Increased participation in church activities does NOT make someone more of a disciple of Christ.
“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.”
So what does this mean for Willow? Hawkins explains:
“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.
Okay, so let me get this straight. Willow Creek was founded on the concept of “rediscovering church”, right? Now after thirty years they’ve decided to take out a clean sheet of paper and rethink all of their old assumptions. Does that mean they are now re-rediscovering church? I’m just sayin’.
October 20th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Well, to be nicer, and not to be a “nudge” (hey, great thing is that you can edit mistakes after the fact so that nobody need even know what I’m talking about in a matter of a few minutes/hours), it does say something tremendous for Willow that they’re willing to go to the hard work of going back to the drawing board and reconsidering these things. Further, they have been a pioneer in small group ministry, which should involve some of the things that they say they’ve discovered are critical. Too many churches either resist taking a long, hard look to begin with (the vast majority, IMHO), or having taken that look, resist the types of changes that will get them to where they ought to be. IMHO, so many churches/pastors/Christians might tut-tut at Willow’s discovery, but are themselves mired in ruts that wouldn’t dream of altering, even if in the altering of them they’d be sure to do a better job of disciple-making. How many churches wouldn’t give up Sunday evening service, say, for small groups, just because they’ve always done it that way?
So while some of your words are valid, let’s at least applaud Willow for being willing to keep refining (and this isn’t the first time they’ve done this) their methodology, for the one thing we can certainly applaud is their desire to put the making of disciples above any particular methodology or sacred cows.
October 20th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
I will grant you that Willow has been a pioneer in small group ministry. I’ve personally made use of their small group Bible study curriculum numerous times. I guess my biggest criticism, though, is that after all these years of being a so-called authority on “rediscovering church” it turns out that to a large degree, what they were rediscovering wasn’t really church at all. It also highlights a problem I addressed in my earlier post concerning the “suckling pig” mentality that permeates America’s church’s today. This is a problem that Willow’s ministry strategies have helped to foster in many ways. For me this issue has become one of my greatest pet peeves. If we’re really serious about “rediscovering church” I think the first thing that we need to rediscover is that church is not a product to be consumed.