Posted by
East Coast Evangelical on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 5:38:03 PM
Churches and pastors tend to be good at challenging other people to turn the cheek, but are notoriously willing to take shots at other churches and pastors. So I nearly laughed when I recently read the title: "A Shocking 'Confession' from Willow Creek Community Church" in a recent article. What I found sad about the article is that it contained so little actual knowledge of Willow Creek's "confession". Instead, the article turned out to be a catch-all complaint about the whole church growth movement, presuming that Willow Creek's size is simply a bi-product of slick marketing techniques without paying any attention to the Bible. So let me supply a bit of background.
Willow Creek Community Church is one of America's largest and most influential churches. This is due in part because of Willow Creek's size and in part due to the role Willow Creek has taken in providing training and leadership advice for thousands of churches across North America and the globe. The most visible tool in Willow Creek's arsenal is an annual summer conference for pastors and church leaders known as "The Leadership Summit." The 2007 Leadership Summit was hosted by some 110 satellite sites in North American and another 80 or so in other countries. Upwards of 70,000 people attended the Summit in North America last August.
One of the key presentations this year resulted from a tool that Willow Creek developed in order to evaluate the church's effectiveness based on factual research into the spiritual growth and depth of its congregation. Then, the results were published in a study titled REVEAL, by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, with contributions from Eric Arnson and a foreword by Bill Hybels. As a result, Willow Creek made some surprising discoveries about its own congregation. For instance, they found that one in four among Willow's congregation felt they were stalled in their spiritual growth and were even considering leaving the church (REVEAL, p. 4). They also discovered that 30 percent of the congregation "did not participate in the mission of turning irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ," (p. 21).
How many churches or pastors of any type, whether traditional or contemporary, really have hard facts that evaluate the spiritual depth of the congregation? I find it encouraging that Willow Creek Community Church not only put in the work to find these facts, but that Willow is also transparent enough to publish the results. What Willow knows is part of the dark side of the church business: that most pastors go on gut feelings or attendance numbers rather than measurable evidence about spiritual growth.
So does this confession mean that we now know that what Willow Creek has been doing for thirty years does not work? Has Willow Creek failed? Not at all! If thirty percent are not fully engaged in the mission, that means that some sixty-five to seventy percent of the people are engaged in the mission. Most pastors would kill for that. And the reason is that healthy churches have people who fit several different categories: fully engaged members, newly involved, people taking a season away from involvement, people on the outside edges and seekers who are wrestling with reasons to believe.
Here's my confession. I am intrigued enough that our church is joining several other churches across the country who will be taking part in this research through the REVEAL study. We may find some things we don't like. We may find that we're not as effective as we think we are, let alone want to be. But we will also learn about areas where we are hitting our goals and targets.
Willow Creek is a big church and it has a big target on its back. But the revelation of REVEAL is that it is time to stop shooting at other pastors and other churches and it is time for each of us to put our own house in order. Thank God that Willow Creek is again leading the way.