Thursday, May 15, 2008

Willow Creek Abandoning Seeker Sensitive - Sort of?

It's about time. From Christianity Today:

Willow Creek's 'Huge Shift'
Influential megachurch moves away from seeker-sensitive services.
Matt Branaugh | posted 5/15/2008 08:30AM

After modeling a seeker-sensitive approach to church growth for three decades, Willow Creek Community Church now plans to gear its weekend services toward mature believers seeking to grow in their faith.

The change comes on the heels of an ongoing four-year research effort first made public late last summer in Reveal: Where Are You?, a book coauthored by executive pastor Greg Hawkins. Hawkins said during an annual student ministries conference in April that Willow Creek would also replace its midweek services with classes on theology and the Bible.

Whether more changes are in store for the suburban Chicago megachurch isn't clear. Hawkins declined CT's interview request, and senior pastor Bill Hybels was unavailable for comment.

Since 1975, Willow Creek has avoided conventional church approaches, using its Sunday services to reach the unchurched through polished music, multimedia, and sermons referencing popular culture and other familiar themes. The church's leadership believed the approach would attract people searching for answers, bring them into a relationship with Christ, and then capitalize on their contagious fervor to evangelize others.

But the analysis in Reveal, which surveyed congregants at Willow Creek and six other churches, suggested that evangelistic impact was greater from those who self-reported as "close to Christ" or "Christ-centered" than from new church attendees. In addition, a quarter of the "close to Christ" and "Christcentered" crowd described themselves as spiritually "stalled" or "dissatisfied" with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. Even more alarming to Willow Creek: About a quarter of the "stalled" segment and 63 percent of the "dissatisfied" segment contemplated leaving the church.

...Greg Pritchard, author of Willow Creek Seeker Services, told CT the church "sporadically has recognized it was not teaching a robust enough biblical theology and needed to turn the ship around.

"It is a huge shift," Pritchard said of the church's planned changes to its services. "But they're still using the same marketing methodology. Willow appears to be selecting a new target audience with new felt needs, but it is still a target audience. Can they change? Yes, but it will take more than just shifting their target audience."

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posted by Bob Hunter @ Thursday, May 15, 2008 0 comments

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Bill Hybels: We Were Wrong!

Bill Hybels is finally realizing what many have known all along: Having megachurches doesn't mean the flock are getting fed. From Christianity Today's blog:

Not long ago Willow released its findings from a multiple year qualitative study of its ministry. Basically, they wanted to know what programs and activities of the church were actually helping people mature spiritually and which were not. The results were published in a book, Reveal: Where Are You?, co-authored by Greg Hawkins, executive pastor of Willow Creek. Hybels called the findings “earth shaking,” “ground breaking,” and “mind blowing.”

If you’d like to get a synopsis of the research you can watch a video with Greg Hawkins here. And Bill Hybels’ reactions, recorded at last summer’s Leadership Summit, can be seen here. Both videos are worth watching in their entirety, but below are few highlights.

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.” This has been Willow’s philosophy of ministry in a nutshell. The church creates programs/activities. People participate in these activities. The outcome is spiritual maturity. In a moment of stinging honesty Hawkins says, “I know it might sound crazy but that’s how we do it in churches. We measure levels of participation.”

Having put all of their eggs into the program-driven church basket you can understand their shock when the research revealed that “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.”

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.
Self-feeders? While we should all be in God's Word, in prayer, etc., what happened to the idea of the pastor feeding the flock? Are they still not willing to do that, preferring to continue entertaining the congregation instead?

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posted by Bob Hunter @ Wednesday, October 24, 2007 1 comments

Friday, June 08, 2007

Just LOVE the Seeker-Sensitive Movement


.....and their total lack of discernment. From the Christian Report Blog:

Willow Creek Chooses Jimmy Carter for Leadership Summit

Yesterday, I received a promotional mailing for the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek. I quickly opened the slick marketing package to learn about this year’s list of speakers and the other pertinent information. Then, like an unexpected punch in the stomach, I saw that former President Jimmy Carter was listed as a speaker, about leadership.

...In recent weeks, Carter has caused a rift in the Baptist Church over the liberal gathering at the New Baptist Convenant. This event, aimed at bringing faction of Baptists together, has turned out to be a divisive regret. Carter has also been a vocal critic of the Faith-based initiatives of the current administration, saying, “ As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one."
He's also well-known for his liberal views of Scripture, abortion, etc.

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posted by Bob Hunter @ Friday, June 08, 2007 2 comments