Willow Creek

In a recent article entitled, "Willow Creek Repents" in Leadership magazine, a multi-year research project into the church's ministry is recounted which was conducted by Willow Creek, and brought about some interesting findings. The research was "to know what programs and activities of the church were actually helping people mature spiritually and which were not." Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek, made the following statements regarding the research findings.

"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."

"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."

It is wonderful that Bill Hybels is recognizing that church programs do not automatically effect personal spiritual growth, but isn't it sad that it took a research study to lead to this realization when the Bible itself has plenty to say about the matter. Later on in the article, the executive pastor of Willow Creek says they are going to replace old assumptions and "replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture." I fear that Willow Creek has still not addressed the underlying problem: a pragmatic approach, which looks to what research says "works" rather than to the Word of God itself. Read the full article below.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2007/10/willow_creek_re.html