confession | willow creek

weeping willow

Imagine waking up one morning to the shocking realization that everything you have built your life on, your vision, your passion, and your conviction, has been wrong. That was the shocking revelation about the ministry of Willow Creek Community Church, and what makes it even more shocking is the revelation came from them. Bob Barney gives us the whole story in his article, “A shocking confession from Willow Creek Community Church leaders”

COLUMBUS, Ohio (BP)–If you are older than 40 the name Benjamin Spock is more than familiar. It was Spock that told an entire generation of parents to take it easy, don’t discipline your children and allow them to express themselves. Discipline, he told us, would warp a child’s fragile ego. Millions followed this guru of child development and he remained unchallenged among child rearing professionals. However, before his death Dr. Spock made an amazing discovery: He was wrong. In fact, he said:

“We have reared a generation of brats. Parents aren’t firm enough with their children for fear of losing their love or incurring their resentment. This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have imposed on mothers and fathers. Of course, we did it with the best of intentions. We didn’t realize until it was too late how our know-it-all attitude was undermining the self assurance of parents.”

Oops.

Something just as momentous, in my opinion, just happened in the evangelical community. For most of a generation evangelicals have been romanced by the “seeker-sensitive” movement spawned by Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. The guru of this movement is Bill Hybels. He and others have been telling us for decades to throw out everything we have previously thought and been taught about church growth and replace it with a new paradigm, a new way to do ministry.

Perhaps inadvertently, with this “new wave” of ministry came a de-emphasis on taking personal responsibility for Bible study combined with an emphasis on felt-needs based “programs” and slick marketing.

The size of the crowd rather than the depth of the heart determined success. If the crowd was large then surely God was blessing the ministry. Churches were built by demographic studies, professional strategists, marketing research, meeting “felt needs” and sermons consistent with these techniques. We were told that preaching was out, relevance was in. Doctrine didn’t matter nearly as much as innovation. If it wasn’t “cutting edge” and consumer friendly it was doomed. The mention of sin, salvation and sanctification were taboo and replaced by Starbucks, strategy and sensitivity.

Thousands of pastors hung on every word that emanated from the lips of the church growth experts. Satellite seminars were packed with hungry church leaders learning the latest way to “do church.” The promise was clear: Thousands of people and millions of dollars couldn’t be wrong. Forget what people need, give them what they want. How can you argue with the numbers? If you dared to challenge the “experts” you were immediately labeled as a “traditionalist,” a throwback to the 50s, a stubborn dinosaur unwilling to change with the times.

All that changed recently.

Willow Creek has released the results of a multi-year study on the effectiveness of their programs and philosophy of ministry. The study’s findings are in a new book titled “Reveal: Where Are You?,” co-authored by Cally Parkinson and Greg Hawkins, executive pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. Hybels himself called the findings “ground breaking,” “earth shaking” and “mind blowing.” And no wonder: It seems that the “experts” were wrong.

The report reveals that most of what they have been doing for these many years and what they have taught millions of others to do is not producing solid disciples of Jesus Christ. Numbers yes, but not disciples. It gets worse. Hybels laments:

“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.”

If you simply want a crowd, the “seeker-sensitive” model produces results. If you want solid, sincere, mature followers of Christ, it’s a bust. In a shocking confession, Hybels states:

“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 services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.”

Incredibly, the guru of church growth now tells us that people need to be reading their Bibles and taking responsibility for their spiritual growth.

Just as Spock’s “mistake” was no minor error, so the error of the seeker-sensitive movement is monumental in its scope. The foundation of thousands of American churches is now discovered to be mere sand. The one individual who has had perhaps the greatest influence on the American church in our generation has now admitted his philosophy of ministry, in large part, was a “mistake.” The extent of this error defies measurement.

Perhaps the most shocking thing of all in this revelation coming out of Willow Creek is in a summary statement by Greg Hawkins:

“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.”

Isn’t that what we were told when this whole seeker-sensitive thing started? The church growth gurus again want to throw away their old assumptions and “take out a clean sheet of paper” and, presumably, come up with a new paradigm for ministry.

Should this be encouraging?

Please note that “rooted in Scripture” still follows “rethink,” “new insights” and “informed research.” Someone, it appears, still might not get it. Unless there is a return to simple biblical (and relevant) principles, a new faulty scheme will replace the existing one and another generation will follow along as the latest piper plays.

What we should find encouraging, at least, in this “confession” coming from the highest ranks of the Willow Creek Association is that they are coming to realize that their existing “model” does not help people grow into mature followers of Jesus Christ. Given the massive influence this organization has on the American church today, let us pray that God would be pleased to put structures in place at Willow Creek that foster not mere numeric growth, but growth in grace.

Writer: Bob Burney is Salem Communications’ award-winning host of Bob Burney Live, heard weekday afternoons on WRFD-AM 880 in Columbus, Ohio. This column originally appeared at Townhall.com. Copyright (c) 2007 Southern Baptist Convention, Baptist Press.

16 Comments to confession | willow creek

1. I am not a fan of the Willow Creek club, nor do I think that Hybel’s essentially congregational principles are easily transferable to an episcopal movement like The Salvation Army. However, in reading many of the posts floating around in the blogosphere resulting from this honest and brave confession from the Willow Creek crowd, I cannot help but feel that there are a lot of sour grapes being munched during the penning of them. All these conservative modernist critics in their tiny dying churches saying, “well at least we still preach expositional sermons” or “at least we have a good sacramental theology”. A thought that can perhaps keep their minds off the smell of decay.

   Alister McGrath points out that the mega-church is the twentieth first century Christian village, a Christian community filled with activity and ministries that engage thousands of Christians and not-yet-Christians. And yes the emergents can snipe at their business models and “concert churches”, but quite frankly, the jury is still out on the emergent church movement. I have a great deal of sympathy with their writings and ideas but I suspect that they are merely the left edge of an open evangelicalism rather than the cutting edge of any new paradigm.

   And of course we have also discovered that incarnational urban ministry, like that of the 614 movement, is incredibly hard work. It is a glorious quest but is dependant on gifted, passionate suburbanites migrating in and probably will always be so.

   And then there’s the criticism by liberal theologians and practitioners and as we know that liberalism isn’t the answer to anything. The question that has been consuming me lately as a Corps Officer is why can’t we grow big congregations? Big vibrant corps where lots of people get saved and that can support all sorts of stuff with money and personnel. I hear some Salvation Army leaders saying that perhaps we were always meant to be small, as long as we’re faithful. I don’t accept that for a moment. That too has the smell of decay. A healthy and vital congregational life is the lifeblood of our movement - or should be. It’s not that I want to grow a mega-church, but I would love our corps to grow to 300 or 400 so we could then send a hundred of them out to start some other work to inspire more middle-class kids to go to Streetlevel (in Sydney) or spend a year or two with Brendon Nottle at 614 Melbourne…to become officers, soldiers, employees.

   I’m guess I’m just not a fan of Lilliputian criticism.

   Grant Sandercock Brown
admin on November 27th, 2007

2. For a church that prided itself on the ’small group’ I would suggest that their confession that they “…should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their Bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.” is probably the most striking admission that Burney highlights.

   In response to Grant’s questioning as to “why can’t we grow big congregations?” I would humbly suggest one possible answer. It might not make me popular in some circles, but one of the reasons is our model of church. For many years we prided ourselves on the fact that wherever you went in the world you would find a form of service that would differ little from that you would experience in your home corps. This was great for Salvationists but not necessarily attractive to those outside our walls. It also created an environment that concentrated more on creating good Salvationists than it did good disciples.

   I agree that a healthy congregational life is the life-blood of the Army, indeed any denomination, but at the same time this cannot take precedence over the individual development of disciples. Interestingly it seems that maybe we suffer from exactly the same issue as Hybels highlighted. We simply haven’t been very good at teaching people to read their Bible or do the spiritual disciplines, concentrating more on teaching our young people to sing and play and abstain!

   On a final note, 300 to 400 in a congregation is tiny in comparison to the likes of Willow Creek, Mars Hill and Hillsong type mega-churches! Yet I would love to see congregations like those suggested by Grant. Congregations that are continuously sending out people into ministries that are not solely based on the local congregational needs. This would suggest that maybe we had really started to make disciples that make disciples!
Graeme Smith on December 4th, 2007

3. But Grant, many of us don’t need or want to be part of congregations at all - though we are happy to meet with others for group worship in various ways. Many choose mega-church, I think Barna is currently putting it at about 50% of believers in US are involved, and it seems to be 25% (and rising?) in UK. But that leaves half the church who don’t.

   The new paradigm Barna are seeing in the US is a divergence between those who want megas and those who move to small groups, new forms, and house churches etc. I see the diversity forming as being the new paradigm in itself, many no longer interested in forking out large sums of money to support buildings (why???) so people can meet in groups of 100 (why????) when we could be meeting in replicating small groups, resourcing our growth in a wide variety of ways from networks and portfolio church, and spreading the gospel without any need for huge hierarchical organisations ‘with all their gravitas and need to control’ - and their insatiable appetites for money.

   The deepest dissatisfaction I encounter here is in non-ordained/commissioned people being left sitting around doing nothing, not needed, not included, in often moribund congregations, while the denominations of all flavours sink funding into training a few professionals and provide ordinary believers with next to nothing. (Why????) I just asked a life-time salvationist friend here in rural Cornwall how many classes or small groups he had been in which had been focussed on discipleship or formation, preparation for active service, etc in his lifetime. He is mid fities. He recalled ten classes, about thirty-five years ago. ‘You don’t understand, Eleanor, we just don’t do that’.

   Building large congregations may work here and there, but it is not important. I see it as increasingly a dangerous distraction from the real task, which is to engage disciples in making more disciples, spilling out the love of God in the neighbourhood as we go. How many congregations actually end up doing that? (Do I love stirring things up? Broad grin..)

   Warmest blessings E.
Eleanor Burne-Jones on December 4th, 2007

4. Grant,

   I have read your post a couple of times today, and here are some thoughts to consider.

   I did not take the above article to be sour grapes at all but a lesson for us all to share in. I really don’t mind learning from others.

   What concerns me about any ministry starting from a blank page is that, there is no ‘blank page’, there is the Bible.

   614 incarnational ministry is hard work. It’s also rooted in Isaiah 61:4
   ‘They will rebuild the ancient ruins, and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.’

   It’s not a glorious quest, but a persevering daily hope to meet people where they are at and share Christ, share company, and journey with all you meet. Also I am not gifted and I am without training.

   I hear your desire to build a big congregation. A vibrant community where all are supported and no one has need, a fellowship of believers.

   But I can’t help thinking that it is God’s signature that these things come in small sizes.
   Would you trust just a handful of believers to go out and spread the message of Salvation, and a Saviour nailed to a cross to the entire world? This would not have been the plan I would have gone with, I might have started with a blank sheet of paper and come up with a ten point strategy.

   It is man’s (and woman’s) signature to build big, whatever glorifies our name. A big church has no merit if your people are like the seed that fell on to shallow soil. It is God who starts small like a mustard seed. His followers ending up in jail. Denying Christ at times. The road seems to be marked with rejection, not big success stories.

   No servant is greater than their master, so I accept that success may not be what I am intended for.

   ZF
Zoe Fay on December 4th, 2007

5. While part of me wants to jump up and say Hallelujah about what Willow Creek has discovered another part of reminds me that indeed we need to be seeker sensitive also.

   I think the truth of the matter lies in the fact that we need to attract crowds and present to them the Gospel of the Good News in such a way that they reach out and accept.

   It is then at that point that we need to instill the need for spritual growth through a numer of elements, from Daily Scripture Reading through taking of personal responsibility for ou actins through group sessions through spiritual mentorship and direction.

   In some ways it says to me that we need to rethink some of what we are doing in TSA. The old concept of both a Holiness Meeting and a Salvation Meeting on Sunday may actually make sense. The Salvation meeting is the one to which we should be attracting crowds .It should be ths seeker sensitive meeting maybe modelled on what churches such as Willow Creek did.

   Once someone has made a committment has accepted Jesus then the Holiness Meeting is the one where indepth teaching in and about the Christian Life and all its elements should occur.

   Maybe also we then need to reinstitute a midweek meeting that addresses the spiritual needs of the growing in the faith Christian.

   There is so much we are in need of.

   Like Grant says in his comment I also believe that we can have 300 to 400 congregant Corps–that we are not relagated to having small Corps.
   But megaChurch Corps I have a problem with…I think anything more than 300 to 400 at the most is too large.

   Oh well we can have the vision but how do we bring it to fruition.
John Stephenson on December 4th, 2007

6. I wrote this some weeks ago now in response to the disappointingly large number of Christians who were gloating over Willow Creek’s brave confession. I have never been a devotee of Hybels but I will say that I heard himn speak live once here in Australia and he seems to me to be a man of God and a gifted communicator.

   Re the writer of the original article, lots of southern baptists can’t stand Hybels (or lots of other Christians for that matter, in fact condemnation by Southern Baptist may well be a badge of honour in some circles)and this is hardly an objective commentary by Bob. There is a limit to how many times a writer can use “shocking” in one article and whatever that limit is Bob exceeded it.

   By the way Eleanor I am still puzzling over “many of us don’t need or want to be part of congregations at all - though we are happy to meet with others for group worship”. Is that what you meant to say? There is no other model in the NT but that of a community of God’s people meeting together - all we’re discussing is an appropriate size surely? A community of 20 has real benefits but so does a a community of 200 and a community of 2000.
Grant on December 4th, 2007

7. Grant,

   Community, or congregation?

   I’ve spent decades, first in the church, then in the Jewish community, then back in the church, reflecting on and thinking about how we create and nurture congregations. In the church in the ’70s the terrible problems were the neglect of lay development via general lack of discipleship, training and mentoring for ordinary believers, and the crushing oppression of women. The church moved on on the issue of women leaders at least in the UK, but still hasn’t addressed the first in the main, though church members can go outside their denomination or congregation to find ways to grow in faith and service through all manner of ecumenical training courses and parachurch organisations.

   But I never really asked ‘why’ congregations?

   Here in a small town, we have a lot of small congregations none of whom have very good worship leaders and worship bands to cater for younger people We have lots of expensive empty buildings, creating crippling bills for church members. Some friends and I sat down last week and looked at some figures and identified a congregation of wider circle about 80 friends, about 17-25 attenders, and only two of them are in employment. The rest are mostly retired or carers.

   How can only two employed people support an entire congregation? Why not have one building in which we gather everyone for an ecumenical (or led in rotation) service once a month with all our resources pooled, and the rest of the time meet in small groups of whatever denominational flavour, or none, people wish?

   We’ve assumed the New Testament mandated congregations. I don’t think it does. I think it mandates gatherings, in which we study the Bible, worship and pray, share a meal,etc,resolve differences as we work together in spreading the Gospel and the love of God and listen to and learn from trusted apostolic leadership. We do not have to form fixed congregations, denominations, cell churches, house churches or anything else. Why church membership? Where is that in the New Testament? It almost doesn’t exist in orthodox Judaism in this country. What people do is join a burial society and subscribe to a group that undertakes to provide their rites of passage. Jews gather in a minyan when and where convenient to pray daily, increasingly in shtibls, which are private houses. It is cheaper, friendlier, and more efficient. Almost practical care and learning is non-congregationally based. It has happened in the Jewish community because people live in proximity, but in the church it is happening because of the net and global networking.

   So a retired local minister attends a dying elderly congregation hanging on in a building they can’t possibly support, but because there is no opening for meaningful service there, (apart from the essentials of caring for elderly members) he serves elsewhere, engages in Bible study from the net, prays with an ecumenical group, and works on yet another ecumenical outreach team.

   A salvationist in one of our big cities is a member at the corps, but has been given nothing to do for years, so works ecumenically in her neighbourhood and is a member of a new monastic community for spiritual growth and they also help her engage in working for social justice.

   New forms of church are already reality in rural UK. If established churches have only a few years left in rural UK, we have to ask what do we rebuild and why? Traditional congregations don’t work, they’ve been abandoned by younger generations for decades now and for several generations. So surely we should focus on the essentials, and set aside our assumptions, which were based on what worked in Christendom, in modernity paradigm. We need what will work now.

   Congregations fostered lazy laity and professional clergy. We need to ask what next?
Eleanor Burne-Jones on December 6th, 2007

8. Eleanor, it wasn’t congregations that fostered lazy laity and professional clergy. Congregations are really just a coming together of believers. This could also be called a fellowship or community.

   The problem really comes from the fact that society has moved on so much in this era of rapid societal change that the models of church that have existed for years are no longer relevant to many. This coupled with the fact that for many Christian’s their claimed faith rarely interferes with their life outside of the 4 walls of church has led to a trust deficit to those outside the buildings! The issues of lazy laity and professional clergy are more a problem of human nature struggling to act out what is essentially a counter-cultural faith within the strictures of a church that has been part of the controlling establishment for centuries.

   For those who are firmly entrenched into the ‘emerging church’ or ‘post-modern paradigm’ the word ‘congregation’ seems to have a negative connotation. Yet as I said earlier all congregations are are communities. This means that whether people like to admit it or not any gathering of Christians is really a congregation because it is where a group of Christians congregate to meet together in worship and the outworking of their faith. Calling it a community or fellowship is just a way of dressing it up differently!

   Let’s not forget as well that the traditional form of congregation did not suddenly appear at the same time as the Christendom model of church adhered itself firmly to the modernity paradigm! The traditional congregation has existed for the majority of the churches life and if we compare the church of current years with the church of the middle ages then we can see that in reality those who attended more recently as laity were probably far more involved in missional activity than their middle-ages forbears, who really were simply pew-fodder being controlled in all they did by the state through the church.

   What I don’t really understand is the obsession we have in today’s shifting church with being given something to do in order to be effective in mission! Mission is something that comes out of our discipleship. Of course we can ask the question whether our discipleship programmes have been effective or not, but the most productive missional activity over the course of the church has been from the interaction between individuals and the Holy Spirit. They were not imposed by an appointed leadership on a congregation, but instead were the natural outworking of people open to the Spirit’s leading.

   One of the issues I see as a leader is that the cult of individualism reigns supreme in today’s church. This divides into two distinct camps. The first says this is the way I have always done it so don’t try to change it even if it is totally ineffective. The other says I want to do mission so give me something to do now! Few if any come to me and say is it possible that I can try to reach out to my neighbours by doing this?

   This leads me to believe that for all its faults the varying models of church are not really the problem, but instead it is the fact that Christians have sold out in their masses to a media driven culture of consumerism. Consequently, the great ‘I want’ rules their lives instead of the great ‘I am’. We want to be fed but refuse to take responsibility for our own feeding. Even many of those who say that they want to get away from the traditional church are expecting others to produce the perfect model that will fit all their dreams of what church should be!

   I always remember the quip that says something like “If you ever find the perfect church leave quickly as it won’t be perfect anymore” and suspect that for all the complaining we do about church, we’ll never find the perfect model that meets the needs of everyone.
Graeme Smith on December 6th, 2007

9. Hi Graeme…for point of reference. The perfect church is in Atlanta Georgia. Here’s a link to a picture of it. I’ve seen it…

   http://farm1.static.flickr.com/39/111774245_21e3c86799.jpg
Rick on December 6th, 2007

10. Then I take back the last paragraph of the comment, although maybe the reason it is The Perfect Church is that the doors are closed preventing anyone getting inside!

    The rest of the comment however still stands!
Graeme Smith on December 6th, 2007

11. Hi Graeme,

    Two thoughts, you say: ‘The other says I want to do mission so give me something to do now! Few if any come to me and say is it possible that I can try to reach out to my neighbours by doing this?’

    That looks to me immediately like a training issue. Good and well thought-out training in mission moves people from the first position to the second, through giving us confidence to explore and think through what to do, and also a bank of examples to drawn on. It also provides an environment in which the group can help each other find ways rather than waiting on the CO telling them what to do.

    Secondly, by congregation I mean the sort of ‘this is my gathering’ concept. I’m sure like me you exist in a complex of networks and gatherings. But most of us belong to ‘a congregation’.

    You have one primary one - because you are leading it. Similarly if I’m leading a fresh expression or house church that becomes my primary group, (though I have a close second as a Sister with other Franciscans or Independent Religious).

    But I’m just wondering out loud here why we are stuck in thinking it is so important for a believer who is not in leadership to identify with one congregation, as in ‘I belong to St Gremlin’s’. I could see a reason for it if congregations were usually highly effective in mobilising each member in mission. But that is hardly what I see around me. Now if they provided amazing opportunities for highly motivated, passionately engaged (by which I don’t mean strung out and overworking) teams in a high challenge high support environment I wouldn’t have any worries.

    But that isn’t reality. The other question is to do with maths and leadership. While a small group of 12 involves 12 people having 11 relationships each other, and the leader facilitating a group which has 12×11 relationships (maths isn’t my strong point), if you go up to sizes of 50-250 plus, the complexity of the system escalates wildly. (Well it escalates mathematically actually, but my brain shuts down at that point!). This demands a very skilled, intelligent, emotionally and spiritually mature and stable leader.

    Is God actually sending us enough people like that who are able to lead groups the size of what we imagine a ‘congregation’ should be? If he isn’t, surely we need to listen to the Holy Spirit and try to discern what God is saying to us. what I hear out here in rural UK is ‘we don’t have enough leaders who can lead our congregations’ and ‘we don’t have sufficiently skilled leaders’ etc.

    Leaders of large congregations - even medium sized congregations - often work furiously hard at doing everything under the sun except making missional disciples who will go out and make more disciples. They haven’t got time because of the work involved in simply leading a congregation - and they are modelling Christian life for others.

    That worries me.

    Thoughts?

    Blessings, E.
Eleanor Burne-Jones on December 7th, 2007

12. I actually do think that it is important for there to be a primary group that each individual meets in. One of the things that this should provide for us is a form of accountability that is long-term.

    As for a congregation providing us with the mobilisation that you seem to be expecting them to. I’m not sure that this has ever really happened. When I look at the NT I see groups, congregations if you like, of believers who simply went about their Christian lives in the public eye, but did not cease meeting together. It was this public visibility of true disciples that convinced people to become Christians. The very fact that Paul taught the various churches about communal worship suggests that the sorts of congregations that exist today existed then.

    This is why I think that having the expectation of a church leader to supply each of her members with a tailor-made missional activity is simply implausible. We continue, in the West, to want to be spoon-fed in all aspects of our walk. We expect the church to provide us with as much or as little as we are prepared to accept, whilst doing very little for ourselves, including finding ways of being salt and light in the world!
Graeme Smith on December 7th, 2007

13. Hi All…

    I have an issue with the whole “seeker sensitive” model in that the Gospel, as I read it, does not come across as “seeker sensitive.”

    Consider Jesus words from Luke 9:23-24 “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lost it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” In an attempt to contextualise this “I’m on my way to the electric chair, if you want to be my disciple then BYO double adapter!”

    Or how about Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:23 “This man (Jesus) was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” In other words, “Jesus died and you killed him!”

    These words would fail the “seeker sensitive” test. In fact, they are seeker “insensitive” more than anything else.

    Maybe we need a model of seeker “insenstivity” and cultural “irrelevancy”?

    Perhaps the problems that Willow Creek have identified have arisen because those who have come to faith through this model have received a “product” rather than a “person.” They have been offered forgiveness without repentence, and salvation without sacrifice. They’ve been sold a lie and now they’re paying the price.

    We’re not immune to this problem, of couse. I’m sure there are many officers and congregations that have employed this methodology with the best of intentions yet have produced a generation of week, half-hearted, consumer Christians. Hey, I count myself in as one who both bought and sold it.

    That, however, does not negate the grace of God. We have to be aware that whatever model we use is just that - a model. It is an imperfect attempt by us to present the perfect gospel of Jesus Christ. As such, whatever model we employ, whether that’s seeker-sensitive, salvation/holiness meeting, open-air services, or otherwise, will need to be reviewed and reworked constantly and faithfully. I applaud Willow Creek for having the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say “We made a mistake!” That’s the most attractive thing I have ever heard come from them and I’m glad to call each of them a brother and sister in Christ. I pray that we would be as willing to admit our mistakes as they have shown themselves to be.

    Grant, I’m not sure why we need congregations of 300 to 400 to achieve what you have suggested. Couldn’t a congregation of 30-40 do the same as what you are suggesting albeit on a smaller scale? That is, send out some of their number for the purpose of engaging in some type of mission work. I’m not sure why we need to wait until we have congregations of this number in order to achieve what you suggest. In fact, I’m not sure how you would get a congregation of 300 to 400 without engaging in what you suggest before arriving at that number.

    Was the number just arbitrary?
Adam Couchman on December 10th, 2007

14. Adam

    I enjoyed your post especially “They have been offered forgiveness without repentence, and salvation without sacrifice. They’ve been sold a lie and now they’re paying the price.”

    That appears to be a major if not the major problem with seeker sensitive post-modern congegations.

    But as you said Willow Creek at least had the strength to admit they made a mistake and need to reevealuate and readdress how they do religion.

    Christianity involves the whole being.
    To be a follower of Christ one must repent and one must sacrifice some of the pleasures of this world to stay on the path of following Jesus.

    As to size I for one think a congregation of 200 to 250 regular attenders is about the size that an Officer or Pastor can handle. It is also a good size for members to know one another and have a sense of community. The larger the group the loss connectivess as a family.

    Yes it is also possible to do the same with a congregation of 30 to 50 but there would need to be some great changes in how we (TSA) conduct ourselves for this to happen. Full time Officers for such size would appear to be cost-prohibitive but tentmaking Officers may work. There needs to be thought given to this concept which we have ignored for the most part in TSA ( part time Officers)

    John
John Stephenson on December 11th, 2007

15. Congregational size is an interesting issue. I tend to go for the Mennonite model that takes 120 as about a max size for everyone to have relationships with the others, and beyond that they plant. Here in UK the usual teaching seems to be one pastor/minister can lead around 120 people, growth beyond that means a second minister is needed.

    Many people simply don’t like being in large groups, so diversity seems to be a good idea.

    To reply to Graeme, long term accountability is a bit difficult to attain in churches where the ministers keep changing every few years, and where the lay person may well have developed skills completely outside the minister’s realm of expertise. So someone who has multiple areas of ministry as many of us do, have also multiple accountabilities (ie within Mediator networks, spiritual director groups, planting or fresh expression of church frameworks etc). I don’t see there’s much anyone can do about that.

    I do believe that if you are a member of a denomination or congregation that group has a fundamental responsibility to (appoint someone to) develop and mentor you. It doesn’t have to be the minister but it does have to be someone basically capable. This is called discipleship/formation and is the whole point of church - helping people to become fully mature in the fullness of Christ, which means in service as well as in their inner lives. If you slack on this, the church drifts into helpless passivity. What is the point of a congregation if it has no shared sense of mission or sense of teamwork?
Eleanor Burne-Jones on December 11th, 2007

16. Hey my friends interesting article and more interesting remarks. Check out the ministry at Southlands Community Church in South Winnipeg, Manitoba Can. Growing to some 200 or more. People of all nations are finding a friendly church home. Yes people come and go and others are moved to a deeper faith from the pastor. Oh yes I love the Army but we are marching in deep troubled times . Take the time to pray for each other and support each other with love. It, is time to unite as one. Henry Armstrong, just marching along in faith.Ps my spelling may not be great but I can still pray.
Henry Armstrong on December 14th, 2007

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