Willow Creek Admits Mistakes, Re-evaluating Ministry

The blog Out of Ur reports that Willow Creek, the mega-church outside of Chicago, which has led a "mega-shift" in the way church ministry has been done (and made many-a-pastor jealous of their success, myself-included) has reported that its leadership has realized that they have had some wrong assumptions. Greg Hawkins says their philosophy had been:

"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.”

Now they have determined that this strategy of growth through participation has NOT been a determining factor in producing spiritual growth. Now, executive pastor(?) Bill Hybels says:

"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."

Is their new analysis correct? Have they considered enough factors? Have they discovered the root issue(s)? Will a new strategy work better?

My first thought about any mega-church is that one of the first, and most difficult, factors to consider is the problem of "success" itself and how difficult it is to see "to the bottom" of it.

Nothing draws a crowd better than being seen as "in" and "the next thing" and to be seen as drawing a crowd. But nothing fails like success in the spiritual realm. We should not fault churches for being large, but we should fault anyone who thinks they are winning a spiritual war just because they attract a crowd.

The depravity of human nature is far too sinister and self-deceived to think mere attendance and involvement mean very much. The Bible demands that we should expect mixed and wrong motivations. Jesus drew crowds too, but he saw it often was for all the wrong reasons.

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man. ~ John 2:23-25

I do not know enough about Willow Creek's ministry to comment in any more depth except to say that we all should admit that making disciples is difficult (humanly impossible, we need a sovereign God's supervision) and there are no easy answers. All pastors should be suspicious of any claim of knowing "the secrets" of effective ministry if its not directly in the Bible.

We should all dedicate ourselves to the sovereign hand of God and the hard work of preaching, teaching, admonishing,and praying with sweat, blood and tears and a broken heart that cries to God in prayer for His mercy and teaches others to do the same.

I am glad for Willow Creek admitting to having wrong assumptions and focus. I also hope they keep the humility and keep from giving the impression they have "a corner" on the secrets of effective ministry. May I do the same.