Back to Basics

A couple of weeks ago, Willow Creek Community Church (one of the most influential churches in America) made some remarkable statements. They released some research into how well their church programmes and activities facilitated spiritual growth.

Greg Hawkins (executive pastor) 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.”

In essence, this is the philosophy of most churches in the western world. The idea is that by creating programmes and activities, people will grow spiritually through participation.

Hawkins continues; “I know it might sound crazy but that’s how we do it in churches. We measure levels of participation.”

But when the research came back (now published in Greg's book 'Reveal'), Willow Creek leaders were shocked at the findings. Bill Hybels explained at a leadership summit recently: "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."

After 30 years in ministry, Hybels calls this the "wake up call of his adult life."

He said that what the church should have done when someone became Christian was encourage them to become 'self-feeders'. In other words, encourage and help them to read their Bibles, pray and build relationships on their own.


For a fuller article, check out this blog. It also has all the links to the Willow Creek resources should you want to check out the research further.