First, let’s get the story from the horse’s mouth : Willow Creek’s Reveal study
To younger church leaders (usually with small congregations) leaping for joy at Willow Creek’s recent bout with “repentance”, halt ye your leaping and take a closer look. Scot McKnight (as usual) serves up a few wise and balanced observations.
The common taunt I hear runs like this: “Willow Creek just spent millions of dollars to discover that bible reading and prayer are the keys to developing genuine, self-feeding Christians. I could have told them that for free!”
Woe to you, young church leader, lest your small church becomes large and you, as a leader, make some mistakes. Will you undertake an investigation into your own shortcomings? And after undertaking this investigation, will you publicly discuss you findings?
Another objection I hear is the amount of money that was spent on the study and that it is an awful lot of money for a church to spend merely looking at itself. McKnight points out that:
They have now studied — get this — more than 230 churches, more than 75,000 surveys, and studied churches all across the map. This doesn’t reveal just what is going on at Willow but what is going on all around the USA. 40% of the churches being studied are neither seeker-targeted nor seeker-sensitive.
Now, I’m no fan of seeker sensitivity when it lacks the essential ingredient – sense – but neither am I a supporter of the 17th-century glorification model, where the women are always quiet and the men are always right… about everything… all the time.
Let’s give Willow Creek some time and see what comes of it. Maybe all those wagging fingers could be put to work building a bridge. After all, they’re calling it a “conversation” and want to find different ways to “do church”… Could Willow Creek be the biggest, newest emerging church ever?!!? Stay tuned.
