Few churches have had the impact on American church life than Willow Creek. Thousands of church leaders flock to their conferences each year to learn how to do church like Willow Creek. Their pastor, Bill Hybels, has written a number of books on church ministry and Christian living that have been popular. I have a number of them on my shelves and enjoyed reading them and learned from each of them. It certainly came as a surprise to many on the Willow Creek staff when a survey they took showed that their efforts have not been effective in producing mature believers.
Their approach was to develop numerous programs for people to attend believing that their participation in these programs would lead to spiritual maturity. Hybels now admits they should have encouraged their members to take more personal responsibility for their spiritual development by reading the Scriptures and practicing spiritual disciplines at home.
A number of web sites and blogs seem to enjoy this admission by Hybels. I've never understood the oppostion to Willow Creek that has existed by many groups. Personally, it sounds like jealousy to me. Willow Creek has successfully reached out to thousands of people to bring them into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Multitudes of people will spend eternity in heaven because of the ministry of Willow Creek.
I'm thankful that Hybels and the church are willing to admit what their studies discovered. Some church leaders would have tried to cover that up, but the leaders at Willow Creek reported honestly what their studies learned, admitted they had make mistakes in the area of discipleship, and are looking at the changes they need to make to improve this area of their ministry.
One of my questions in this is how are they different than many of our churches? We only have to take a look at the condition of our nation, the decline in many areas of church life, the wide-spread ignorance of the Bible, the controversies that plague many of our denominations, the moral failures of many of our ministry leaders, the decline in baptisms, and the little impact that the church is having on our society to recognize that this is not a problem limited to Willow Creek. Many of our churches are failing to develop disciples. What makes Willow Creek different is that they now admit their failures and are looking to correct them. Many of our other churches won't even admit they are not effectively producing disciples, and they certainly are not interested in finding new ways of doing ministry that might be more effective.
This may well be the most important challenge facing our churches as we approach a new year. Pastors and other church leaders need to step back and evaluate the effectiveness of their discipling programs. The Great Commission calls us to not only reach out and lead people to a relationship with Jesus Christ but to also help them develop as His disciples.
I would encourage the readers of this blog to call together the leaders of your church and begin evaluating the ministry of the church in the area of disciple-making. What is the level of spiritual maturity of the members of your church? Is this growing? What church programs have been effective in helping your congregation grow more mature spiritually? Which ones are not effective? What does your church need to do in 2008 to help the spiritual development of your congregation? These seem to be good starting questions to address a wide-spread problem in many of our churches.
No comments:
Post a Comment