Willow Creek "Muffs Up Maturity"

Woody sent me an article from October 18, 2007 entitled “Willow Creek Repents?” I think it originated in a Christianity Today's blog, "Out of Ur." I have abridged it below as a follow-up to my own essay called “Muffing up Maturity.”

Few would disagree that Willow Creek Community Church has been one of the most influential churches in America over the last thirty years.

Willow, through its association, has promoted a vision of church that is big, programmatic, and comprehensive. This vision has been heavily influenced by the methods of secular business. James Twitchell, in his new book Shopping for God, reports that outside Bill Hybels’ office hangs a poster that says: “What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?” Directly or indirectly, this philosophy of ministry—church should be a big box with programs for people at every level of spiritual maturity to consume and engage—has impacted every evangelical church in the country.

So what happens when leaders of Willow Creek stand up and say, “We made a mistake”?

Not long ago Willow released its findings from a multiple year qualitative study of its ministry. Basically, they wanted to know what programs and activities of the church were actually helping people mature spiritually and which were not. The results were published in a book that was recently released. Hybels, the executive pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, called the findings “earth shaking,” “ground breaking,” and “mind blowing.”

Hybels previously taught that if more people participate in sets of activities on a more frequent basis, more disciples of Christ will be produced. This has been Willow’s philosophy of ministry in a nutshell: The church creates programs/activities. People participate in these activities. The outcome is spiritual maturity. Up until now Willow Creek has put all of its eggs into the program-driven church basket.

You can understand Willow’s shock when the research revealed that “Increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone’s becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether they love God more or they love people more.”

Speaking at the Leadership Summit, Hybels summarized the findings this way. “Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into, thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually… Other things that we didn’t put that much [staff and] money into is stuff our people are crying out for.”

Having spent thirty years creating and promoting a multi-million dollar organization driven by programs and measuring participation, and convincing other church leaders to do the same, you can see why Hybels called this research “the wakeup call” of his adult life.

Hybels confesses, “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 [sic], how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.”

In other words, spiritual growth doesn’t happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. And, ironically, these basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage.

Does this mark the end of Willow’s thirty years of influence over the American church? Not according to 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.”

(If you haven’t read “Muffing Up Maturity,” skip down and see what I wrote about this very subject before I read the article about Willow Creek.)

What Are You Reading?

Here are titles and brief notes about each of the books I’ve read (or am reading) so far in 2007.
1. The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg – OK, but Seeking the Face of God is WAY better!
2. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyesvsky – Worth reading the classic, but Dostoyevsky’s mind was sick and the book is depressing.
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandr Dumont – Light, long and REALLY fun to read!
4. Patrick by Stephen Lawhead – It has its parts that are violent, but it was a great book.
5. The Great Influenza by John M. Barry – very poorly edited (should have been 300 pages instead of nearly 500), but fascinating to learn more about the influenza epidemic of 1918
6. The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence – I like meditating on it a sentence at a time. There are some things I don't like about it, though. Ask me about it.
7. Get me Out of That Pit! by Beth Moore – I like her studies better than her books. This one should have been a pamphlet.
8. Seeking the Face of God by Gary Thomas – Excellent!
9. Night by Eliezer Wiesel – You are better off reading The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Wiesel’s experience in concentration camps is similar to Ten Boom’s – only she redeemed her suffering and came out with HOPE.
10. Boxers to Bandits by Stephen Fortosis and Mary Graham Reid – Not the best writing or editing, but still very worth the read. I loved learning about the pioneer Christian missionaries to China and seeing what God did back then!
11. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway – My least favorite Hemingway piece so far. I stuck with it because I hope to see Paris next year – ever so briefly en route to Israel!
12. Mountain Light by Lawrence Yep – Juvenile fiction – not super-well written, but interesting.

13. Praying God's Word by Beth Moore - Basically a book that re-words Scripture into prayers - something I enjoy a lot!

What are YOU reading?

He Is in My Boat

I’d like to share an idea from Amy Carmichael’s book first published in 1933. Rose from Brier was given to me by my very special friend and mentor, Win Couchman. I have read it carefully many times and continue to be blessed by the thoughts presented.

It is normal at times to have fears “spring to life.” We wonder if all is well. No human voice can reassure us. “We must have our Lord’s, His very own.” Like the disciples in the midst of the storm, when urgent fears assail us, we cry out, “Master, carest Thou not?”

It is a needless cry because the Master is right there in the boat. 2 Timothy 1:12 says, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

“Storms may lie ahead. The waves may break into the ship. There is no promise of a calm passage. Let us settle it, therefore, in our hearts, as something that cannot be shaken, that our first prayer, our deepest desire, shall be not for blue skies and sweet airs, but that we may always have the ungrieved Presence of the Captain and the Master in our ship.”

Here’s part of a poem Carmichael wrote about the assurance of the Master’s care before our urgent call.

Lord, is all well? Oh, tell me; is all well?
No voice of man can reassure the soul
When over it the waves and billows roll;
His words are like the tinkling of a bell.
Do Thou speak; is all well?

Across the turmoil of the wind and sea,
But as it seemed from somewhere near to me,
A voice I know – Child, look at Calvary;
By the merits of My Blood, all is well.

Whence came the voice? Lo, He is in the boat;
Lord, wert Thou resting in Thy love when I,
Faithless and fearful, broke into that cry?
O Lord, forgive; a shell would keep afloat
Didst Thou make it Thy boat.

He is in the boat!

Muffing Up Maturity

Yesterday I read an article that Woody sent to me. It was written by Gordon MacDonald. Some of you may recall that MacDonald is familiar with “muffing up.” Unlike other fallen Christian leaders, MacDonald humbly repented of his sin, and God has seen fit to continue to use him, just as he used a king named David who muffed up centuries ago. MacDonald is now editor at large of Leadership magazine and chair of World Relief.

Martin Thornton said, “A walloping great congregation is fine and fun, but what most communities really need is a couple of saints. The tragedy is that they may well be there in embryo, waiting to be discovered, waiting for sound training, waiting to be emancipated from the cult of the mediocre.”

Joel Osteen has made it big. Let me promise you, he has a walloping great congregation. In Houston – what used to be the Rockets’ stadium – Lakewood Church hosts three services with an average attendance of 16,000 per service. On Larry King Live he was introduced as a “megapastor.” Woody kiddingly told me, “Hey! I want to be a mega-super-hyper-maxi-pastor!” Osteen’s main goal is to make people feel really good about themselves and believe that God has better things for them - both in this life and the life to come.

MacDonald writes about how we as a church are not too bad at bringing people to Christ and doing basic discipleship. It is possible to have programs - and the modern church loves programs! - that bring people to Christ and take them through booklets that teach them the basics of the faith. But programs rarely produce true mature Christians.

We are good at producing “churchy Christians,” but listen to how MacDonald describes the holy, Christ-like, and godly man or woman of God : “I have in mind those who walk through all the corridors of the larger life – the market-place, the home and community, the playing fields – and do it in such a way that, sooner or later, it is concluded that Jesus’ fingerprints are all over them.”

Like I was hearing on Tom Dooleys’ Through the Bible podcast, these are people who - just by the way they live - leave behind them a trail that makes people ready to hear about Jesus. It’s hard to define a mature Christian, but you are likely to know one when you see one. The marks of maturity include a spiritual devotional life that is self-sustaining, wisdom in human relationships, humble service, and comfort in the everyday life in the real world where faith is lived out among unbelievers.

How many people do you know that are like that? Have we forgotten how to raise saints? What are we doing wrong? Reading the wrong books? Doing the wrong studies? Preaching wrong? Too much emphasis on self-help? Too much application in church of the world’s principles of success?

Mature Christians are formed in many ways, but one important key is through mentoring.
When I was a young wife and mother and missionary in Bolivia, I realized that I sorely needed a godly woman to mentor me. During one furlough I decided to approach several mature women that had experience in ministry as well as being a godly wife and mother. I was shocked and sorely disillusioned when one after the other, they refused to share their lives and wisdom with me. One of them told me bluntly, “I have nothing to teach you.” I almost got down on my knees to beg her, “Can’t you teach me some of what you know about following Christ and serving others? You host many people in your home. Can you give me tips on having a healthy balance between hosting guests and caring for family? Can you at least give me some recipes that are easy to fix for big groups?”

“No.”

The answer was final. And my heart was broken. I could only go to God and say, “You have to help me! I want to do this right and well. Help me, please!”

Mentoring might involve sharing a helpful book with someone, but it goes way beyond sharing recipes and reading books. As we read that book, we talk of life and we pray about ways that God needs to change us and how to go about that. Mentoring takes place on the streets of life – learning how to live as a Christian in the nitty-gritty of life. “Mature Christians are made one by one through the influence of other Christians already mature,” says MacDonald.

I’ve been writing a devotional. A couple of weeks of Su’s Daily Devos focus on the reality of suffering in our lives. Mature Christians grow through suffering. A sense of inadequacy is the stepping stone to dependency on God. Wrestling with questions and doubt are the springboard to growth. Mature Christians fail forward, as has MacDonald. They say a strategic “no” when others are indulging themselves with “yeses.” And they fall and learn to get up again. As MacDonald says from his own personal experience, “Mature Christians are experts at repenting and humility.” Mature Christians learn under one who has gone before so that “his/her life becomes a textbook on Christ’s work in us.”

Just like my failed search for a mentor over 20 years ago, young people today are failing to find mentors. People of my generation are more interested in cruises than modeling Christ. As MacDonald puts it, they are “too busy, too distracted, too secretive, and too afraid.” He doesn’t add that they are also too immature! Maturity in Christ has not been among their long-range goals!

I hope and pray along with Gordon MacDonald that we won’t lose a new generation of young Christians who couldn’t get past infancy because we were unwilling or unable to “emancipate an embryo,” or at least share a recipe!