Brace Yourself: There is about to be a major paradigm shift across america, which is great! Willow Creek Community Church, which has been atleast as influential as Saddleback, especially in the 80's & 90's is rethinking what they have invested themselves in.
I'm still taking in the data, but I will have more to say later. I think this is a good thing and will have a ripple affect around the country.
quote from Willow Creek's Pastor
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.Here is the video of pastor Bill Hybels explaining the discovering and its implications.
In a nutshell, the people want meat, they want to know how to feed themselves and not just be catered to and programmed into spiritual maturity. More activity doesn't equal spiritual maturity. AMEN! I honor Pastor Hybels for his humility in receiving a report that was critical of much of their efforts and sharing it with the Christian community.
I'm not going to boast or brag that we have it right. We don't. We have new people coming in quickly and we are not doing all that we should do. Every church is enslaved to its traditions and assumptions. We can never stop examining what we are doing or not doing.
One more quote from the article:
Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out 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. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he’s asking us to transform this planet.
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