I am usually skeptical of large churches (I don’t need to go into the details as to why), but if there was a large church who did things right, I thought it was Willow Creek. My wife and I even visited last July and we both felt like it was a doctrinally sound church that just did things right.

Several weeks ago Willow Creek announced a 30-year public apology. They say that their approach to church was wrong. The basis of how they did church was to create programs, get people involved in programs, and this would lead to spiritual growth. They did a research in their church body and they found that seekers and new Christians loved the church and felt like they were being fed spiritually. But they found as Christians matured spiritually, they became less satisfied with the church and weren’t being fed. Willow found that mature Christians were expecting the church to continue feeding them. Bill Hybels says, “we should have been teaching Christians to be ’self-feeders’ as they mature.”

Their remedy for this issue is to have “personal spiritual trainers.” The idea is that as you mature spiritually, you meet with a trainer and they create a custom plan for you to grow spiritually.

Willow’s approach sounds interesting, but I still feel like we’re doing church wrong. I can’t give an answer to what the right way is–and I’m not sure if Willow even knows. But it will be interesting to see where things will go as we wrestle with the issues.

Resources:
Willow Creek Repents?
Will Creek Repents? (Part 2)
Greg Hawkins : Hear the heart behind REVEAL
Bill Hybels : The wake up call of my adult life