Willowcreek research says programmes do not equal spiritual growth!

ht to Matt for this article on recent research done on themselves by Willowcreek

The research shows that participation in a programme does not equate with spiritual depth/growth.  Senior Pastor Hyballs says...

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.

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 services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

Executive Pastor Greg Hawkins admits that his primary concern when he sits in a service is how many people are there, that it has become a distraction for him... he wonders whether it is right that all the money collected at their huge services gets ploughed into staff, service equipment (lights, building etc.) and programmes.  He says there aim is to help those who are far from God move closer, and they do this by programmes, classes, etc.  Participation in Church activities has become the measure of discipleship!  He says that the first thing the research shows is that participation in Church programmes does NOT produce disciples... increasing participation in Church does NOT mean a growing/deepening relationship with God.  In fact Hawkins says that many of people who invest most of their time in Church activity say that their Spiritual life/walk is "stalled" and that the most "centred" people, the people whose lives are most centred on Christ/God are the group who are leaving Church and the ones who express the most dissatisfaction with Church.  He suggests the "revolutionary" concept that Church leaders should not just listen to staff and leaders but should listen to the people in the congregation.  Unfortunately as Matt points out the answer to this is that Willowcreek have written a book and developed a programme, entitled "Reveal", to address it!  Oh well, step by step guys!
Hawkins says,

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. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he’s asking us to transform this planet.

The question will be how this research impacts the day to day life of Willowcreek, there is no doubt they have a very powerful voice in US Christendom, so will they re-orientate and will others follow?  It would be good if in doing this they begin to point to the communities in the US who have been trailblazing relational/missional community and to challenge the Holy Cows of the evangelical mega-church movement they have promulgated.
watch the video

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Comments

[Andrew]

When i read the research report I was amazed that they were surprised by the results - but when you buy in totally to a consumer approach and suddenly discover that 25% of your church might leave it must come as major shock.
I thought it was interesting that what "mature" christians were saying was that church played a much less important role in their on-going spiritual growth whereas new Christians found the church very important for that purpose. I wonder in the new churches we are "birthing" what this has to say to us - are we into a discussion around spiritually mature / immature?

[Mark]

I think that is an interesting question Andrew... a lot of the "new churches" start from a position of intentional and intimate community... so there is something present about belonging, perhaps it is belonging in a different way... belonging through relationship rather than through participation??? I don't know. The other question is do the spiritually "mature" find less need for Church because they do not need community or they do not need what Church is offering? I think there are clear links between this and Alan Jamieson's research (Churchless faith)