It was definately nice to hear Hybles speak candidly in response to all the buzz. I am highly critical of mega churches in general. As one mega church pastor up in the great north recently said to the effect that mixing big and God together can be dangerous.

What I find unbelievable is that Willow, Bill Hybels, and the church growth movement are locked on the terms "effective," "relevant," and even "thrill." I was reminded of Henri Nouwen's exclamation that the future Christian leader must be one who is willing to claim their "irrelevance" as a divine vocation in a world seeking relevance.

Each of these terms were significant in the video interview conversation. It is obvious that Willow is beholden to its model and while making some tinkering adjustments the paradigm remains the same. What I find more astounding is that Hybels thinks he is building an Acts 2 church? What? How does he make that practical and hermeneutical jump? I sure hope someone of his stature is not beholden to the misinformed idea that because thousands were added to the church at Pentecost that meant a mega-church was started? Those people scattered back to their villages and homes. They did'nt gather in the stadiums of Caesar and the politicla gatherings of Rome (ekklesia) they in their communities formed micro-counter versions of these.

I have no illusions that Willow is ever going to disolve itself and become a thousand small churches with fully discipled and equipped pastors. But what urkes me to no end is the presumptious language of late capitalistic market terminologies which get laid over the Scriptural language as if there is not difference.

Oh well, I'll just keep being faithful in my church fellowship. I just wish these churches would stop using modern categories to define themselves. Because we're looking less and less like the church and more and more like corporations. Seems like they've transformed and conformed the church more than the church as transformed them.

After listening to the video, I have two thoughts.
1. I think the articles in question were written fairly based on the comments by Hawkins and by the videos with Hybels and other leaders.
2. In this latest "interview" Hybels spent the entire time defending their mission to stay "seeker" sensitive, but the articles did not say they would no longer try to reach the un-churched. The articles were about their REVEAL study which highlighted Willow's inability to make mature disciples. Based on this disconnect, I have serious doubts that Hybels actually read the articles or else he just was a bit oversensitive in his response.

When Hybels comes out after 30 years and says directly, "we were wrong!" AND we plan some "radical" changes in the way we do church--I think writing an article that says, "Willow Repents" is fair. After all, is that not what repentance is? Recognizing a wrong and making a change?

Finally, I have to say that I am not shocked at the response. From the beginning, Hybles has made it clear that their "radical" change is really just more of the same with a different program to replace the older programs. From my perspective, they are not changing their philosophy, just their accessories.

I love Willow but I think there is a bit of "blame the messenger" going on here. Willow is amazingly terrible at communication these days. Defining Moments not available online when Catalyst Podcast and Audio Ur are; web-casting of sermons is spotty; no one on their staff seems to blog; their best thing is the Leadership Summit which is so last decade and causes absolutely no buzz; no speakers from Willow are speaking at conferences; and no Willow people are writing books. At least that is my perception. Greg Hawkins's book and his "defending" it were a disaster. Evaluating the most influential church in the nation with a second rate marketer when Leadership Network, Hartford Seminary and numerous sociology dissertations have been done on Willow? If they don't want to be a teaching church - passing on what they are doing anymore, I think that is fine - it is probably a waste of resources by most of the churches who do that. But if they still want to do that, they are falling far behind I'm afraid.

If anyone is being disingenuous, it is Bill Hybels. The issue is not about methods or programs or being sensitive to seekers (a clearly unbiblical concept). The issue is the teaching from the pulpit. The impression I received from the original video was that Willow was about to take a theological turn towards sound teaching.

Since Willow has decided to bring in false teachers such as Brian McLaren, it is clear that this is a church that is not committed to the faithful delivery of God's Word. The product of all their efforts can only be that lost souls will exit the building self-satisfied and self-deceived.

Here are the links to all the CT and Out of Ur articles. You missed #s 2 and 3 above.

6. Willow Creek Responds

Bill Hybels tries to set the record straight about REVEAL.

June 6, 2008

Matt Branaugh | posted 5/15/2008

Greg Hawkins tells about the big changes Willow Creek is making.

April 11, 2008

One sociologist says Willow Creek’s research may not be as revealing as we think.

January 14, 2008

Greg Hawkins responds with the truth about REVEAL.

October 26, 2007

Why the most influential church in America now says "We made a mistake."

October 18, 2007

I like much of what Willow and Bill Hybels has had to offer over the years. I think if one looks at any ministry with a critical eye, one can always find fault -- which gets boring pretty quick.

That being said, the one being truly disingenuous here is Willow & Hybels, not Out of Ur (as he suggests). Willow is the one who introduced Reveal with a full-court-press marketing blitz. Willow is the one which said it had been very wrong and had now changed. The application of the term "repent" was fully appropriate in this context.

And with all respect to Bill Hybels and his ministry, a Christian who has difficulty admitting the need to repent, and who instead wants only to speak in terms of "strategic adjustments," is headed for trouble.

Could we spend a little less energy criticizing Willow Creek?

Yeah, that Jesus. He sure was unbiblical when he showed sensitivity to the adulterous woman, or the bleeding woman, raised the young man at Nain, healed demon possessed people, and taught us to love our enemies.

Sheeesh. That sermon on the mount was just so unsound.

As a former coworker of youse guys, I really don't believe CTI has an axe to grind. If Willow or Hybels are upset about the reportage (or the bloggage) it's more than likely because their own heads are still spinning over the results of this study and what to do about it -- it's no wonder they're maybe not doing the best job at explaining what's going on in the wake of this tectonic worldview shift.

For my own part, I think Willow should heed Warren's advice: "It's not [all] about you." What Willow has doine (and is doing) through this study is a service to the Body of Christ. Maybe a sometimes painful servie, but healthy nonetheless.

See my own reaction to CT's article: What Willow Creek's 'Reveal' study really tells us...

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

To describe the works of Christ when he walked the earth as sensitive or seeker sensitive or meeting felt needs is to marginalize, minimalize, and belittle His person and work. In other words, it is to totally miss the point.

I was at the Willow Summit last year when Bill said the REVEAL study "rocked his world" and they showed a video that said "Willow is taking out a clean sheet of paper" and doing ministry in a whole new way and "these are the biggest changes in 30 years."

Now they're talking "continuity" and "a few strategic adjustments"? Wow. What changed?

Yeah, it totally misses the point.
I mean the 3 years of Jesus' teaching and ministry--i.e. service to others--was just a lovely prologue to supply us with Sunday School lessons for children.

Please don't assume that a serious appropriation of the whole ministry of Christ is somehow a denegration or denial of the work of the Cross.

I think that what is going on here is that, taken alone the reporting on the REVEAL study probably isn't biased. However, in the context of the sort of criticism Willow has long been subjected to, the way it was reported made it seem like Willow Creek was finally admitting to what critics had long claimed - that it diluted the message of Christ, pandered to seekers, and taught a "feel good" theology that didn't challenge or grow people. Anyone who attended Willow for any length of time knows that this is a load of dung. So, I think that Hybel's response is best understood in the context of the sort of criticism Willow has long been subjected to. There are some who saw REVEAL as an admission of wrongdoing (requiring repentance?) and Willow's changes as a repudiation of what they had been doing for 30 years. Hybels is saying, "uh-uh. Not so fast." Which is a good thing. Although Willow is not perfect and their approach has been somewhat incomplete, they have brought a lot of people to Christ and done some really good work in the world and in the church. I'm glad to see that they are changing, but I'm also glad they aren't simply repudiating what they've done to this point as well.

Gotta love the "big is bad" generalization. Some of the mega churches are doing great things and growing because of it. It is easy to sit in a small church and pretend you are small because you are being "true to the gospel".

Growth is not everything but, if we are true to the gospel, we cannot help but grow.

Nathan said "As a former coworker of youse guys, I really don't believe CTI has an axe to grind."

That's fair. CT/Ur isn't about making a point, it's about generating pageviews. They're not going after Willow as such, they're just trying to draw traffic to their site.

This whole thing is ironically hilarious. It would be an understatement to say I'm not the biggest Willow fan in the world, but I'd bet money nobody in this thread has actually read REVEAL.

REVEAL said that seeker stuff works incredibly well (better than they expected, actually) for growing people who don't know Jesus or are young in their faith. What REVEAL also said was that *NO* front-stage programmatic approach was sufficient for continued growth, which is highly dependent on personal disciplines and is relatively unaffected by what's taught at the front. Teach verse-by-verse through the New Testament, it doesn't matter unless people get into their Bibles on their own.

So Willow's radical shift wasn't to cut their seeker service, it was to cut their believer's service and blend it back into the seeker service. Instead of having New Community every week, they're spending all of that energy focusing on personal disciplines.

We'll see if it works for them. I'm skeptical, but at least I'm informed.

Bravo, Bill! It is great to hear Bill explain that Willow's mission is still the same, even if it's methods continue to change along the way. Since I was one of the pastors quoted by the CT article about Willow's Shift, I want to add that I was rather stunned to see my words re-shaped to say something I did not say. When CT interviewed me, I did say that I saw Willow's current move as another step in the direction of getting deeper.

Several years ago, Bill told a group of us pastors (not at the Summit) that in the early years Willow was "a mile wide and an inch deep." When they chose to do more vertical teaching and less relational theology, many people left.

Then, a few years later, they aimed to go deeper again by adding teachers like John Ortberg to the staff.

The CT article took pieces of those two statements (which were in support of Willow) and put them together, making it seem like my claim was that adding Ortberg cause the church to decrease in size. That's just sloppy journalism.

Silly me, I thought CT would get it right. My mistake was in not insisting that the writer read back his notes on my conversation before ending the call, in order to be sure of accuracy.

Thou doth protest too much maybe?! It is fascinating to me that Willow Creek did such Horrible PR on this issue! For a church that wants to act like a corporation that's rule number one! Know your influencers (journalists and bloggers) and get out and talk to them! And the above video has serious credability issues, he isn't even interviewed by a third party! Most of the video is more damning than helpful for the church, just read the comments section of this post!