Influential megachurch moves away from seeker-sensitive services.

Christianity Today | Matt Branaugh | posted 5/15/2008 08:30AM

After modeling a seeker-sensitive approach to church growth for three decades, Willow Creek Community Church now plans to gear its weekend services toward mature believers seeking to grow in their faith.

The change comes on the heels of an ongoing four-year research effort first made public late last summer in Reveal: Where Are You?, a book coauthored by executive pastor Greg Hawkins. Hawkins said during an annual student ministries conference in April that Willow Creek would also replace its midweek services with classes on theology and the Bible.

Whether more changes are in store for the suburban Chicago megachurch isn’t clear. Hawkins declined CT’s interview request, and senior pastor Bill Hybels was unavailable for comment.

Since 1975, Willow Creek has avoided conventional church approaches, using its Sunday services to reach the unchurched through polished music, multimedia, and sermons referencing popular culture and other familiar themes. The church’s leadership believed the approach would attract people searching for answers, bring them into a relationship with Christ, and then capitalize on their contagious fervor to evangelize others.

But the analysis in Reveal, which surveyed congregants at Willow Creek and six other churches, suggested that evangelistic impact was greater from those who self-reported as “close to Christ” or “Christ-centered” than from new church attendees. In addition, a quarter of the “close to Christ” and “Christcentered” crowd described themselves as spiritually “stalled” or “dissatisfied” with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. Even more alarming to Willow Creek: About a quarter of the “stalled” segment and 63 percent of the “dissatisfied” segment contemplated leaving the church.

As Willow Creek expanded its research into churches of varying geographic locations, sizes, and ethnic and denominational backgrounds, the church said the same general pattern emerged, an indication that the problem extends beyond Willow Creek.

Dave Terpstra, teaching pastor of The Next Level Church in Denver, a Willow Creek Association member congregation that draws about 600 people on Tuesday nights, said he’s unsure Willow Creek can provide greater depth to mature believers by its moves, especially since more traditional churches wrestle with the same issue.

North River Community Church in Pembroke, Massachusetts, recently completed the Reveal survey. Senior pastor Paul Atwater said he recalled Hybels telling pastors that Willow Creek planned “to get deeper” about 10 years ago at its annual leadership summit.

“They got more challenging” by bringing in teaching pastors like John Ortberg, Atwater said, only to see attendance drop. “I think they’ve paid the price before in different ways to address their early, surface-level depth, and maybe this is another step in that trend.”

Greg Pritchard, author of Willow Creek Seeker Services, told CT the church “sporadically has recognized it was not teaching a robust enough biblical theology and needed to turn the ship around.

“It is a huge shift,” Pritchard said of the church’s planned changes to its services. “But they’re still using the same marketing methodology. Willow appears to be selecting a new target audience with new felt needs, but it is still a target audience. Can they change? Yes, but it will take more than just shifting their target audience.”

From the Presbyterian Outlook:

The chief cornerstone and the game plan
by Kenneth E. Bailey
03/10/2008

It is clear that Jesus carefully planned the first part of the Triumphal Entry. He chose a village where he had friends. One of those friends was alerted to ready a colt and tie it in front of the house at a specified time. Its owner was waiting and watching. The disciples were told where to find the colt and both parties memorized passwords.

It is also clear that Jesus engaged in similar planning for the Last Supper. A man who could recognize the disciples was waiting with a water pot to lead them to a house where the owner had already offered his large, furnished upper room to Jesus. Those involved used passwords again. Meticulous planning clearly surfaces in both of these occasions during holy week. I would suggest a third: the Triumphal Entry itself.

Psalms 118:19-28 is a carefully constructed rhetorical piece with seven inverted cameos and the parable of the “chief cornerstone” in the center. A number of striking features appear. These include:

1.         A pilgrim, and then a crowd of pilgrims enter the temple through the gate.

2.         Thanks for “my salvation” are expressed. As a single written Hebrew word, “my salvation” is ljshu‘a and the name Jesus is jshu‘a. The two words have the same root and resonate together powerfully.

3.         Salvation is not a set of ideas (the Greek mentality) or an act in history (the Old Testament worldview). It has become a person.

4.         A special stone that was rejected by builders becomes the “chief cornerstone.”

5.         The people cry out, “Hosanna” (save us now) to Yahweh. The root ysh‘, from which the name Jesus is formed, appears again.

6.         The pilgrims also affirm, “Blessed is he who enters in the name of the Lord!”

7.         The parade of worshipers carries branches.

 

Is all this accidental, or was some planning done by Jesus and his disciples before they started down the slope of the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley and up into the Temple complex? Indeed, the followers of Jesus no doubt were caught up in the excitement (and danger) of what was happening, but the careful planning evidenced at the start of the parade strongly supports the idea that the rest of the occasion was also arranged.

The seven points of interest in Psalms 119:19-28, noted above, all reappear in the Triumphal Entry. This suggests strongly that Jesus planned a “re-enactment” of the parade set forth in the Psalm. The use of branches as part of a parade is not a traditional Middle Eastern custom and this only occurs here in the entire New Testament.

Of the seven overlapping features noted above, let me particularly note three:

First, the Mishnah affirms that when the second temple was built, the builders found an elevated stone on the old Holy of Holies that was three fingerbreadths higher than the rest of the floor. They assumed that the Ark of the Covenant originally rested on that stone. Probably remembering that in Isaiah 28:16 God promised that he would one day lay a precious cornerstone … a sure foundation in

Zion, they named that elevated stone “the foundation.” Jesus told a parable about a man who built a house and laid the foundation upon a rock (Luke 6:48). That rock was clearly the person and words of Jesus. That is, in the parable Jesus claimed to be “the foundation” promised by Isaiah and he rejected the ideas that the stone in the floor of the Holy of Holies completed Isaiah’s vision.

If this understanding of the earlier parable is in any way correct, then Jesus and his followers would have been intently focused on Jesus as “the foundation stone” of Isaiah as they entered the temple where the other “cornerstone” lay in silence at the center of the Holy of Holies. The approach of the “living stone” to the temple would, in itself, naturally invoke the parable of Psalm 118 with its focus on the stone that the builders rejected. On the following day, when Jesus was challenged for his actions, he told a parable and at its conclusion quoted the parable of the stone from Psalms 118:22. Jesus is the foundation stone of our new temple; he is our Kaaba.

Secondly, in Psalm 118, the pilgrims cry out, “Hosanna” to Yahweh. In the reenactment, this cry of hope is addressed to Jesus. This can be called “hermeneutical Christology.” Language and symbols that in the Hebrew Bible refer to God are reused and applied to Jesus. Rabbi Hillel, who lived one generation before Jesus, made similar claims. Thus, what David Flusser calls the reality of a “heightened self-awareness” was already a part of the Jewish world of the first century before Jesus was born. There is little wonder that, as recorded in Luke, some of the Pharisees were horrified and said to Jesus, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Jesus replied, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out (Luke 19:29-40.) The stones of the temple immediately come to mind, and surely, the foundation stone in the Holy of Holies was also intended. The temple was still in process of being built. Therefore the temple authorities were indeed “the builders.” For the followers of Jesus, the ‘rejected stone” was already the “chief cornerstone.” The foundation of the new temple was replacing the old foundation and that reality was surely an important part of the so-called “cleansing of the temple.” Was Jesus cleansing it for purer use or replacing it with a new temple — his body?

Lastly, salvation in this reenactment appears as a person. In the first servant song in Isaiah, God addresses the Servant and says, “I have given you [singular] as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.” The covenant is personified. In like manner, in the Psalm text before us, God does not bring salvation nor does he offer it. He becomes “my salvation.” And, as noted, the name of Jesus resonates with the word used.

There is still an irrepressible element of exuberance in the Triumphal Entry. I find it hard to imagine that Jesus specifically instructed his followers to cry, “Hosanna” to him, knowing that this is a petition addressed in the Psalms to God. Perhaps the disciples, understanding what they were doing, themselves chose to cry out to Jesus using that word. At the same time, the courage and boldness of Jesus is heightened when the overall pattern of a “reenactment” of Psalm 118:19-28 is seen in Jesus’ triumphal entry. This possibility opens wide avenues in the mind and spirit for reflection, adoration, and discipleship.

Kenneth E. Bailey is an author/lecturer in Middle Eastern New Testament studies living in New Wilmington, Pa.