By Darrel Rowland
About a year ago the founder of one of the most influential churches in modern American history confessed a need for repentance.
But Bill Hybels wasn”t adding his name to the list of those succumbing to moral failures. Instead, he admitted that despite Willow Creek Community Church”s worldwide influence and 21,000 weekly attendees spread across four campuses, the church had failed.
How so?
By not equipping its members to become mature Christians.
STALLED OR DISSATISFIED
Using techniques borrowed from sophisticated consumer studies, Willow”s leaders discovered they were doing well meeting the needs of those exploring Christianity and newer converts, but not those of more spiritually mature members.
“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,” said Greg Hawkins, Willow”s executive pastor, in a video discussing the findings of the study that came to be know as Reveal.
In fact Willow discovered that more than a quarter were stalled or dissatisfied with their spiritual life, and a large percentage of those were considering leaving the church. Could the same be true in Christian churches and churches of Christ?
Before we dismiss Willow”s findings by pointing out the suburban Chicago church”s differences with “our” churches, we must realize this: The Reveal study has now been extended to more than 500 congregations (91 international) involving some 150,000 members from dozens of denominations, many that don”t use Willow”s “seeker” model. Yet the findings are the same.
“What we learned was incredible and is changing the way we look at our ministry and how we do church,” Hawkins said in the video.
But Willow”s plans to offer deeper Bible studies and gear services more toward mature believers does not mean the church is abandoning the seeker model, said Cally Parkinson, coauthor with Hawkins of Reveal: Where Are You?, a book detailing the findings from about 5,000 people in the first round of churches studied.
“Willow Creek is as seeker-obsessed as it has ever been””but it is reinventing its model to reach them based on new insights,” she said.
“That”s what this is about . . . a place with unchanging values; mission; obsession . . . making changes to respond to new insights. Not because the “˜old” model didn”t work, because it did . . . but because there seems to be evidence that new and higher levels of spiritual effectiveness are possible.”
NEW YARDSTICKS
The roots of Reveal stem from Willow”s desire to measure how well it was doing beyond the usual yardsticks of attendance, offering, and conversions.
“That”s how churches for 2,000 years measured how effective they were for Christ,” Parkinson said.
To move beyond those traditional measures, Parkinson turned to a colleague from the secular world who had conducted marketing studies for such companies as Procter & Gamble and Allstate. In recent years such consumer research has gone well beyond routine studies of demographics such as income, gender, and age. These surveys now attempt to gauge people”s emotions, motivations, and needs that cause them to pick one product over another.
The core of the Reveal study lies in converting this secular tool to a spiritual purpose, to measure the very heart of a congregation””not just likes and dislikes, but the drivers of and barriers to people”s spiritual growth.
The resulting survey not only asked the expected questions about worship attendance, Bible reading, and service to others, but probed the level of agreement with such statements as:
“¢ I love God more than anything
“¢ I seek God”s guidance for every area of my life
“¢ I have tremendous love for people I know and those I don”t
“¢ I am willing to risk everything that is important in my life for Jesus Christ
“We”re getting empirical evidence right out of the hearts of God”s people on what seems to touch them and move them in terms of their spiritual development,” Parkinson said.
Willow”s goal was to discover how to move believers along a “spiritual continuum” of four steps, from exploring Christianity, to growing in Christ, to close to Christ, to Christ-centered. Increasing spiritual maturity was defined as growing closer to the Great Commandment to love God and love people.
KEY FINDINGS
Some of the key findings:
“¢ Involvement in church activities does not predict or drive long-term spiritual growth. This is where Willow”s leaders confessed they had blown it, developing programs and spending money under the assumption that the more spiritual activities people would join (Bible studies, mission trips, men”s or women”s groups, etc.) the more they would grow spiritually.
“¢ A church”s most active volunteers, donors, and evangelists are spiritually mature members. This undercuts the common contention that the best evangelists are typically recent converts, applying their “zeal of a new believer” to their many contacts in the non-Christian world.
“We found that is not true,” Parkinson said. “I”ve been teaching this wrong for 30 years. It really fundamentally made an enormous difference.”
“¢ About 16 percent are “stalled” in their spiritual growth. These folks say, “I believe in Christ, but I haven”t grown much lately.” Many are struggling with addictions or emotional problems, but the church apparently isn”t helping them. A quarter of this group is considering leaving the church.
“¢ About 10 percent are “dissatisfied” with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. Surprisingly, this group comes mostly from the “Christ-centered” end of the spiritual continuum, supposedly the most mature. Most are loyal attendees, ready volunteers, and regular Bible readers. But this group wants more challenging biblical teaching and spiritual accountability. Nearly two-thirds are ready to walk out of the church.
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
Hybels said the spiritually mature members should be taught not to rely on the church so much.
“We made a mistake,” Hybels told Willow Creek”s leadership summit last August when the initial Reveal results were unveiled.
“What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and became 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.”
The follow-up to the Reveal study, called Follow Me: What”s Next for You, is due out this summer. Parkinson said a template is being developed so the Reveal research can be applied by leaders to their individual churches.
For more information, check the Reveal Web site at www.revealnow.com.
Darrel Rowland is public affairs editor of The Columbus Dispatch and an adult Bible fellowship teacher at Worthington (Ohio) Christian Church.
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