A Shocking Confession from Hybels’

Willow Creek Community Church
By Bob Burney

If you are older than 40 the name Benjamin Spock is more than familiar. It was Spock that told an entire generation of parents to take it easy, don’t discipline your children and allow them to express themselves. Discipline, he told us, would warp a child’s fragile ego. Millions followed this guru of child development and he remained unchallenged among child rearing professionals. However, before his death Dr. Spock made an amazing discovery: he was wrong. In fact, he said: “We have reared a generation of brats. Parents aren’t firm enough with their children for fear of losing their love or incurring their resentment. This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have imposed on mothers and fathers. Of course, we did it with the best of intentions. We didn’t realize until it was too late how our know-it-all attitude was undermining the self assurance of parents.” Oops.

Something just as momentous, in my opinion, just happened in the evangelical community. For most of a generation evangelicals have been romanced by the ‘seeker sensitive’ movement spawned by Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. The guru of this movement is Bill Hybels. He and others have been telling us for decades to throw out everything we have previously thought and been taught about church growth and replace it with a new paradigm, a new way to do ministry.

Perhaps inadvertently, with this ‘new wave’ of ministry came a de-emphasis on taking personal responsibility for Bible study combined with an emphasis on felt-needs based ‘programs’ and slick marketing.

The size of the crowd rather than the depth of the heart determined success. If the crowd was large then surely God was blessing the ministry. Churches were built by demographic studies, professional strategists, marketing research, meeting ‘felt needs’ and sermons consistent with these techniques. We were told that preaching was out, relevance was in. Doctrine didn’t matter nearly as much as innovation. If it wasn’t ‘cutting edge’ and ‘consumer friendly’ it was doomed. The mention of sin, salvation and sanctification were taboo and replaced by Starbucks, strategy and sensitivity.

Thousands of pastors hung on every word that emanated from the lips of the church growth experts. Satellite seminars were packed with hungry church leaders learning the latest way to ‘do church.’ The promise was clear: thousands of people and millions of dollars couldn’t be wrong. Forget what people need, give them what they want. How can you argue with the numbers? If you dared to challenge the ‘experts’ you were immediately labeled as a ‘traditionalist,’ a throwback to the 50s, a stubborn dinosaur unwilling to change with the times.

All that changed recently.

Willow Creek has released the results of a multi-year study on the effectiveness of their programs and philosophy of ministry. The study’s findings are in a new book titled Reveal: Where Are You?, co-authored by Cally Parkinson and Greg Hawkins, executive pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. Hybels himself called the findings “earth shaking,” “ground breaking” and “mind blowing.” And no wonder: it seems that the ‘experts’ were wrong.

The report reveals that most of what they have been doing for these many years and what they have taught millions of others to do is not producing solid disciples of Jesus Christ. Numbers yes, but not disciples. It gets worse. Hybels laments: “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.”

If you simply want a crowd, the ‘seeker sensitive’ model produces results. If you want solid, sincere, mature followers of Christ, it’s a bust. In a shocking confession, Hybels states: “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.”

Incredibly, the guru of church growth now tells us that people need to be reading their Bibles and taking responsibility for their spiritual growth.

Just as Spock’s ‘mistake’ was no minor error, so the error of the seeker sensitive movement is monumental in its scope. The foundation of thousands of American churches is now discovered to be mere sand. The one individual who has had perhaps the greatest influence on the American Church in our generation has now admitted his philosophy of ministry, in large part, was a ‘mistake.’ The extent of this error defies measurement.

Perhaps the most shocking thing of all in this revelation coming out of Willow Creek is in a summary statement by Greg Hawkins: “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.”

Isn’t that what we were told when this whole seeker-sensitive thing started? The church growth gurus again want to throw away their old assumptions and “take out a clean sheet of paper” and, presumably, come up with a new paradigm for ministry.

Should this be encouraging?

Please note that “rooted in Scripture” still follows “rethink,” “new insights” and “informed research.” Someone, it appears, still might not get it. Unless there is a return to simple biblical (and relevant) principles, a new faulty scheme will replace the existing one and another generation will follow along as the latest piper plays.

What we should find encouraging, at least, in this ‘confession’ coming from the highest ranks of the Willow Creek Association is that they are coming to realize that their existing ‘model’ does not help people grow into mature followers of Jesus Christ. Given the massive influence this organization has on the American Church today, let us pray that God would be pleased to put structures in place at Willow Creek that foster not mere numeric growth, but growth in grace.

Publisher’s Comment...

In my opinion, Bob Burney’s cautionary comments at the end of his column about Willow Creek’s ‘revelation’ are right on target given the fact that Emerging Church guru Brian McLaren and other emerging church leaders such as Dan Kimball and Scot McKnight will be speaking at Willow Creek’s April 2008 ‘Shift’ Youth Conference. According to the Shift website, McLaren, who will be the keynote speaker, will be delivering a message from his latest book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.

Blogger, author and web designer Tim Challies (www.challies.com) has a very interesting analysis of McLaren’s Everything Must Change on his website. Challis states “McLaren goes so far as to say that those who hold to traditional [biblical] views must regard much of the Bible as useless filler that we deliberately choose to disregard. McLaren’s utter disdain for Protestant theology is evident throughout his book.”

Challies goes on to reveal: “McLaren seems particularly incensed with the biblical concepts of heaven, hell and atonement. Rather than being eternal realities, heaven and hell become states we create on this earth as we pursue or deny the kingdom of God. Because Jesus’ message is not one of sinful men becoming reconciled to a holy God through an atoning sacrifice, those of any creed can seek and participate in the kingdom. People of other creeds may well be participating in it more fully and more purely than ones who claim to be Christians. Men and women of all creeds can be followers of Jesus living out the kingdom of God even if they have never heard His name.”

Don Veinot of Midwest Christian Outreach (www.midwestoutreach.org) also had some very interesting comments on his blog – Crux – regarding McLaren’s theology and the fact that he (McLaren) will be speaking at Willow Creek’s Shift Conference:

“The Message of the Christian Faith, to use the title of one of Bill Hybels excellent talks on the gospel, [in McLaren’s theology] is no longer repentance and salvation but helping Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, etc, be the very best Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, they can be as illustrated in McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy (pgs. 260, 262, 264):

“I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts…rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on…To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord.”

In summation, I believe giving Brian McLaren a platform at a youth conference (where potentially thousands of youth leaders and teachers could be misled into taking his heretical teachings back to their churches) shows a serious lack of discernment on the part of Hybels and whoever was responsible for inviting McLaren and the other emergent leaders to speak. I shudder to think of the number of young people who could be led astray by McLaren’s false teachings.

Such a lack of discernment should cause any follower of Christ to carefully examine whatever will be on Willow Creek’s new ‘clean sheet of paper.’

Pastor Bob Burney is Salem Communications’ award-winning host of Bob Burney Live, heard weekday afternoons on WRFD-AM 880 in Columbus, Ohio. He currently serves on the Board of Advisors for Pregnancy Decision Health Center and Citizens for Community Values and the Board of Directors of The Pastor's Retreat Network.  He has also been appointed to the Ohio Governor's task force for Faith Based Initiatives. In 2000 Bob and his wife Joy founded a ministry called Crosspower Ministries (www.crosspower.net), where they travel across the country encouraging the church of today.  Their ministry is founded on I Cor. 1:18 and they are available for Retreats, Seminars etc. via email at bob@bobtalk.com or by calling (614) 890-1974.