I’ve pretty much just copied and pasted some of this from www.jordoncooper.com. (He’s the founder of Resonate, a Canadian emerging church cohort that I’ve been following for 3-4 years now.)
Willow Creek admits to getting it wrong.
In the Hawkins’ video he says, “Participation is a big deal. We believe the more people participating in these sets of activities, with higher levels of frequency, it will produce disciples of Christ.” This has been Willow’s philosophy of ministry in a nutshell. The church creates programs/activities. People participate in these activities. The outcome is spiritual maturity. In a moment of stinging honesty Hawkins says, “I know it might sound crazy but that’s how we do it in churches. We measure levels of participation.”
Having put all of their eggs into the program-driven church basket you can understand their shock when the research revealed that “Increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone’s becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether they love God more or they love people more.”
People like Dallas Willard have been saying this for years, increased level of church activities do not produce disciples, it just produces people who spend more time at the church (and out of their communities where they could be making a redemptive difference). The reason we default to activities can be explained by Lyle Schaller in his book, Reflections of a Contrarian where he talks about the kind of statistics churches and denominations count. Because it is easy to count participation in activities, we count that and therefore do things to increase those stats. On the other hand it is really hard to quantify a person becoming a better disciple of Christ which in turn gets put aside. Especially when almost every snake oil salesmen church growth consultant is selling churches on the idea of church programs (again, see what Darryl has to say about that). Good for Willow Creek to come to grips and their mistakes and for sharing them with the rest of the church. I think the problem runs deeper than teaching more Bible reading and spiritual disciplines but at least the discussion is happening.
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(Me again)
It seems to me that the point of church has become the programs.
We have programs for everything. We have programs for hospitality. Programs for youth (God forbid they be included in the daily life of the church). Programs for young mothers. Programs for spiritual growth. Programs for losing weight, for learning to manage money, for missions, for outreach, for learning to sing. From the time you enter church as a 2 week old infant, baby, there is a program for you. What’s your issue? Go to this class. What? You still have a problem? Try this other class.
If you want to grow, just get busy going to church. And if you really want to be spiritual, go to EVERYTHING.
I’ve become very disillusioned with modern church, to be honest. I have a lot of questions that I don’t see answers for just yet. I don’t think that’s a surprise to usual readers of my blog. But here’s the one bugging me recently:
Is the point of church to be building programs? Or is it people?
I know it’s the stereotypical postmodern in me coming out, but I am so sick of structured, run-it-like-a-business church. It’s not a business. Jesus is not the CEO here. It’s community. It’s family. Yes, occasionally dysfunctional but family nonetheless. And I love it. I love church and The Church with my heart of hearts. And yet they infuriate me. Jesus is no more the CEO of the church than Brian is the CEO of our family. Jesus never described the Church or his relationship with us like a business – it was always in terms of relationships.
My friend once told me that since most of our hurts come from relationships, most of our healing will come from those as well.
I’ve personally experienced church fatigue. As in, I’m sick of it. I have this Bible study on Monday nights, small group on Tuesday night, women’s meeting on Thursday, mid-week service on Wednesday, youth event on Fridays, and then 3 services on Sundays. The common complaint of most pastors is that we’re too busy busy busy. But you know what? So are the rest of us. The entire church is busy and tired. If we did everything our churches ask us to do, we’d be there 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. Most of the people at the programs are the weary Christians there to perpetuate the programs. They have jelly-faced toddlers and a lonely spouse and a demanding boss and a bathroom to clean and a spirit to nourish. And sitting through another sermon ain’t helping.
Sidenote: I’ve become convinced that just like I don’t like career-politicians, I don’t like career-ministers. It’s good to get out in the ‘real world’. Where you don’t have Bible study time on Mondays with the rest of the staff and you have to manage a 60-hour work week with kids and church commitments and the struggle to maintain a good marriage while balancing your cheque-book and being active at soccer league. Where you don’t have the flexibility of hours or you’re not getting paid for being there. When you get up every morning and go to work at a job you barely like because it’s the honourable thing to provide for your family. Where you don’t really have the comfort of knowing you’re spending 60 hours a week fulfilling your calling. (Sidenote 2: This is not a rant on Pastors. We were pastors and we will pastor full-time again shortly. But ask Brian…it’s been good for him to be out in the real world for a bit. It’s a reality check as to how much demand we place on our people for programs.)
What if we were just to stop?
Stop the programs.
Just declare a “No Programs Month” like we do “No TV Month”. What if we stopped asking people to be at church, hanging out with Christians for 5 nights a week and all day on Sundays? What if we told them to hang out with each other in love? What if we had some margin in our lives? What if we let them pick the topic for their small group? What if we empowered people to be ministers in their own context? What if we had time to volunteer at hot dog day at your kids school, coach the Little league or join the local book club? What if we stopped being so walled up in our churches and started being salt to a tasteless world? Light to a darkened room?
What if your pastor just talked to you instead of tried to recruit you? What if someone from your church called you and it wasn’t to ask you to volunteer for something?
Brian is debating on starting a paper called “Church Fatigue”. The basic gist of it is that we are running our people into the ground with programs. That people – even those that love God wholly – are sick and tired of church. And sick and tired of just being told to sustain the programs.
Here’s the thing: we build all these programs for when people come to the church.
But what if they don’t come?
What if they don’t ever know what a great Sunday school class you have? What if they don’t ask you to prove creation in 12 easy steps? What if they’re sitting at your local library, corner pub, lonely apartment next door? And they’ll never come to your church.
But they might like a friend.
