re: Willow Creek Thoughts

tcolucy — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:38:19 GMT

Jeff,

We are doing some real sole searching in the area of events and why we do what we do. Your post is very timely and I'll be using it to spark conversation among our team.

Thanks

Todd

re: Willow Creek Thoughts

Bob VanDerPloeg — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:23:40 GMT

You are correct. The formula Events + Participation does not equal Spiritual Growth. (E+P=SG). I think most church leaders would agree. A more correct formula would be E+P=OFI. Events + Participation = Opportunities for Influence. At the core of most church events is a desire to influence peoples beliefs and values. A desire to help people align their understanding of truth to what Gods says is truth. I think most church leaders believe that if you can change a person’s beliefs and values, you can change their lives. However it takes time. It takes time and of course the power of the Holy Spirit. The formula for spiritual growth is completely different. It’s a three part equation that includes us, (the church) and God and time. The formula for spiritual growth is Opportunities for Influence (the churches part) + Holy Spirit Power (God’s part) over Time.

OFI + HSP = SG

You correctly concluded that “The church has a responsibility to create an environment within which spiritual growth can and is expected to occur.” Events are just one part of the environment we need to create and manage.

re: Willow Creek Thoughts

jlandon — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:16:26 GMT

It's definitely the church's responsibility to equip and train the saints to do the work of ministry, which includes pastoral care for others. I think that most people also intuitively know, even previous to the Willow Creek study, that events and programs are simply places for potential spiritual growth - as opposed to it being presupposed. Essentially what Willow Creek is saying is that we need to teach people to become self-feeders.

The programs that they are talking about can be also talked about as just organized ways of doing things/ministry. The events and programs were found to be incredibly effective at helping people cross the line of faith and then progressively less the longer they are Christians. Its an interesting kind of a catch 22 because you need the matured Christians to be those that are equipped to help others mature simply because the ratio of professional pastors to those who need discipling doesn't get the mission accomplished.

So we really need a forum or environment where people can mature (a result being self-feeding) and then help others mature. I think that community groups are an essential piece because they help people apply newly found faith principles to their growing repository of life experiences. The next concern is that someone then has to lead these groups or they will result in existentially guided blind-leading-the-blind therapy sessions. A question church's should ask is, "how are we developing spiritual leaders?"

Some churches philosophy is that Sunday morning IS that development time and the result is often that their preaching is heavy with theology and the application of that theology. Then, ideally, the church is to be sent out from being equipped to then "be the church."

Other churches view is that Sunday's is more oriented for new believers and thus the emphasis is heavy on connecting with where people are at. Usually there are other forums to develop leaders - whether it be on another night or in some kind of Leadership gathering.

Either way a church needs to have a balanced approach. If your church is so academic that you are producing a bunch of good scholars that dont know how to reach people where they are then your church wont be effective in its mission. OR if your church is so focused on participation and getting the masses is and leadership development isnt effective then you have a church that wont have a strong enough "infrastructure" (mature Christians) to develop those who need discipling, then the church will also have not fulfilled another part of their mission.

I think that its OK to have a program that can just do that. Because programs, as I am using the term, just means an organized way of doing it. Maybe the programs + participation formula isnt as flawed as one could suspect. Perhaps we need to focus more attention on "programs and events" that equip leaders to be able to equip others. This obviously isnt the end-all answer, but just some random thoughts.