Reveal: Where Are You?

I just picked up Reveal: Where Are You?, the Willow Creek publication by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson that articulates what has been dubbed ‘Bill Hybels’ Confession’. Some have used this to attack the seeker church model that Hybels pioneered, but it really has nothing to do with sin, as some would like to make it out to be. Some of you have been asking me about it, so here is a summary.

Based on a significant scientific research project (which was interesting as Aileen is currently taking a research course the deals with qualitative and quantitative research methods) done at Willow Creek from 2004-2007, the research team discovered that their church was not doing as well as they had thought when it came to spiritual growth. Not only where they brave enough to ask the hard questions, but they were brave enough to share their findings with the world. Hardly scandalous!

The questions the project raised and observations they made have revolutionized the way they look at the role of the local church. They say the church and its myriad of programs has taken on too much of the responsibility for people’s spiritual growth, which they define as ‘an increasing love for God and for other people’. I love their definition. Their findings certainly clarify some of the issues I’ve had in the back of my mind as I have thought about the church and its role over the past years.

Willow Creek made six key discoveries based on their data:
1. Involvement in church activities does not predict or drive long-term spiritual growth. A higher level of church activity does not correlate directly to an increasing love for God or increasing love for people. Church busyness is not next to godliness.

2. Spiritual growth is all about increasing relational closeness to Christ. God has wired us to be in a growing relationship with him – not with the church. There is a passionate instinct born in all of us that desires to draw closer to God. As we draw closer, we begin to see a dramatic change in how we live our lives and relate to other people.

3. The church is most important in the early stages of spiritual growth. Its role then shifts from being the primary influence to a secondary influence. As one matures in Christ, the importance of services and small groups for spiritual development decreases. The church’s role becomes more a platform to provide serving opportunities. This makes a lot of sense, because as the mature believes step into a serving role, they minister to the new believers who need this to jump-start their spiritual lives, so both groups are in a place where they can experience profound spiritual growth.

4. Personal spiritual practices such as prayer, journaling, solitude, and scripture study are the building blocks for a Christ-centered life. They are the driving force in spiritual growth, so the church doesn’t need to handhold people who are moving along in the later stages of the spiritual continuum.

5. A church’s most active evangelists, volunteers, and donors come from the most spiritually advanced segments. The more one grows, the more one serves, tithes, and evangelizes. This surprised Willow Creek because their assumption was that new believes, with their passion for faith and relationships with people who where not Christ followers, had the highest evangelistic fervor.

6. More than 25 percent of those surveyed described themselves as spiritually “stalled” or “dissatisfied” with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. (Many of these people are considering leaving their church – which for a church as good as Willow Creek is frightening – I mean, if Willow can’t keep people coming, who can?)

Stalled people are those who consider themselves close to Christ, but haven’t grown in their spiritual life. They are Christians who have run into difficult life circumstances or come face-to-face with a personal weakness (addiction, inappropriate relationship, emotional issue) that has become a significant barrier to spiritual growth. Dissatisfied people see their faith as central to their lives, but feel their church is letting them down. Essentially, they have a high level of expectation for what the church can and should deliver, but have become jaded, cynical, and disillusioned.

Considering these observations, and looking specifically at the Stalled and Dissatisfied segments of their survey group led the research team to the big “aha” moment of the project. The data indicated that both the Dissatisfied and the Stalled portions still look almost exclusively to the church to lead their spiritual growth. They tend to voice complaints about the need for more in-depth teaching, more connection opportunities, more serving options and more of everything they feel is missing from their church experience. But the heart of their unhappiness may be the fact that neither segment seems to realize that much of the responsibility for their spiritual growth belongs to them. Obviously this isn't strictly their fault. The church has had something to do with it!

After taking over two years so assimilate the data, they are making three strategic changes to their vision:
1. Change the message to the congregation. It is not the role of the church to meet everyone’s spiritual needs. They want to move people from dependence on the church to a growing interdependent partnership with the church and see people take an increasing level of responsibility for feeding themselves through personal spiritual practices.
2. Coach next steps. They want to transition the role of the church from spiritual parent to spiritual coach. They are working on a tool that will assist them as a church to help people discern what is the next step they need to take in their spiritual development. It will be interesting to see what this looks likes.
3. Extend the impact of their weekend services. Focus more attention on those who are further along the spiritual continuum by providing tools like journals, study questions, and commentary notes that themed with the message to assist people digging into scripture for themselves. I imagine that this is a big shift for the mother of the seeker sensitive church.