There's a deep irony in Hawkins words.

It reminds me of politicians who change their views and how they say things just to suit what people want to hear. But, you also have to respect Willow's ability to reinvent itself. Not many churches would be willing to change course in a big way.

Also, it just makes me wonder if maybe Willow is just entering a different phase in its life cycle. Perhaps it's like leaving adolescence and entering early adulthood, or something like that? Not to say that one phase is better than another, just different.

I sat through the same session as Skye and it was amazing! I went in skeptical...I had over-read the blogosphere about its doubt of this study. I was bowled over at the profundity of the information. I immediately bought the book to get the whole picture. Looking forward to reading it.

BTW...Skye, we went to Miami together. I can't find your email anywhere on the site. Would love to touch base while we're both here...email me.

Hawkins is like doing satire on himself and he does not even know it. It makes my stomach turn when this article says Willow Creek will change how they "produce" their services. Yuck! These guys are so seized by the myopia of management guru lingo that it is nauseating.

It is about the best that can be done given the framework they live in. It is striking to me that they thought by making it easy for "seekers" that they would come to Christ. When your services do not match what people read in the Bible what do you expect? The Mega Church is the Mega problem but I doubt they will address that one. The largest church I have been part of is 3000 and it was problematic. I can only imagine what it would be for 25000.

Willow has finally discovered the fact that the church as a gathered body is about believers being instructed, encouraged and challenged in their faith walk. I'm no fan of the organisation, but am very glad they have been willing to acknowledge their mistake.

" It makes my stomach turn when this article says Willow Creek will change how they "produce" their services."

I believe the writer of the article used the word "produce" - it does not appear as a direct quote from Hawkins. I don't know if he said produce or not, but your comment draws conclusions that he did.

As for the word itself - I see nothing wrong the use of it. If you look at the magnitude of worship in the OT (hundreds upon hundreds of musicians, singers, priests, etc.) procession, etc. - SOMEONE had to organize and coordinate the whole thing - just as in a large setting like Willow has doing 3 services a weekend for 7,000 people each - and in contemporary arts today, which are widely used in church, "produce" is a totally appropriate word to use for such an activity, just as it would be used in any artistic setting whether that be the stage, movie, TV, etc. It's really just another name for "administrate" but particular to the arts. (i.e. a "Producer, production, etc." Produce may not be the best word for a church of 50 and a guy with a guitar up front. But to each his own. In the setting Willow is in, produce is perfectly acceptable.

While Willow seeks to reinvent itself, I read an interesting blog about how Willow discovered that church programs don't work, so they created a program (Reveal) to replace the church programs that don't work.

The basic problem here is that they are still gearing their worship around man and his edification and making Lord's day (or weekend) worship about people. They will continue to have a problem until they realize that the Lord's day is about Him. It is for his glory and to be done in His service. Evangelism and growth are great, but they are only bi-products in the gathered worship of God's people on the Lord's day. The place for the things that Willow Creek wants to accomplish is not in the gathered worship of the congregation on the Lord's day.

Scott Chafee! RIGHT ON THE NOSE! I've been saying that very thing in response to all of this "Reveal" business.

As much as I applaud Willow for trying their best to reach "mature" Christians, it's this overtly target-based business system that really takes away from the subversive nature of the Church.

Let the church be the church.

The trend is towards orthodoxy. Orthodox worship is God-centered and not audience centered. Instead of asking what the people want, how about looking into the Scriptures and seeing what God has said that HE wants?

I interpret the Lord's call for us to evangelize to be the responsibility of individual believers. I never saw that to be the primary mission of worship services. The WC model flips that.

When is God's hour?

agreed that willow does some target-based churching but it would also be nice to believe that their leadership felt rebuked by the holy spirit and realized discipling believers is needed as much as reaching unbelievers.

If the study came out in 2004, why did it take so long to make some serious changes?

In my humble opinion, Hybels is one of the best leaders this century has seen - He is just a man, but he is a man who is trying, like the rest of us, to listen closely to God and follow His direction. It takes someone very special to lead a congregation of 25,000 and lead over 12,000 WCA churches all over the world. Willow hasn't failed, what they've done so far hasn't been a big mistake and these changes just solidify the fact that Willow isn't afraid to step out of the traditional model and take some risks. It was a risk for Willow to do the "Reveal" study in the first place. I don't care how big or small your church is - if people are encountering Jesus, then the church is being the church.

"While Willow seeks to reinvent itself, I read an interesting blog about how Willow discovered that church programs don't work, so they created a program (Reveal) to replace the church programs that don't work." RIdiculous comment. Reveal wasn't a program, it was a survey.

I tire of the Willow-bashers. I'd rather change what I'm doing based on solid research than just keep doing what I'm doing because "we've always done it that way" which is the boat that too many dying churches have found themselves in.

YAY WILLOW!

Why does this adjustment surprise us? I have to admit, the return (or beginning) of discipleship classes is at first blush exciting! Willow is wanting to grow deep instead of wide. Fan-freaking-tastic!

But what are the long range results of this move? Discipleship is not just the acquisition of knowledge. Discipleship involves one on one relationships - following Christ together. Replacing a mid-week worship experience for a mid-week Sunday School may teach stuff to Willow's body but what happens when that becomes old hat?

My biggest concern is the lack of the phrase, "The Lord has led us to..." or "As we have sought the Lord..." I know I sound like a hater - I in-fact love Willow and respect those guys. Their ministry has been amazing and lives are changed! I just want to see and read more about the Father than the Reveal Study.

I would have loved to see this begin with God - his leading as the staff of Willow prayed and fasted because they sensed that the body was growing stagnant. Out of prayer God could have prompted either revival or the path they are on now.

Beginning with a survey, making decisions in response to results and adjusting programs are part of the process but should never be the foundation.

Any word on Frazee's Neighborhood Life program in light of these changes?

Shane Montgomery

"It takes someone very special to lead a congregation of 25,000 and lead over 12,000 WCA churches all over the world. Willow hasn't failed, what they've done so far hasn't been a big mistake and these changes just solidify the fact that Willow isn't afraid to step out of the traditional model and take some risks. "

If this was a terrible mistake, than it was magnified by the fact that 25,000 go to the church, and 12,000 WCA churches follow the same mistake. I am not against Willow, but I do believe that the bigger the leader, the bigger potential for failure. Hybels has failed on a huge scale. The size of his influence doesn't minimize this, it magnifies it.

No church does everything right. Jesus talked about a lot of things in Matthew 7 than can be applied here...especially about judging and recognizing false prophets. Maybe some of you should give that a read.

Willow has consistently produced very good fruit, and I for one, am very thankful to God for Bill Hybels, Willow Creek, and Bill's devotion to the cause of Christ through the local church.

When you've given your life away for as long as Bill has, when you've seen one tenth of the fruit that his service has, and when you've got the guts to prioritize your faithful attention to what God wants of his church over your "success" (as Bill and WC have) then maybe you're qualified to take potshots at Willow and Bill Hybels. Or maybe you're just qualified to go and re-read Matthew 7.

What I find extremely interesting is this -
Has anyone here actually spent time visiting Willow Creek? It doesn't appear that many have. If not, enormous presumptions about this church are being made. It's similar to believing what people tell you about the Bible without picking it up for yourself and reading it.

I have been a member at Willow for 20 years. I started out there as a very young believer and have grown into a fully committed follower. I have worked extremely hard on self-feeding myself instead of expecting my church to feed me.

Over the past 6 months my husband and I felt it was time to check out some other churches in the growing area we live in outside of Chicago. This wasn't due to dissatisfaction with Willow, but out of a need to see what other churches are doing. After all, the world does not revolve around Willow Creek.

We have visited 8 churches (2-4 weeks at a time) with average attendance of 150-600. Many of them were wonderful. We discovered many to be very seeker focused, or very mature Christian focused, to the detriment of excluding a seeker walking walking in the door. There is a very fine balance. From the findings in REVEAL, it seems to me that Willow is working very hard to find the balance between the seeker and the mature follower. I know Willow is not the only church out there who struggles with this balance.

Does Willow have it's faults? Of course. Other churches do as well. I've come to realize there is no such thing as a "perfect church". We are flawed human beings and our churches are filled with people just like us, including those in leadership. Our ultimate goal is to become more Christlike every day.

Spend a month visiting Willow. Ask questions, attend classes and check it out. Don't make presumptions about this church or any other church unless you are willing to spend some time behind it's doors.

Don't tear down the church. Build it up for Christ's work. Whether it is the one down the street from you or several thousand miles away. We need to lift our brothers and sisters in Christ up with encouragement even when it appears they have fallen flat on their face.

Perfection does not exist in this world. We will only see it when we are face-to-face with God.

As I read the posts, I am reminded of Ephesians 2:19-21: "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord."

I am, by nature, an extremely negative person. I get jealous too. I am your classic older brother from the Prodigal Son story. And at first glance, I read the story and blogs in regards to Willow and begin to move into old patterns of thinking...and then I am reminded that I am a part of something bigger than myself, my church, my denomination and my country. I am a part of the most diverse family in the world...the body of Christ.

My fear in being critical about Willow (or any church) is that I wonder if deep down, it isn't because we want our churches to move towards traditional orthodoxy. I wonder if deep down we harbor bitterness, jealousy and ill feelings towards mega-churches. Regardless of the surface reasons, any motivations that are not of the Spirit will have to be dealt with by the Spirit, which may be more painful than being wrong about a church stategy.

We are the church...one body, united in one Spirit. To fire shots at a brother (or groups of brothers) is to shoot oneself in the foot. It will hurt all of us in the long run.

[We are the church...one body, united in one Spirit. To fire shots at a brother (or groups of brothers) is to shoot oneself in the foot. It will hurt all of us in the long run.]

Amen, Derrick. Well stated.

I read the article and then began reading the posts and I was amazed the topic of discussion wasn't centered around a church trying to learn how to help people come to know Jesus more and applaud that, but rather how wrong people are for the strategy they use to help others.
Then I read Derrick's post and you are right on man. It is a shame that we are so focused on each other that we don't stay focused on serving Christ and loving others. Let's stay focused on what Christ has called us to and that is love him more than anything and love others the same as we love ourselves. I don't know about anyone else, but I am pretty selfish and love myself, so I definitely could do a better job of loving others, especially other believers.