Thanks for visiting my BLOG. I am the pastor at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Rome, WI. I hope to share with you here some of the things that I am thinking about, that I'm challenged by, that I'm curious about. I hope this can be a place for us to encourage and challenge one another in our faith, so please add your comments.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Revival 2
After writing about revival, I came across this blog post about Willow Creek Church. If you are unfamiliar with Willow Creek, they have been the model for large, outreach focused congregations for years. In evaluating their effectiveness they have discovered that by and large they have simply acculturated a shallow faith. They have done a good job of getting people to show up for things around their congregation, but it seems they have struggled to get people to be intentional about nurturing their faith outside of Sunday morning. It sounds like a common struggle of many congregations. It will be interesting to watch and see where they go with this new understanding. Read the entry here and tell me what you think.
The measure of the success of Willow Creek will not be found in the professed love of God of parishioners in Sunday exit interviews, but rather in the delta density of believers some years hence. Hawkins is right, “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.” They are sowing seeds with a supercharged broadcast spreader. Not all will take of course, and likely a lesser percentage than might take in a meager traditionally tended garden. In the end how many accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? How many that never would have come to church are drawn by the bling but then stay to discover the true thing?
ReplyDeleteHybels seems to be lamenting the study habits of his parishioners and how they do not take to a traditional catechism. Let him preach to the choir.