A current headline story on various church websites quotes Bill Hybels as saying Willow Creek leaders have conducted an extensive study of their congregation (and several similar churches) and have concluded participation in programs did not inculcate Christian discipleship and that they had spent "millions of dollars" on programs thinking that they would help people grow—only to find that there was no real increase in parishioners' love for God or their neighbor. "We made a mistake," says Hybels: "What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self-feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."
As the Leadership Journal blog put it, "Spiritual growth doesn't happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. These basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage."
Diana Butler Bass writes, “As I have traveled across the U.S. and Canada, I have found that many congregations—including mainline churches, progressive evangelical communities, and synagogues—are rebasing their life on spiritual practices including prayer, theological reflection, doing justice, generosity, storytelling, discernment, shaping community, hospitality, and leadership.”
Nearly every week someone suggests to me that we need this program or that one at First UMC and as a result all would be well with us. It would appear that it might be better for us to intentionally create a climate of transforming practices. Perhaps growing Christians mega-style isn’t the answer after all. I hear a call for the return to basics.
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Our culture has had its nest victimized by the entertainment cuckoo. We are becoming dependent upon our spiritual centers for entertainment and will soon be looking for individual remote controls mounted in every pew. We should bring God with us to church and not wait for Him to be announced as the Emcee of the Sunday Variety Show. I must confess that I am guilty of bringing spare batteries to church just in case the remote provided has dead ones.
Interestingly I was having this same conversation recently. We agreed that every few years or seasons, something pitched as new, radical, trasnforming etc. leaps into the church's imagination. The book, program, whatever is advertised as being the greatest thing spirtually since sliced bread. So we all buy a copy, do the program and so on. Cliques are created. Those who don't buy in are shunned or labeled as unfaithful or disinterested in thier spiritual formation. But in the end, the excitement fades and life goes on. Steady Bible study and intentional prayer, journaling, meditation and such last.
Examples in the past few years include the Prayer of Jabez, 40 days of purpose, the movie "The Passion of Christ," all that Beth Moore stuff, and I know there are plenty more.
Be careful. If you advocate a return to basics, you might have people actually read the Bible for themselves, and some of them will take it seriously, and then they will call for justice, while others will start witnessing, and before you know it you will have revival fires breaking out, and some will be ablaze, and some will be burnt, and some will douse everything with water. (How's that for a long run-on sentence?) So, on second thought, don't be careful.
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