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c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Willow Creek Community Church, the suburban Chicago megachurch that has become a model for some of the nation’s largest churches, started more than a quarter-century ago by asking the question: Why don’t people go to church. Now, church leaders are looking for new ways to keep them there after […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Willow Creek Community Church, the suburban Chicago megachurch that has become a model for some of the nation’s largest churches, started more than a quarter-century ago by asking the question: Why don’t people go to church.

Now, church leaders are looking for new ways to keep them there after new research revealed that worshipers’ spiritual growth did not keep pace with their involvement in church activities.


The findings, based on research at Willow Creek and similar churches, showed that involvement in church activities did not carry with it a boost in spiritual growth, defined as “increasing love for God and others.”

The findings were not only enlightening for Willow Creek and it’s 20,000 weekend worshipers, but also for the more than 12,000 churches in the Willow Creek Association that look to the church for guidance on meeting the needs of spiritual “seekers.”

“They (church activities) don’t seem to be lifting them up the spiritual ladder to a new level,” said Cally Parkinson, who helped manage the evangelical church’s research effort.

Bill Hybels, senior pastor of the church, said it was “almost unbearable” to learn that almost a quarter of people at his megachurch were either “stalled” in their spiritual growth or dissatisfied with the church, with many considering leaving.

“It is causing me to ask new questions,” Hybels acknowledged in the foreword to “Reveal,” the 110-page book that detailed the research results. “It is causing me to see clearly that the church and its myriad of programs have taken on too much of the responsibility for people’s spiritual growth.”

The initial study looked at Willow Creek and six other churches across the country; it was expanded to include 23 additional congregations. In response to the research, Willow Creek is retooling its programs and providing pointers to churches that belong to the association.

Greg L. Hawkins, the church’s executive pastor, said the research showed that Willow Creek was doing well in terms of evangelism, serving the poor and encouraging Bible reading.


“But what we found was our people were hungry for even more,” said Hawkins, who co-wrote the “Reveal” book with Parkinson. “They wanted to go deeper with the Bible. They wanted to go deeper with personal spiritual practices.”

Willow Creek is now building an online “next-step tool” that will direct people to books, videos and other activities based on answers to questions about their spiritual path. Willow Creek’s midweek services for the first half of 2008 will focus on a chronological overview of the Bible.

In recent months, Willow Creek undertook a churchwide teaching series on the New Testament book of James. Commentaries were available for those who wanted to further study the text. Worshipers were encouraged to take a range of “challenges,” including attending all of the related services, reading the biblical text on their own, or joining small-group discussions.

Recently, the association completed additional research with 200 churches, 40 percent of which are not specifically targeted at spiritual seekers. The network plans to spend $500,000 to use the research as the basis for a fee-based system that will funnel information to congregations.

Meanwhile, some of the churches in the earlier phases of the study have made changes based on what they’ve learned.

Pastor Steve Stroope of Lake Pointe Church in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall is trying to turn around the “shockingly low” finding that showed only 18 percent of his flock read their Bible daily.


“How about reading just a chapter a day?” he’s asked his 10,000 worshippers. “Don’t read for volume. Let’s read for quality. And just take one thing out of that. Just jot it down, a sentence.”

Jason DeVries, a pastor at Faith Church in Dyer, Ind., said the research showed that his Reformed Church in America congregation needed to work on its small-group programs. The church, which has about 3,000 attendees on two campuses each weekend, has begun offering “mini-churches” that try to foster relationships among small groups of people.

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DeVries said the Willow Creek research may help churches understand where they are so they can move forward.

“I think churches are out there and they have the questions, and they either don’t have the mode to find out the answers or they might be afraid of what the answers tell you,” he said.

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While the findings may have startled Willow Creek leaders, they didn’t surprise Diana Butler Bass, who has tried to identify signs of vitality among smaller mainline Protestant churches.

“I have interviewed dozens and dozens of people throughout the United States who used to belong to churches like Willow Creek but left them in order to become Presbyterians or Lutherans or Episcopalians,” she said. “Ex-members of the megachurches have sort of rediscovered a level of being Christian that they were unaware of.”


Just as some mainline churches are emphasizing the importance of simple practices like prayer and Bible study, Bass said, churches like Willow Creek are having a similar revelation.

“The littlest congregation in the world can do those kinds of things,” she said. “It’s through those pathways that those churches have actually found revitalization.”

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File photos of Hybels and services at Willow Creek are available via https://religionnews.com

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