More Church Growth Confessions

On the old site, we blogged about a church growth guru who came to admit that contemporary worship is NOT an effective evangelism tool. Now, the church growth pioneer, Bill Hybel of Willow Creek, is admitting that his techniques for building megachurches do NOT make for mature Christians. That confession is in a new book by Willow Creek staff members Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson entitled <a href="Reveal Where Are You?“>Reveal Where Are You?. Says Hybels:

Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for. . . .

We made a mistake. 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.

The book apparently offers yet more suggestions to re-invent church. But untold numbers of congregations have adopted the Willow Creek methodology, which apparently gets people in the door, but doesn’t do much for them spiritually. Read this commentary.

HT: Paul McCain at Cyberbrethren.