Return to Part 1: What is the Willow Creek Model
What is the Blight?
The blight is a thick corrosive fog that strips away the
will to live, work, and move in a church. It’s a miasma that envelopes you, making
you so apathetic that no further response to the Spirit is possible. Once the people
of the church breathe deeply of it they will think nothing of closing the doors
to evening service, then morning Bible study, and then preaching altogether. It
is an attitude, or an atmosphere, or a culture that makes the ears itch, that causes
people to stop valuing and seeking Christ.
Don’t be confused; although it looks like I’m describing
unbelief, the blight is distinct from this. It’s not that blighted people are becoming
unbelievers, it’s that their sanctification is halted. The blight transforms
the church from a small and faithful body to an enormous and faithless group.
The blight replaces learning with ignorance, fidelity with doubt, and as new
people are pulled in, the old ones are pushed out. The preaching of Charles
Finney produced the ‘Burned over district.’ That’s another word for what
happens when the blight sticks around long enough.
And the blight is what happens when you sign up to become a Willow
Creek church.
The Why of the Blight: The Systemic Problems of Willow Creeks Model
- It’s expressly
prohibited by Scripture. The idea is that if we find out peoples needs we
can tailor the sermons and programs to meet people where they’re at is
completely undone by the fact that Scripture directly prohibits it. Paul warned
Timothy against this very thing in 2 Timothy 4:2-5 when he instructed him to
ignore everyone and continue preaching the gospel no matter what happens. But it’s
not just that God said it and we’re disobeying—it’s that there’s sound wisdom
in this prohibition—for in reality immature people don’t know what they want. The
situation can be likened to my kids getting fussy (a common occurrence) and me
trying to fix it by polling them instead of being a parent and just doing
what’s best for them, “Uh hey kids, what would fix this fussing? You say you would
be happy I gave you candy? Okay then.” Sometimes we need to have the doctor
tells us bad news, and give us medicine which doesn’t taste nice. Look at James,
if he gave people what was pleasant he never would have commanded them to weep,
wail, and mourn, and the same goes for the messages of Isaiah and Jeremiah.
- It denies
the authority of Scripture. This might come as a surprise, because the
leaders pushing it might (and many times do) affirm the Chicago statement on
Inerrancy, but if he’s a willow creek man he’s in full denial of the
authority of Scripture.This is because either God has explicitly told us how to conduct church or He
didn’t. He has either commanded us to evangelize a certain way, or He didn’t.
If He didn’t, then why bother, and if He did, then we have to submit and do it
His way, because the Bible isn’t a book that we come to with questions and get
answers for. The Bible is the book that asks us questions and demands answers
from us. At bottom Willow Creek denies that the faithful proclamation of the
Scriptures is insufficient—we need drama, and skits, games, and things people
like if we are to win them, but consider this for a moment and you realize that
the denial of the sufficiency of Scripture is merely the fruit of the rejection
of Scriptures authority.
- It
doesn’t Pastor. One key thing Willow Creek does to appeal to people is to
let them be part of the crowd. “If you don’t feel comfortable coming forward,
that’s fine, nobody is asking you to. We want you to be comfortable here. Wear
your blue jeans and sit in the back if you like, that’s okay with us, and when
you’re ready, you come forward to discuss your problems.” As the church grows
in size it becomes practically impossible to shepherd the sheep, because aside
from the problem of having a congregation larger than you can manage, the system
doesn’t encourage the shepherd to leave the 99 and go after the one, it
encourages him to figure out a way to recruit 2 more instead. A church who
brings people in anonymously keeps them anonymously, because what we’ve won
them with, we win them to, and when we win them with entertainment, we can’t
expect to move on to pastoring. When you set up anonymity as the chief good, well, certain non-negotiables have to go.
- It plays
catch up. What is the Willow Creek model but a plan designed to lure, draw,
or entertain people into the kingdom? But how entertaining are we? Can we
really compete with the world, or the Mormons for meeting people’s needs and giving
them happy, healthy families, or successful, wealthy lives? Is this kind of
formulaic, self improvement schedule that features God at the highest point of
the pyramid the model we want to be advancing? The world is far better at this
than we are. Competing with Game of Thrones and Mormonism for people’s time and
attention? Good luck. The world is always
better at it than we are.
- Friedrich Hayek already proved it couldn’t
be done.
If Willow Creek fails even at the secular
level to build a lasting organization, then why should it be tried in the house
of God? In his excellent little book The
road to serfdom, Hayek showed that the only way to manage a large group
through a top down approach is to pick winners and losers. That is, preaching
to felt needs necessarily pushes the
church further into homogenized compartments because before we being we have to
select which felt needs we’re going to meet. If we’re going to address the felt
needs of the 40 year old people then we’ve automatically excluded everyone
else. And how long can a church last at this rate? Not into the next generation
is the answer. The willow creek model for the people my age is the emergent
church, a group so outrageous that in under a decade they’ve managed to achieve
total apostasy.
- It denies
cardinal doctrines. What would the apostle Paul think of the Willow Creek
model? Answer: he actually wrote to the Corinthians to tell them to stop doing it.
“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not
with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who
are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and
the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise?
Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish
the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God,
the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of
what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand
signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly
to Gentiles, but to
those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the
wisdom of God.
(1 Cor 1:17-24)
and again it is written,
“My speech and my preaching were not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor 2:4),
for
“the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14).
Next: Part Three, this time it’s personal
