Is Willow Creek Just Shifting the Titanic's Chairs?

If you go by the numbers, the church is in trouble. We’ve reported it before. Statistically, the population of people going to church is shrinking. Now a major survey of people still attending church suggests the problem could get worse before getting better -- and getting better isn’t guaranteed.

On Thursday, May 16 Christianity Today Magazine led with a story about how Willow Creek, the Chicago area the mega-church, is making major changes in an attempt to halt the exodus. Willow Creek’s actions came in response to a four-year study called, “Reveal: Where are You?” Here’s how Christianity Today reported the situation:

“Since 1975, Willow Creek has avoided conventional church approaches, using its Sunday services to reach the unchurched through polished music, multimedia, and sermons referencing popular culture and other familiar themes. The church's leadership believed the approach would attract people searching for answers, bring them into a relationship with Christ, and then capitalize on their contagious fervor to evangelize others.

“But the analysis in Reveal, which surveyed congregants at Willow Creek and six other churches, suggested that evangelistic impact was greater from those who self-reported as "close to Christ" or "Christ-centered" than from new church attendees.”

Here’s where the real problem comes in: a quarter of the "close to Christ" or "Christ-centered" group describe themselves as "stalled" or "dissatisfied" with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. Worse yet, about one-quarter of the "stalled" and 63 percent of the "dissatisfied" are contemplating leaving the church. So Willow Creek is using its findings to shift it’s focus away from showmanship, and toward serving “mature believers seeking to grow in their faith.” But this group isn’t happy either. Sounds like “damned if you do, damned it you don’t.”

To learn if the problem was unique to them, “Willow Creek expanded its research into churches of varying geographic locations, sizes, and ethnic and denominational backgrounds” and found similar patterns everywhere.

Let me pause to say many millions are still attending church in America and being fed spiritually. For all its faults and failings, the church is still the greatest force for good in our culture. I haven’t seen many atheists or agnostics banding together to build hospitals. But this isn’t about what’s good for the church, it’s about healing a broken world and discovering how the church can best shape itself for the job.

To stay vibrant -- and reverse the growth trend, the church needs to make some essential changes. Simply revising musical or preaching styles isn’t going to do it. Refocusing on keeping the old guard rather than drawing in newbies won’t be enough either until basic questions are answered about the essence of what has gone wrong. Why are people “stalled or dissatisfied?” The tendency at times like this -- the tendency we’re seeing at Willow Creek -- is to fall back rather than ask how can we leap forward in a truly different way. So Willow Creek decides to drop its “fire ‘em up” Wednesday service in favor of some good, old-fashioned Bible study and theology classes. The question is, what will happen in those classes that makes a difference for the “stalled and dissatisfied,” or for newcomers trying to decide if this church or any church can feed their spiritual hunger -- tomorrow as well as today.

The Willow Creek study seems to say that mimicking contemporary forms isn’t the answer, and neither is nostalgia for that old-time religion. We in the church, we in this community which exists to sustain spiritual health, look out upon a cultural landscape that everyone, even the young, can see is an empty shell satisfying no one. We can‘t succeed by copying such a model. And only tired and unimaginative minds think the answer lies in a return to the old school. The old school had it’s chance and didn’t cut it.

I’m happy to report that our problem is also an opportunity. We get to go back to the drawing board with a chance at an exciting new beginning! Next time in this space, “where should we go from here?” I’ll give my thoughts, whatever they’re worth. Yours are welcome too. Just click on “comment” below.

Dreaming of a Future for "Neural Christianity"

In my world the phrase, “favorite conservative commentator” might be considered an oxymoron. But I want to give credit where it’s due. David Brooks is one of the most thoughtful, least biased of all commentators in the popular media. And his reach goes beyond partisan politics. Yesterday’s column in the New York Times is a good example. He describes recent trends in neurological research which suggest a native tendency in our species toward goodness:

“Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.”

That’s great news and what he writes should help feed optimism for our future. But what Brooks says next shows what a poor job we in the progressive church have done in spreading our enlightened understanding of Christ to our culture. “The cognitive revolution,” Brooks asserts, “is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible.” He goes on to say that this new research will most likely “lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.”

Now, Brooks doesn’t explain his concept of Buddhism so I’m not sure what he means, except to imply from his other comments that he views it as a kind of loving instinct for good that transcends our personal biology. We can all say “amen” to that.

What he doesn’t seem to understand very well is Christianity. Or more accurately, he understands Christianity the way the Evangelicals have taught him to understand it, which is no surprise. Speak of James Dobson and everyone nods in recognition. Say the name Marcus Borg and you get a quizzical look. “Faith in the Bible,” as Brooks describes it, is the literalist belief in the word-for-word inerrancy that Dobson peddles. Somehow Brooks has failed to realize that millions of Christians have a more sophisticated view in which Jesus is a transcendent spiritualist, and a social activist. When it comes to biblical faith, we don’t labor over the syllables but interpret intention in the full light of the God’s message of love, mercy and compassion.

Brooks could open his horizons by reading Borg’s side-by-side comparison of very similar teachings from Jesus and Buddha . And Borg isn’t the first to link the two. Christian teacher, philosopher and pastor Paul Tillich, recognized by many as among the leading thinkers of the 20th century (not just religious thinkers), often yoked Jesus and the Buddha together as the greatest spiritual prophets in human history.

I don’t blame Brooks for any of this. I blame our inability to move our progressive message outside the sanctuary and into the public spotlight. Interestingly, when we do, it is often in the form of confrontation with the Evangelicals. An article in Dobson’s online publication this week told of the Christian gay rights group Soulforce traveling to six so-called mega-churches around the country as part of its American Family Outing campaign. They kicked off the journey with a visit to Joel Osteen’s church on Mother’s Day. Osteen refused to meet with them. Now the others are trying to figure out how to handle their turn in the barrel. A spokesperson for Dobson’s organization Focus on the Family advises they should try to balance “the inerrant truth of God's word regarding sexual behavior and the compassionate grace of our Lord Jesus toward those living outside of it.”

“Living outside” of God’s grace? Foolish me, here I am thinking that even under the Evangelical definition Grace belongs to all who accept Jesus as God‘s son. I think that’s what Paul said -- that all of us on our own fall short of God’s glory but thankfully are justified by God’s Grace. Maybe Grace sounds to them a little too much like what Brooks described: an instinct for good -- in this case God’s instinct for good. Funny how inerrancy can ebb and flow as it suits one’s political purposes.

What I long for is a time when groups like Soulforce can just bypass the Evangelical mega-churches as irrelevant. In that day, hopefully, there will be no more mega-churches, only faithful communities of believers embracing and sharing God’s loving spirit. Soulforce would disappear into the mainstream in the true church of Jesus Christ, a church known by Jesus’ commandment to love one another as he has loved us. Brooks would no longer need to speak of undermining faith in the Bible, and could predict an age of “neural Christianity.” If he wanted to include the Buddha, that wouldn’t bother me.