Over the past few years, Willow Creek Community Church, one of the most influential churches in America and the world, has been doing research to discover which of its programs and activities are helping people to mature spiritually and which are not.

Recently Willow Creek released its findings, and senior pastor Bill Hybels described the findings as “earth shaking” and “mind blowing.” What did the findings reveal? One key revelation was this: increasing involvement in programs and activities does NOT predict whether people will mature spiritually.

That’s a huge revelation for Willow Creek because it has put most of its eggs (and many millions of dollars) into the program-driven church basket. Hybels called the findings the “wake-up call of his adult life.”

How will this research affect the Christian church in America and around the world? Who knows. I hope it leads to a focus on helping people to develop emotionally and spiritually in deeper and deeper ways. This could be a very positive step in the evolution of the Christian church.

To read more about the research findings and to view videos of Willow Creek pastors talking about the findings, visit ChristianityToday.com’s blog post, “Willow Creek Repents?”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 11:57 am and is filed under Church, Emotional & Spiritual Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.