My former pastor left me with this memorable guidepost.. At all times in your spiritual walk, you need a Barnabas (companion) a Timothy (someone you are teaching) and a Moses (someone you are learning from and following). Barnabas for Accountability, Timothy to demand Output and Moses for to provide Input and example.

Thanks for the "welcome back" note! Yeah, there was a lot of dead air after March. I started my new job on March 10 and with the 10 hours of commuting each week, the extra time at the office to master the learning curve, and the simple adjustment of working full-time after being a layabout for over a year, well, it hasn’t left much time for posting blog entries. I’ve had many thoughts, and I’ve often considered posting an entry, but the thought of the time it would take was simply too overwhelming. It takes more time to do a blog well than most people realize, though probably less time than my procrastination would warrant.

You mentioned attending a WCA church "whose pastors are thoroughly Willow-Creek-ized." There definitely is a unique culture to the Willow-Creek and Saddleback church models. It’s hard to put your finger on it at first, but after the novelty of the new church smell wears off, you start to notice that it’s definitely not your daddy’s church any more. I’ve belonged to a few mega-churches ranging in size from 5-10,000 in membership, was on staff at one (briefly) and have belonged to many smaller churches.

All-in-all, the quality of programming was definitely superior at the larger churches (depending on your "quality" checklist), but the quality of love and community was superior at the smaller churches. Not say there weren’t relational problems at small churches, and not to say that we didn’t make great friends at the larger churches. It’s unfair to paint all churches of any stripe with too broad a brush — WCA churches included — but if there weren’t some similarities between churches that use the Willow-Creek model, they wouldn’t be WCA-member churches.

I’m not a primitivist — I don’t necessarily believe that the first century culture provides the idea model for 21st century churches. But there seem to be elements missing from church communities today that were in the warp and woof of the churches we see in the Book of Acts.

Thanks for stopping By, Oengus!

Thank you for the kudos, and for posting a link to this post, I appreciate it. You mentioned that you "carried a load of guilt that I just (at least in part) laid down!" I would like to say that flatters me (it probably shouldn’t) but I must confess I’m not sure, exactly, what that means.

Why would you feel guilty, and how does anything I’ve written here help relieve you of your guilt?

Though, if I helped in any small way, I’m grateful!

@David Copeland:

Thanks for the kudos, David! And I agree: "When we stop running a church like a major corporation, and run it like a family I think we will see the engaging and the spiritual maturity of people leap off the charts!"

John Piper wrote a book published in 2002 titled, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry. In it, he writes:

"The aims of our ministry are eternal and spiritual. They are not shared by any of the professions. It is precisely by the failure to see this that we are dying ….

"We are most emphatically not part of a social team sharing goals with other professionals. Our goals are an offense; they are foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:23). The professionalization of the ministry is a constant threat to the offense of the gospel. it is a threat to the profoundly spiritual nature of our work. I have seen it often: the love of professionalism (parity among the world’s professions) kills a man’s belief that he is sent by God to save people from hell and to make them Christ-exalting, spiritual aliens in the world." (From page 3.)

Amen, John!

@8rent:

Well, I wasn’t setting out to indict anyone, or anything, really, just trying to articulate my perspective on the "big picture." For what it’s worth.

You asked:

Did we really need a study to find these things out? Are these not self-evident realities? And finally … will this do anything to stem the tide of mediocrity sweeping over churches of all types, shapes, demographics and sizes? (Better phrased, will this be enough to end the dangerous trend of McChurches?)

While I suspect these are rhetorical questions, I’ll say that I think the study is helpful. Sure, it confirmed what the naysayers have been braying all along, but it’s interesting that it was Willow who did the study. Whether Revealwould pass the muster of a well-crafted sociological study, I don’t know. But I don’t know of anyone else doing a similar study, except, perhaps Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger, authors of Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples. In preparing for that book (published in June, 2006, so the manuscript was probably completed as early as Spring 2005 — well before the Reveal study had been released), Geiger and Rainer surveyed several thousand churches that exhibited dynamic growth and evidence of personal spiritual transformation and concluded that the healthiest churches were not merely large churches, but churches that has a simple, easy to identify process for discipleship; that every program in the church was measured against that process; that everybody in the church could identify where they were in the process; that the leadership was sold on the simple process of discipleship; and that everyone invited into the process was encouraged to complete the process. There’s more, of course, and it’s a great book to read if you’re concerned about this at all.

But my point is, the study was helpful, and healthy, and carries a lot of weight because Willow did it and released the findings themselves. That says an awful lot about Willow, whatever you might think about their church model.

Will it do anything to stop the trend? Who knows? No one thing can probably ever stop a cultural trend. Who can say what will bring the modern church to it’s cultural "tipping point" that catalyzes change. I welcome anything salutary that helps us along the way. In short, I applaud the study.

Thanks for your contribution, and thanks for your kind words, too!

Thanks, again, to everybody who commented! I really appreciate the dialog.

However, I must ask nagging questions: Did we really need a study to find these things out? Are these not self-evident realities? And finally… will this do anything to stem the tide of mediocrity sweeping over churches of all types, shapes, demographics and sizes? (Better phrased, will this be enough to end the dangerous trend of McChurches?)

Love the site and your thoughts; keep up the good work.

“Just as parents still must provide guidance and proper nutrition for their hungry children well past their infancy, so much the shepherds of the local flock continue to provide good content to direct their charge’s attention and spiritual formation. Though Timothy was the Apostle Paul’s appointed delegate and personal representative (a sigh of great trust, leadership, and maturity), Paul continued to minister to him with instruction, doctrine, guidance, and wisdom even from prison, nearing death. (See 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy.)”

I think this is the nail on the head! A generation of fatherless and motherless people who refuse to take responsibility of raise children. Spiritual children!

I know there is goofiness in that subject also, but when we stop running a church like a major corporation, and run it like a family I think we will see the engaging and the spiritual maturity of people leap off the charts!

Just my 0.02 worth!

Great article as always Rich!

This is a must-read, and I’m posting about it asap!

You nailed it bro, and put words to what I have felt but not been able to articulate, and thus I have carried a load of guilt that I just (at least in part) laid down!

Thank you again, from a very weary pastor lady.

For my own part, I think Willow should heed Warren’s advice: “It’s not [all] about you.” What Willow has done (and is doing) through this study is a service to the Body of Christ. Maybe a sometimes painful service, but healthy nonetheless.

See my own reaction to CT’s article: What Willow Creek’s ‘Reveal’ study really tells us…» [HERE]