God and Culture
A SCRIPTURAL RESPONSE TO WILLOW CREEK
by Paul Edwards
©2004 by Paul Edwards. Reproduction for distribution is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

From time to time the subject of the "seeker-friendly" church (i.e., Willow Creek/Bill Hybels) is discussed On the Word. There are several churches in our listening area who have adopted the Willow Creek model. This subject produces more email than any other subject we talk about.

Because of the "success" of these mega-churches, people find it difficult to believe that anyone could possibly take issue with them. I mean, after all, aren't these churches effectively reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ? Large numbers of people are attracted to these "seeker-friendly" postmodern services every weekend, so if "God is blessing these churches" who are we to argue with their approach? This is PRAGMATISM, not historic CHRISTIANITY.

What follows is the basis of my criticism of the Willow Creek model of ministry.

There are many things about the Willow Creek model that are positive. (We use their "Contagious Christianity" material in our own church's evangelism training, but not uncritically). But the main thrust of Willow Creek's philosophy gives the impression that pragmatism and ultilitarianism are the driving forces behind evangelism. Simply put, this means we must adapt the message of the cross so that it is least offensive to the "seeker" with the result being that large numbers of people will respond. Jesus was very clear that merely because someone was "seeking" Him did not mean that their motives for seeking Him would be honored by Him:

Matthew 7:13-14 [ESV]
"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

John 2:23-25[ESV]
Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

John 6:26 [ESV]
Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves."

Luke 13:23,24[ESV]
And someone said to him, "Lord, will those who are saved be few?" And he said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

The Willow Creek model of ministry makes the audience sovereign.1 The elements of the gospel that are perceived to be offensive to the seeker are downplayed or entirely removed ostensibly to remove the stumbling blocks that would prohibit the unchurched from coming to Christ.

WHAT'S MISSING IN THE WILLOW CREEK MODEL? BIBLICAL THEOLOGY!
This philosophy directly contrasts with a biblical theology of salvation. The Apostle Paul said that the gospel IS offensive to the lost, going so far as to say that "the preaching of the cross is FOOLISHNESS to those who are perishing," [1 Corinthians 1:18], adding in his letters to the church at Corinth that the gospel is a STUMBLINGBLOCK [1 Corinthians 1:23] and that the lost are BLIND to it; and barring a divine and supernatural work of grace, no one is saved [2 Corinthians 4:3-6]. The Willow Creek model seeks to "help" God out by removing these offensive elements. In doing so, it unwittingly removes GOD from the process.2

It is not our marketing strategies that save, but the power of the gospel. It is not our job as believers to make the gospel believable or palatable. It is our job simply to proclaim the gospel. The Holy Spirit makes the gospel attractive to those whom the Father has chosen:

John 1:11-13 [ESV]
He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John 6:44 [ESV]
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

John 10:27-29 [ESV]
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

The Holy Spirit also PRODUCES the necessary faith so that the sinner can respond:
Ephesians 2:8,9 [ESV]
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this [the faith] is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

The Willow Creek model emphasizes the application of human ingenuity and creativeness in the evangelism process as THE most important element that causes a person to come to faith in Christ.3 But biblical theology and historic Christianity teach that God's grace in salvation does not IN ANY WAY depend upon our creativity in presenting the gospel, but rather on God's own sovereign purpose:
Ephesians 1:5, 11 [ESV]
[H]e predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will...In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 [ESV]
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Marketing the gospel is a humanistic strategy that has no basis in historic, biblical Christianity. And the result of this marketing strategy has been a weakening of theology and the Bible in these seeker churches. And because many people are responding to these marketing strategies, the ultimate tragedy is that on the Day of Judgment "many" will be there who believe they are saved when they are not:
Matthew 7:21-23 [ESV]
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'

It is THE GOSPEL ITSELF that is the power of God UNTO SALVATION, not our PRESENTATION (or packaging) of the gospel. If people are only responding to a creatively packaged presentation and not the gospel, they have not been genuinely converted, even though many of the outward signs of conversion may be present.
Romans 1:16 [ESV]
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Historic theology has always taught that it is GOD'S choice of the sinner - not the sinner's choice of God - that makes salvation possible. This is not to say that we do not have a responsibility to choose to be saved. It does, however, mean that we have an INABILITY to choose to be saved unless and until GOD acts first by choosing us. Why? Because we are DEAD in our sins; and DEAD people don't choose! Something must happen PRIOR to your choosing that gives you LIFE so you are then able to call on Jesus for salvation. This something is known in biblical theology as regeneration. Regeneration is solely a work of grace produced by God and is PRIOR TO our calling on God for salvation. Regeneration makes it POSSIBLE for the sinner to call, because prior to regeneration, the sinner IS DEAD. Calling on God for salvation is an EVIDENCE of regneration and is known in theology as CONVERSION. Both REGENERATION and CONVERSION happen as a result of what GOD does, not what MAN does.

Ephesians 2:1-7 [ESV]
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Romans 5:6 [ESV]
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

John 1:11-13 [ESV]
He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

1 John 4:19 [ESV]
We love [Him] because he first loved us

Prior to God's work of grace in our hearts, we are spiritually DEAD and incapable of responding to the gospel - regardless of the strategies used to remove all of the obstacles to our doing so [Ephesians 2:1-7].

The Willow Creek model IGNORES these theological implications of man's inability and the role of the Holy Spirit in producing faith for salvation; it rather seeks to manipulate the emotions to induce a spiritual response to the gospel from those who are yet dead in their sins.4 The result CANNOT be genuine conversion. This theology is, for the most part, MAN-CENTERED (emphasizing our role in salvation and Christian living) rather than GOD-CENTERED (emphasizing God's sovereignty over every area of our lives).

As for the basis for choosing a church, my own view is that a Christian who is committed to developing and growing in their faith must be in a church that is first and foremost BIBLE focused. The preaching IS preaching: an exegesis of a text that seeks to reveal precisely what God is saying, rather than taking a text to support the preconceived conclusions of a "self-help" talk. The philosophy of ministry (HOW the church operates) is developed from the Bible (Acts, 1 & 2 Timothy for starters) and not from the leadership manuals of corporate America. The music used is tempered by the word of God and reflects the word of God, and is not merely chosen because of the emotional effect it produces in the audience. Rather, it reinforces biblical theology through the use of both recently produced praise choruses and historical hymns that are faithful to God's word and to historic Christianity. Also, standards of biblical Christian living are modeled by the leadership and encouraged in the membership (i.e., living lives of Christian distinction from the world).

I want to re-emphasize that the concerns I have with all Willow Creek or "seeker" type churches have to do with the UNCRITICAL use of technology, marketing strategies, and the contemporary methods of church growth. SOME of these things, properly used and in their proper context, can be beneficial. Adopting them without carefully thinking through how their adoption impacts or weakens our biblical theology is what we must be careful of.

If you would like to examine this issue further, I would recommend two books to you: Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church (Baker Books, 1996) by G. A. Pritchard and Dining With the Devil: The Mega-Church Flirts with Modernity (Baker Books, 1993) by Os Guinness.

FOOTNOTES
1This isn't my opinion - it comes from the man who WROTE the Willow Creek marketing guide!
"It is . . . critical that we keep in mind a fundamental principle of Christian communication: the audience, not the message, is sovereign. If our advertising is going to stop people in the midst of hectic schedules and cause them to think about what we're saying, our message has to be adapted to the needs of the audience." [emphasis added] George Barna, Marketing the Church (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1988), p. 145

2Willow Creek was started in 1975 after Bill Hybels and his friends completed a door-to-door survey asking people why they didn't come to church. As a result, he started Willow Creek as a "church" that would have no cross, little or no mention of sin, an emphasis on "felt needs" rather than holiness, a drama or self-help talk instead of preaching, popular music instead of hymns, and intentionally programming the service so that the audience would never feel guilty. I would say that in order to accomplish all of this they removed all of the offensive elements of the gospel. (see Willow Creek Seeker Services, p. 55)

I'm absolutely certain Bill Hybels and the pastors of these seeker churches have good intentions by doing all of this. But by doing these things they UNWITTINGLY (without knowing) remove God from the process. They haven't intentionally left God out, that's just the unintended result.

Mike Singletary, former Pro Football player with the Chicago Bears and committed follower of Jesus Christ, was an active member at Willow Creek. Here's what he had to say about Willow Creek downplaying the gospel:

"There came a time when it seemed that the emphasis was more on positive mental attitude than on the Word of God, and I became concerned...I was worried because it seemed we were hearing more of a Robert Schuller or a Norman Vincent Peale type of an approach....It bothered me a lot. I told Kim [his wife], 'Something is going to have to happen soon, because I don't care where I am or how much I care for Bill Hybels, if I'm not hearing the Word of God, it's time to go.'" Mike Singletary with Jerry Jenkins, Singletary on Singletary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991) p. 106

3One example of the above from Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek:

"In this community image is a real big deal...When he (unchurched Harry) drives on the campus he is already assessing our corporate image and the effectiveness of our organization before the message has any bearing on his life." [emphasis added] Quoted in Willow Creek Seeker Services, G. A. Pritchard (Grand Rapids: Baker 1996), p. 209

4Willow Creek's programming is intentionally geared toward maniuplating a response from the audience. This has been well documented by G. A. Pritchard through personal interviews with Bill Hybels, Nancy Beach (Director of Programming at WCC) and various other key staff members. Willow Creek Seeker Services, G. A. Pritchard (Grand Rapids: Baker 1996), Chapter 5 and Chapter 7, et al

FURTHER READING ONLINE:
The links provided below represent a balance between writers who favor and disfavor the Willow Creek approach to evangelism and church growth and do not necessarily reflect my personal views.

A Series of Articles by Pastor Gary E. Gilley, Southern View Chapel, Springfield, IL
A Look Behind the Scenes of the Market-Driven Church: Two Articles from Evangelical Times by Martin Erdmann:
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