More Consumerism? Some thoughts about the Willow Creek article.

There's been a lot of blog space spent over the past few days writing about the article that recently appeared here. If you haven't read it already, you should do so, it's worth your time. The gist of the message is that studies have shown that the Willow Creek model of ministry hasn't produced the desired results of spiritual growth as they had expected, or hoped would happen. Hybels humbly confesses:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own

Self feeders, reading the bible, spiritual disciplines - all sound like good things to me! I am genuinely excited by this. I am happy that the results have forced this rethinking of Ecclesiology. But in a sense, that is exactly the problem. Isn't that just consumerism repackaged? Isn't that where this came from in the first place? Market test show target audience and the appropriate bait to catch that audience. When the audience doesn't turn out, it's time to tweak the process. Is that how ministry methodology is decided?

When did ministry become end user driven? If that is how we measured ministry process, Noah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and at times, Jesus would have been ministry philosophy chameleons or even unemployed. While I'm excited to hear things like deeper Bible study growing out of this, I wish it were birthed out of a verse and the conviction of a biblical theology of ministry based on timeless truth rather than a social/spiritual research project.

I've very curious to see what the fallout of all of this will look like. There are so many churches riding the coat tails of these mega churches. I do pray for them. They have influence that is astounding. May God's Word be found to be the only true answer for any question about ministry!