Learning from Willow Creek Church
Anthony B. Robinson
YOU KNOW there is something different about a church when you begin to see police directing traffic at an intersection a half mile away. And this is for a mid-week service. Joining the stream of cars turning in at the entrance, you see the 120-acre grounds, which look like a well-kept corporate-headquarters or a suburban business park. In the distance stands a cluster of buildings unadorned by crosses or religious signs and symbols. The traffic winds among the sloping lawns and passes a pond. Parking-lot attendants guide the cars to spaces. As you move toward the back of the lot you notice a large sign marking a specially designated area near the entrance: "single-parent parking."
Before you are even in the door you can draw two conclusions: first, if this is a church, it is not like most churches; and second, it is a well-run operation that is prepared for guests. This is Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, a suburb northwest of Chicago. Founded in 1975 by Bill Hybels, now the senior minister, Willow Creek may be one of the churches with the largest weekly worship attendance of any in North America. More than 15,000 people worship at Willow Creek each week.
The entrance area seems more like the lobby of a theater than the narthex of a church--feature reminiscent of the church's beginnings at the Willow Creek Theater in neighboring Palatine. It is well lighted and spacious. Information booths are located at several points. No designated greeters approach visitors; worshipers can remain quite anonymous. No religious symbols decorate the lobby either. This does not look like church. At the doors to the auditorium people are distributing "New Community Update," Willow Creek's version of the Sunday bulletin. Only a small part of the "Update" lists the evening's order of worship; most of it describes educational programs and various services the church offers. The auditorium (which is what Willow Creek intentionally calls its worship area) is neatly designed: comfortable theater seats flank wide aisles that lead to a large stage. Again, religious symbols are absent. Those who are not used to going to church but are accustomed to movie theaters would probably find this arrangement familiar. These details reveal much about Willow Creek Community Church: it seeks to attract those who are probably uncomfortable in most churches and who, by the time they have reached the doors of those churches, have received a number of signals, largely unintended, that they don't belong there.
As the service begins, the curtain on the stage draws back to reveal something between a band and an orchestra. The musicians launch into lively, upbeat music that gradually, not abruptly, engages the audience: What happens next depends on whether the service is the midweek version intended for "believers" (active constituents of Willow Creek) or a weekend service for "seekers." At the midweek service I attended, the main element of the program (in addition to music) was what might be called a teaching sermon, one that dealt in some detail with a biblical text. The seekers' service included a dramatic skit, followed by a sermon, or "message," delivered by Hybels. The sermon addressed a life issue with limited references to a Bible passage. The theme was "compassion," and the main point was that God loves us very much and wants us to love others. In both settings, congregational participation in liturgy was nonexistent. Congregational singing was minimal and simple. It was directed not by words on the printed page (there are no hymnals) but by large video screens on either side of the stage.
Hybels, with the assistance of Wheaton College professor Gilbert Bilezikian, developed the idea for Willow Creek with other members of the youth ministry team at South Park Church in Park Ridge, Illinois. As minister to youth at South Park, he had built a program that sought to appeal to young people who were not part of a church. Willow Creek continues the emphasis on reaching the unchurched, and welcomes 1,000 new members a year. While the theology expressed in Willow Creek's statement of faith is fully consistent with American evangelicalism, the church's approach to people is different. It does not assume knowledge of or background in the church. It simply aims to address people's needs while being entertaining. The life of Willow Creek is rounded out by support groups, Bible study groups, programs divided by age group, and a host of educational and service ventures (budget counseling, prison ministries, family counseling, etc.).
THOSE IN CHURCHES of established backgrounds can learn much from Willow Creek's approach. The first lesson is the most obvious and the most difficult: many people find churches strange and forbidding. A visit to Willow Creek demonstrates to mainliners how much the church takes for granted, and how many aspects of the church can intimidate outsiders. For example, Willow Creek's parking lot and building seem geared for visitors, not for those who already know their way around or are willing to figure it out. The hymns that are familiar to regular churchgoers reflect a musical idiom that is almost completely absent from popular culture and is quite foreign to nonchurchgoers. The traditional order of worship and liturgy may work well for those who have been at it a number of years, but it may well be the proverbial Greek to many others.
Virtues and vices are, however, closely related. If Willow Creek is accessible to the unchurched, is what it offers recognizable as the church? Or has the worshiping congregation been-transformed into an audience? Are the weekly services more entertainment than worship? As people left Willow Creek after the service I noticed some clustered in conversation, but most left quickly and alone.
It had been a private experience. The service seemed a gathering of individuals more than a gathered congregation. In fact, worshiping there was like watching a television program, albeit as a live studio audience. Although attended by 4,000 to 5,000 people, the service had the kind of intimacy, perhaps "pseudo-intimacy," that television offers. Though a million people may be watching the same program simultaneously, viewers feel as if they are being personally addressed.
Nonetheless, established churches can learn something from Willow Creek's attractiveness to the unchurched. Is the distance between church and unchruched widening? How can the distance be bridged-and are any churches interested in trying? Willow Creek's approach has been to maintain orthodox evangelical theology and doctrine but to alter radically the format in which it is presented. And it seems that Willow Creek has accurately read the culture, or at least a significant slice of it. For people in a mass society, attending Willow Creek is like many other relatively anonymous activities, like going to a mall or sports event. Willow Creek may not, however, be a community with a common memory and identity that will persist through the generations.
Reaching the unchurched is in part an issue of reaching a different generation, especially the baby-boomer generation. While exhibiting a smattering of ages, Willow Creek appeared to be very heavy in the age 25-to-45 bracket, a group absent or underrepresented in most mainline congregations. Wade Clark Roof has argued in these pages that this generation "will not just return to church. ..[it] will pick and choose. ...The congregations that attract them provide programs that have integrity and speak to their particular life issues." This raises the question, Are many mainline congregations primarily though unwittingly speaking to the experiences of the pre-World War II generation? Does this foreshadow a future of generation-based churches-congregations that focus on the particular life issues of one generation?
To its credit, Willow Creek's programming reflects the church's awareness that in our society there is a high level of personal uncertainty and family dysfunction. Everything from, Hybels' sermons to the 250 small-group Bible studies communicates that "you matter to God." It is a direct, personal and affirming message. Many Willow Creek's ministries also recognize that people are concerned about personal worth and meaning, family relationships, and simply coping with life. Instead of assuming that most of us are OK and perhaps wish to become somewhat better, Willow Creek assumes that many of us are broken and need healing. It sponsors parenting skills workshops, a single-parent family ministry, a program for divorced or separated people, and counseling on career decisions and resume preparation.
The more established churches often seem to assume that people's lives and sense of values are coherent and workable. These churches focus on challenging people to get out and serve others. That assumption may be increasingly problematic in a society in which half of all marriages end in divorce and in which addiction is epidemic. It may be that increasing numbers of those who are seeking a church do so because their lives are not working. Are churches prepared to address this kind of need, which invites conversion to a new way of life, or will they assume that such a need does not exist or is beyond their capabilities? Much of the life and language of Willow Creek is oriented toward "personal transformation." Have more-established churches lost or neglected this theme? Presbyterian scholar John Leith observes in The Reformed Jmperative that "the denominations that appear to be most optimistic about changing the policies of great nations, as well as economic and social systems, seem less concerned and optimistic about the possibility of significant transformation of the life of individuals in the congregations."
Some will celebrate Willow Creek primarily on the basis of its astonishing growth and numerical success. Others will denigrate it for the same reasons. Certainly the ballot is not in on Willow Creek or churches like it. But perhaps more important are the questions that Willow Creek raises about the nature of contemporary life and the nature of the church.
Copyright 1987 Christian Century Foundation.
Reproduced by permission from the January 23, 1991 issue of Christian Century. pp 68-70.
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