Thursday, October 18, 2007

Willow Creek Repents?

Read this absolutely fascinating piece on Willow Creek's change of heart after 30 years of market-driven ministry. But what's next? Has Hybels been reading Nine Marks of a Healthy Church? Or is this the first step in a transition to Emerging? Your guess is as good as mine, but before you guess, read the closing kicker from the blog post, from the voice of the Willow Creek executive pastor:
Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he’s asking us to transform this planet.
My hope is that they throw away the clean sheet of paper, forget about research and new insights, and pull out a 2,000 year-old book with lots of paper on which ancient words have already been printed.

HT: Justin Taylor

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to rehash an old subject, but it would be fascinating to get Zimmerman's thoughts on this

tenjuices said...

wow but those guys at willow creek are close to reading to the bible. Pretty soon they may discover sunday school. Amazing what research can do for you. Too bad the Bible doesn't have more research plans in it.

Ed Payne

Noah Braymen said...

Ben,

You should watch the video of Hybels speaking about this. It doesn't seem to be a repenting...it seems that they will be trading one pragmatism for another...although the other seems to be a little more biblical...

Curious to see what you think of the video...

In Christ,
Noah

Anonymous said...

hey tenjuices, where do you find sunday school in the Bible? that's what i thought. you do find a lot of talk from pharisees and others who were against Jesus and his scandal of grace. unless you've been to willow or heard hybels preach, your opinion is about as relevant as levitical law.

Lance said...

Guys... you seem a little too happy that a church is changing course. And way too cynical of your Christian brothers...

We have an enemy... it isn't Willow.

I know people who have met Christ, matured, and been blessed by the ministry of Willow...

Now, Joel Osteen and his nothing gospel... that's another story.