Jim and Casper's Church Visit #4: Willow Creek (Part One)

It's been a little while since the last church visit, but there's a reason for that. Next week, I will actually be at the fourth church that Jim and Casper visit and talk about in their book "Jim and Casper Go To Church." That church is Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois (a Chicago suburb) and I will be there for an worship arts conference. I went last year and thought it was pretty good, but this year I'm really excited because of the main speakers (and the Wednesday morning worship band - that would be David Crowder). I have not been at a church service there, however - and there is an opportunity during the conference to go to their Wednesday night "believer" service. Which is an interesting discussion point in the first place. What is the purpose of having two separate services for a church? According to Willow Creek, the weekend services are "seeker-sensitive", which means essentially that they are designed for those who aren't churchgoers. Thus, the music, message, dramas, etc. will all be seeker-sensitive and will be relatable (or is the right word relevant) to those who are seeking God for perhaps the first time. The Wednesday night service is for those who are already churchgoers and who perhaps want something a little deeper message-wise, more worship, etc.

An interesting strategy, and it seems to be working at Willow, but it begs a couple of questions:

- It seems that when you look at NT passages that are related to ecclesiology (church structure, mission and instruction), you would be hard pressed to find anything that talks about having two separate church meetings: one for the unbeliever, and one for the believer. In fact, there are a few passages that describe the impact that having everyone together for worship has on someone who does not know Christ (1 Corinthians 14 being one of those passages). I agree with Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost that Christology should determine our mission, and then our mission should determine how our church is structured and operates. With what we know of who Jesus is and what he did while he was here on earth (although you have to factor in the concept that while he was here on earth, his "mission" was mostly to the Jewish people, and that he commissioned his disciples in Acts 1:8 to expand that mission to the Gentiles), and then letting that determine our own mission, would that mean a church structure based on Christology and missiology would produce two separate services for two "target audiences"?

- Secondly, something I've really been thinking about is something that I've been reading in an incredible book by Hirsch called "The Forgotten Ways". Does right thinking produce right behavior? Does the dispensing of information produce change? Let me quote from the book:

"If our starting point is old thinking and old behavior in a person or church, and we see it as our task to change that situation, taking the Hellenistic approach will mean that we provide information through books and classrooms, to try and get the person/church to a new way of thinking, and hopefully from there to a new way of acting. The problem is that by merely addressing intellectual aspects of a person, we fail to be able to change behavior. The assumption in Hellenistic thinking is that if people get the right ideas, they will simply change their behavior. The Hellenistic approach therefore can be characterized as an attempt to try to think our way into a new way of acting. Both experience and history show the fallacy of such thinking. And it certainly does not make disciples. All we do is change the way a person thinks; the problem is that his or her behaviors remain largely unaffected."

This concept of the Hellenistic approach to change vs. the Hebraic approach to change is definitely a huge topic for another post (or five), but this is why I brought it up: it seems like one of the reasons to separate your church into two target audiences (seeker and believer) would be because you subscribe to this Hellenistic approach to change (which would be right thinking leads to right acting which leads to change). Because you want to produce a different change in your seeker audience (changing from someone who has not accepted Jesus to someone who has) than your believer audience (continual change/transformation to become more like Christ), you separate them so that the different information processed (through sermons, music, and the arts) will produce the correct needed "change" in the person.

However, if you subscribe to the Hebraic approach to change (right acting leads to right thinking which leads to change), then you would want both groups of people, seeker and believer, in the same room, in the same setting, because your believers would be the example you would want the seekers to follow. And as those seekers saw the "right behavior" demonstrated in the lives of the believers (hopefully through more than just sitting in a worship service, i.e. relationship building/mentoring/modeling), this would produce lasting change.

I hope this makes sense. I'm not sure if this is exactly the way I was planning on this post to go, but it really has opened up some thoughts within my own head. Hopefully yours as well.

The next part of visit #4 will be posted during the conference, after I have had the opportunity to actually experience a worship service at Willow.