Visit to Willow Creek (Day four) – Greg Hawkins and tour of Willow

Greg describes his role as Executive Pastor to be the one who focuses on “…where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.” He says that the Executive Pastor who knows that they are in the number two role, has to be very clear that their role is to serve the number one, ‘You lead strong, but in any given moment you back off and elevate the number one.’ Therefore an executive Pastor needs to be someone who complements the gifts of the Senior Pastor, not mirrors them.

Greg spent the morning unpacking the process and finding of the Reveal survey; the focused, research-based view of how the spiritual journey unfolds, validated through extensive survey input from over 157,000 congregants in more than 500 churches. This growing sample includes churches of all kinds of denominations, sizes, and contexts.Without going into immense detail (which I found very exciting), here are some observations.

The results identify a spiritual continuum comprised of 4 unique kinds of people at different stages of spiritual development: Exploring Christ, Growing in Christ, Close to Christ, and Christ-Centered. Each group has uniquely defining characteristics; together they form the lens through which REVEAL conducts its work. Remember, these results were from church attending people, 98% of these people believe in God, with very similar attitudes:

1. Exploring Christ – these are not new Christians, or necessarily active ‘seekers’, they could have been drifting along in church for years
2. Growing in Christ – these are people who would agree with the sentence ‘I believe in Jesus and am working on what it means to know him further.’
3. Close to Christ – ‘I depend on him daily for guidance. It’s a very vital relationship in my life. Jesus will help me through my day. Jesus is my friend.’
4. Christ – Centered – ‘Jesus truly is my Lord. My relationship with Jesus is the most important relationship in my life. It guides everything I do.’ It’s not about Jesus helping me through my day, it’s what can I do for him today.

Some of the implications are as follows:

• If a Pastor measures Christian maturity by their ‘involvement’ in the church, it is not a good question. It’s natural for Pastors and leaders to do this, because there is very little tangible evidence to look for, but involvement is not sufficient. The right lens is ‘how important is Christ to this person.’
• The question is, ‘How can we as a church help them move from stage to stage (increasing level of love for Christ and neighbour) rather than simply be more involved more?’

The Reveal survey confirmed or revealed the following information:

1)    Reading and reflecting on the Bible is the most powerful Catalyst for individual Spiritual Growth

1. Whichever ‘group’ (Exploring Christ, Growing in Christ, Close to Christ, Christ – Centered) you’re in, reading the Bible will help them grow.

2)    Developing Core Christian beliefs is crucial for those in the early stages of Spiritual Growth

1. In the earlier stages of Christian growth, helping them to understand core Christian beliefs is crucial to prevent ‘stalling’ later on. So, for example, an insufficient view of the church as radical covenant community at an early stage of Christian development means at a later stage they are more likely to fall for a consumeristic view of church.
2. Therefore developing foundational classes is very important

3)    Personal Spiritual practices are the building block for a Christ-centered life

1. More than attending services
2. This makes sense, because we stop ‘my’ life by a discipline to ‘be with God’ in some kind of way. When we practice spiritual disciplines we’re prioritizing our life to spend more time with the one we love and consequently the more we spend time with the one we love we love them more.
3. As Pastors, it means we don’t tell people they should do these things, but rather we invite them to be with the one who loves them more than they can know.
4. They remain disciplines because stopping ‘our lives’ requires discipline.

4)    Serving is the most catalytic experience offered by Churches

5)    Spiritual community is vital and migrates from organized to organic

1. The form of what the vital community is, can change.
2. These findings rocked Willow, because they realized that organized Small Groups are less important for the later stages of Christian maturity. Those ‘close to Christ’ and ‘Christ Centered’ don’t need us as churches to organize community for them. If you try, or if we’re forceful, we’ll actually be resented.
3. Therefore ‘The statement that ‘everyone should be in a small group’ is false based on the research. The statement, ‘you should all be in authentic community’ is true.
4. Those who were in the more mature categories of Christian maturity were organising authentic community themselves.

They also discovered that the rate of someone’s spiritual growth in the later mature categories is growing fastest. This is obvious but encouraging; if we spend more time with him, we love him more.

One of the fundamental changes for Willow is in how they see themselves and their role. They no longer see themselves as ‘parental’ and consequently they want to reset the bar of their congregations expectation. They will now say things like, ‘We can’t read your bible for you. We can’t drive the car for you to get here on a Sunday. We can’t pray for you.’ Instead, they encourage self-learning.

According to the results, this what the top 5 effective churches are doing:

• They get people moving
  • This is not an ‘over involvement’ mentality, but rather a ‘Next Step’ mentality; ‘What’s your next step for growth?’
  • They are passionate and consumed about people getting going, not ‘gentle gentle.
• They embed the bible in everything: In staff meetings, naturally in conversations, people sharing what scripture is saying to them at that moment, in addiction/recovery groups, throughout churches. This is not necessarily exposition, but a very value that the Bible guides everything! ‘What are you studying these days because of what God is saying?’ is a natural question
• They create ownership: Investing in people, Low control, They are cheerleaders of people being empowered and released
• They pastor the local community: Do anything, in the name of Jesus, bringing ministry to the neighbourhood. The top 5 churches make a large investment of their budget in this.
• The leaders are consumed with making disciples: They unapologetically call people to full discipleship. They are obsessed with the end-game of ‘…making disciples’ It starts with the leaders of churches having a radical commitment to being a disciple themselves.

I found these results so exciting, and clarifying. Of course they need more reflecting on, and contextualising, but they are a good start.

Greg was such a refreshing individual. He is the executive Pastor of one of the biggest churches in the world, and yet he was really down-to-earth, brilliant in a zany kind of way. If you’re a fan of the West Wing, he was so like Josh Lynam with shades of Leo McGarry. That would make Bill Jed Bartlett….

Tour of Willow with Brian MacAuliffe

This was so inspiring for anyone considering a building project. The tour took about two hours and we visited all the Promiseland Area, the original auditorium, ‘Dr. B’s’ – their large café, a 5000 ft bookstore, their food court/Atrium that seat 750 (which is used on a Sunday with large cinema screens dropped from the ceiling for those who just want to take in the service in a café environment) and other rooms (40 classroom-sized rooms and 18 ‘breakout’ rooms for small group meetings.  The story behind the new building is so inspiring, with incredible generosity from people leading to so many testimonies of how God had truly provided. When one hears of God’s faithfulness in concrete ways, it made PBC’s own £3 million building project seem more of a possibility.

We then went into the new Auditorium. WOW! It’s one of the most beautiful auditoriums I’ve ever seen, with such attention to detail. There is wheelchair seating on all three levels, a stage the size of a West End stage with three or four underground levels for stage building.  They can have different stages already set up underneath that can sit on movable stages that rise up to the top. It has to be seen to be believed. All of this has made volunteering in areas for more pleasant and the building of sets and stages far easier to achieve. Whilst we were touring the stage was a flurry of activity as people were building a stunning looking set for their main Christmas services.

The space has been innovatively designed to reflect the sound of the congregation singing while absorbing the audio from the sound system, allowing for better acoustics and worship experiences. The floor beneath the seats is a beautiful stone that enables singing acoustics, but the aisles are carpeted so you can’t hear people leaving. The chairs are also sound ‘proofed’, cinema style seating so that when people stand for a response, you don’t hear a thousand clattering, clunking seats. The ceiling is one of the most innovative in the whole of the USA to provide perfect congregational acoustics. The Audio is enhanced so that sound levels are consistent throughout the majority of seating areas. It is breathtaking.

We went to the rooms beneath and behind the staging and saw stunning music studios, television/camera operating suites, orchestra rehearsal rooms. They weren’t going to have this area, but a member who passionately believed in the Arts wrote a $2million cheque so that these vital art groups would have dedicated space for rehearsals and development, which in turn has benefited the Willow services. There is a ‘green room’ with cafeteria and comfortable seating, and television screens on the wall for those who are involved in the services to wait in.

In the evening tonight we attended a humbling fundraising evening held in the Atrium/food-court with donors from the Willow Creek membership who had been invited along to hear about the work of the Willow Creek Association and the fruitful Global Leadership Summit (GLS) that is working around the world to encourage church leaders in their development.  About five of the Pastors from the Leadership Training shared how the GLS had helped them. There was a small live orchestra and a lovely cooked meal. I chatted to some of the donors and shared how Willow has helped me in so many ways. Bill Hybels arrived to share extemporarily what the GLS means. There was no hype, no hard sell, just an honest appeal for the Kingdom from a man who is clearly anointed. When he walked in the room, all of us Pastors agreed later in our discussions that Bill has such a presence, it is clearly an anointing. Many of the Pastors on the training week with me lead churches that have thousands attending, and yet they all commented on Bill’s ‘presence’. Many of these donors went on to give six figure sums to the GLS. What generosity. In Indonesia, where there is almost no church leadership training and encouragement, they charge $7 per Pastor to attend the GLS, and yet the projector itself costs $100,000 to hire. Many of the poorer and persecuted countries are heavily subsidised, which these donors were covering. Incredible. The GLS is not a profit making organisation – they just want to encourage Pastors.

The Willow Creek Association

Started in 1992 to provide vision. Training and resources for church leaders. Over 12, 685 member churches representing more than 91 denominations from 37 countries. In 2007, 20,152 guests attended conferences at the South Barrington Campus. In 2007, 108,000 leaders in 216 cities from 32 countries attended the Leadership Summit.