The Shift in Evangelical Thinking

The New York Times magazine had a feature-length article this weekend on the changes occurring within the Evangelical movement that I read while closing things out at Cloud 9 (which was an awesome retreat...great job Donnell and team!).

Jim Wallis does a good job of excerpting the article, describing the shift as a "Real Awakening" so I won't do so here. Suffice it to say, the article certainly reflects my own personal experience in my faith journey and a surprising number of those I know. Clearly the Spirit is doing something.

A complementary read, much shorter and perhaps more to the point, is this post provocatively titled Willow Creek Repents? in which Bill Hybels reflects on the results of a comprehensive study his mega-church conducted on the effectiveness of their programs in making disciples:

Speaking at the Leadership Summit, Hybels summarized the findings this way:

Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.

Having spent thirty years creating and promoting a multi-million dollar organization driven by programs and measuring participation, and convincing other church leaders to do the same, you can see why Hybels called this research “the wake up call” of his adult life.

Hybels 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.

In other words, spiritual growth doesn’t happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. And, ironically, these basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage.

The blog post also has links to the full video presentation by Hybels.

It's great to see so many streams starting to run together.