As my family was visiting with our extended family over Christmas and New Years the topic in one conversation came around to the Willow Creek Community Church and the Willow Creek leadership’s discovery that their programs were not developing their members spiritually, at least according to the measurements in a study they had released over the summer.  When I indicated that I had not yet heard about this I was roundly greeted by a “where have you been?” from nearly everyone else in the room.  While this was a big topic in Evangelical circles it was not major news in Reformed and Presbyterian circles.  (And if any of the blogs I regularly read had picked this up and I somehow missed it I apologize.)  It turns out that a quick Google search showed that it was still big news and even today as I write this there are blogs still commenting on it.  For example you can check out the blog 9Marks which has been writing about it in January, or a recent article in the National Catholic Reporter Online.  I only want to concentrate on one specific aspect, so if you, like me, missed the initial push on this and you are interested in more info there is a lot out there.

Having missed the boat on this major religious news story I decided to go straight to the source and added the book that come out of the study, REVEAL: Where are you?, by Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, to my holiday reading list.  Short book, lots of graphics, pretty quick read.

So to make a short book even shorter, the team at Willow Creek surveyed members of their congregations and six other congregations across the country and found that “Involvement in church activities does not predict or drive long-term spiritual growth.”  (There is a Denver Post article about how Richard Foster figured this out 30 years ago.)

OK, now some details…

The study’s working definition of spiritual growth was “An increasing love for God and for other people.” It may not be everything that a Reformed theologian would want, but I have to give them credit for grounding it in scripture and the Two Great Commandments: “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” and “Love your neighbor are yourself” from Matthew 22:37-39.  In this study the authors grouped the respondents into one of four different groups based upon their increasing level of spiritual development:

Exploring Christianity: Believe in God, not sure about Christ.  Faith not important part of daily life
Growing in Christ: Believe in Jesus, working on what it means to get to know him
Close to Christ: Feel really close to Christ, depend on Him daily for guidance
Christ-centered: God is all I need, Everything I do is a reflection of Christ

To give a very brief summary of the results:  Church program is only really important to spiritual growth in the first two groups and the church needs to train people to be “self-feeders” to develop at the two higher stages.

I’ll leave the basic findings at that but there is plenty more in the blogosphere about the study.  A particularly notable series of posts is by Prof. Bradley Wright, a faculty member in the Sociology Department at the University of Connecticut who studies sociology of Christianity.  He approaches the REVEAL study from a professional academic viewpoint and many of the measurement problems that jumped out to me as a research scientist he is able to describe and dissect more meaningfully.  You can start at the beginning with his first post or just jump to number 11 for the summary.  One of the things that he and I agree on is that in many cases the study over-interprets the results.

From a theological viewpoint, the book is not written from a Reformed perspective.  One of the things that jumped out at me was the usage of the word “church.”  While I did not see it explicitly defined in the book, in my reading it seemed to carry the implicit meaning of the institution not the community.  For example, one of their observations is “The research strongly suggests that the church declines in influence as people grow spiritually.”  While this and most references to “church” could be interpreted as the community, lacking a specific declaration it seemed to me that the institution was a more likely reading than the community.

A more direct example of theological viewpoint is shown in another of their observations:  “The human spirit is wired by God to search for him, just like birds are wired to fly south for the winter.”  Not withstanding Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you,” Reformed theology agrees that before the fall the human heart was wired to seek God, but in the fall that wiring got short-circuited so that now God must search for us.

Now, with that build-up, I want to move on to what I found the most interesting within this study.  The study found two more groups of people contained within the four classes that are outlined above.  First within the middle two groups they found that 16% of all respondents were “stalled.”  These are Christians who have some basic level of belief but are not really active or spiritually developing.  They found that this could be due to a number of reasons ranging from addictions, to personal issues, to not prioritizing their spiritual life.

The second group they found was the “dissatisfied” segment.  These were Christians at the highest level, actively involved in the church and in serving others, who found worship services were not fulfilling, who wanted more in-depth Bible teaching, and among them 63% were considering leaving the church.  This dissatisfied group comprised about 10% of the respondents.  In other words, some of the heaviest consumers have some of the least brand loyalty.  The study found that this group felt the church was not keeping them on track or helping them find spiritual mentors.  This group wanted to be challenged and helped to develop further and to be held accountable.

The REVEAL study draws the conclusion that this group, and the stalled as well, has not been taught that they have a large responsibility for their own spiritual growth at this level.  The church needs to be a better “parent” in preparing members to develop on their own.

I think that is part of it, but this finding struck me because it quantifies something that I have observed in my time in leadership in the Presbyterian church and which (confession time) my wife and I sometimes feel.  But, from my experience I would add other, more complex, factors into the reasons that this dissatisfaction occurs.  I do not dispute that there are cases where the church is not good at helping Christians learn to “feed themselves.”  But I have seen at least three other factors are in play here.

First, most churches are smaller and have limited time and resources.  Preaching and teaching need to be targeted at the “median believer”, if you will, and the church member that is more spiritually mature misses out.  But I would not say that the believer must feed him or herself alone.  They and the church must make a point of gathering these mature Christians together so that they can challenge ea
ch other in community.  OK, I guess that is in line with the REVEAL study except that the growth can be in community.

The second factor I have seen is burn out and distraction.  I have seen several leaders, very active in the church, frequently heading up a major task force, committee, or Pastor Nominating Committee, finish up their work and quickly disappear from the church.  In talking with a few of them I have found that they wanted to switch churches and find a place where they could be anonymous.  They just wanted to get the administratia behind them and focus on their spiritual lives, and they did not feel they could do that by remaining in the same place.  It was not the church’s teaching or lack there of, it was the distraction they felt at the church.  They wanted to wipe the slate clean and start over.  It was not that they were necessarily looking for a “better” church, they were interested in a “different” church.  I will say that several times in our lives my wife and I have felt this and been “two-church” people:  One where we worked, and one where we could attend without business on our minds and feel a stronger sense of worship.  Is it possible for churches to structure themselves so that members can feel free to “release” their servant side and concentrate on their worship and learning side for a while?

Finally, I have known a limited number of church leaders who have become dissatisfied by the politics within the leadership of the particular church and have considered moving on to find a church without the problems and politics.  In severe cases this spills over to the congregation as a whole and members use the opportunity to move on to other churches.  But here I am talking about mild disagreements within the Session that persist and so a leader feels frustrated and considers moving on to another church where things might be better.  I have reminded a few of these people that we are a fallen race and every church has its problems.  Some church’s challenges are larger than others, but as the former chair of the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry I can assure you that no church, at least in our presbytery, was immune from an occasional leadership problem.  Maybe your presbytery doesn’t have these problems.

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to the spiritually mature dissatisfied church member.  I do agree that mature Christians in general, and the elders of the church in particular, must take some responsibility for their own continuing spiritual development.  Furthermore, as the shepherds of the flock, they are responsible for the spiritual development of all the members of the congregation.  This responsibility is not just to make sure that worship is meaningful and that education opportunities are available, but to individually mentor other members of the congregation and keep them accountable for their development.