Network Blog

This is a little long…sorry.  There is much that I have been thinking about.  I just finished spending 2 days at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.  I was there for the first “Reveal Conference.”  It was a very full conference, with a lot of good information.  There are a couple of things about it that I am processing, however. 

I need to preface this by saying that I am not a Willow Creek basher.  I understand the dynamics of a large church, though they take the word “large” to an extreme.  This place is huge.  Really huge.  But I am not one who bashes big places, or who is critical because they take a certain style of church, often referred to as “seeker oriented.” 

The conference itself revolved around the results from the “Reveal Study.”  The study, first done by Willow Creek as a self-assessment, and then done by 500 chuches, to give it statistical significance, has compelling data and information.  It is all available in two books:  “Reveal” and “Follow Me.”  While there is much to be learned there, the results really seemed to focus on a couple of key elements: 

• The need and desire to take the study of scripture seriously.
• That churches that set a high bar/expectation for personal growth have more effectiveness.

What I have spent most of my time thinking about is worship. 

A session was dedicated to how churches provide meaningful worship experiences.  The worship band from Gateway Church in Dallas, TX was invited up to lead worship, and the pastor from there delivered the message.  The whole thing was a little bit overwhelming.  I’ll focus on a few of the elements:

• Music.  The band was really good.  Too good.  A total of 10 people, who all appeared to be “A” players who could have been on stage with any major musician ou tour made up the group.  The quality and production values were amazing.  Unfortunately, for me this created a distance between the experience of the ‘worship leader’ and the experience of the worshipper. I found it hard to worship because I was so attuned to what THEY were doing.  They got in the way.  In all fairness, it didn’t appear that others had the same experience as I.  The arms were up and people were singing with a sense of joy. 

• The Message.  The message was all about the need to go deep and to be authentic in our worship.  Ok.  It focused on “if we’re not committed, why should those we lead be committed?”  Ok.  There wasn’t much in the way of gospel.  No, there wasn’t anything in the way of gospel. 

• The Liturgy.  Yes, I am being serious, and no, there wasn’t any.  I didn’t expect any in the traditional sense.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about it in the form of the ‘work of the people.’  We were encouraged to focus on the worship leader and to sing.  But there wasn’t any other response that wasn’t coercive.  Example:  The pastor talked about raising praises to God and that we were all going to shout as loud as we can.  Moment of full-disclosure:  I don’t like to shout.  But the pastor said something like “the Psalms talk about lifting our voices…of singing…of shouting to God.  So if you’re not used to it, or not comfortable with it, you’d better get used to it, but that’s what heaven is going to be like.”  Really?  Bummer for me then.

• The “Me” Factor.  One of the findings of the Reveal Study is that there are four primary categories or types of people in terms of faith formation:  Explorers, Beginnners, Growing and Committed.  Ok.  There are some problems here, but actually I think categories like this can be helpful and the data from the study does a good job of supporting this information.  But one of the interesting (and helpful) things about the category of “Committed Christian” is that the Commmitted Christian knows that it’s not about them and that they are able/capable of getting out of the way and naming God in their life, the lives of others and in the world.  But this was directly in contrast with my worship experience.  In this worship experience, there was no getting out of the way.  It was about the leader.  It was about what the leader did.  It was “I want to create a worship experience”.  It was “I want to take people from the front porch to the altar.”  I understand about the key role of quality leadership.  However, God was not mentioned.  There was nothing about what God does in worship.  There was nothing about the role God plays in transformation.  I think it was implied, but it certainly wasn’t explicit.  The leaders did nothing to get out of the way. 

These are just my observations and reactions.  They are not gospel either.  I could easily  be wrong.  I’m just writing from my observations.  And I write because I am processing and learning.  I don’t mean to imply that we (I) have it down perfectly yet.  Far from it.  There are lots of problems with the worship experiences where I play a leadership role. 

And I did learn from this experience.  I learned about what I think about worship.  I certainly learned more about what I don’t like.  But most importantly, I learned about leadership, and the importance of stepping aside and letting God do God’s work in the midst of the people.  I’m going to have to think about when and where I do (and don’t) get out of the way.

Peace,

Todd.