Change at Willow
I grew up going to Willow Creek Community Church outside of Chicago, one of the first "megachurches." While my perspective on Willow has changed over the years, I was interested to see this piece today on a rather large change in direction by the church leadership. In essence, they've found that the programs they set up (trainings, retreats, evangelism events, etc.) don't correspond with "spiritual growth" (loving God and people more). That is, just doing church stuff doesn't help you be more like Jesus. Instead, it's relatively low budget items such as Bible study, strong relationships, and prayer that lead to those things--things people need to be trained in, but are primarily not programmatic in nature. It will be interesting to see where Willow goes from here. Personally, I often feel agnostic about the institutionalization of church, since God himself seems to be wary of it in the Bible (resisting monarchy or the temple or even Jesus' ministry outside of religious structures). I'd wonder some about how we describe "spiritual maturity," since that will vary based on the tradition of the church defining it (where's acting for social justice, for example?). But it still seems like a good word.