Be The Fruit

What is going on at Willow? Part 3

by Bill Blair on 29/02/08 at 12:29 pm

The main premise that the REVEAL study tried to test was that a person’s level of spiritual growth could be judged by looking at their level of church activity.  The idea was that they should be able to see a direct correlation with spiritual growth and church activity.  If you know anything about the study, you would know this is where the primary failure was shown.

On the surface, it seems legitimate to think that a church could measure success by how active and involved their people are.  On the surface, it makes sense to think that a person who is extremely active must be a very motivated and passionate believer that is driven to be involved by their level of growth. This idea will only work, however, if everyone’s motives for involvement are pure and good.  Believe it or not, sometimes people get involved in church activity for the wrong reasons, which is where legalism rears its ugly head.

The problem is that when you start by looking at activity as a measure of growth, it quickly becomes the driver of growth in a church’s mind.  That is, if we believe that activity measures growth, then activity must cause growth; therefore, our goal should be to get people as active as possible so they will grow.  So, being a good growing Christian becomes not loving God and people, but having good attendance at church, in service, and in groups.  The church activities become an end and not a means so it does not matter what those programs actually accomplish.  People then get involved not because of passionate growth, but because they have been told that is what they are supposed to do.  To me, this turns into legalism which clearly does not equal growth.

I had noticed this trend as I have grown up in my faith. For me, I did become involved in church as a result of my growth, but I encountered people who viewed my involvement as the cause of growth.  I was commended once for achieving an ideal of going to the worship service on Sunday, being involved in a weekly small group outside the church, and serving in the preschool area.  For me, I got inolved because I was internally driven to do so.  I was growing then I got involved, not the other way around.

Measuring spiritual growth is a difficult thing. I commend Willow Creek for attempting to do so with the study, but even that may not be a true measure. I am sure it would be easy to “trick” the methods used in the survey. Willow Creek or anyone else could make the REVEAL survey a benchmark then develop programs that don’t necessarily cause spiritual growth, but cause people to answer the survey “correctly.” Once again, I appreciate that Willow Creek is serious about spiritual growth, but we need to be careful about any criteria of judging growth.

I think the solution is to be wise about everything we do. We should ask ourselves tough questions. How does any program help people grow? Is there any mechanism or system in place that drives growth? For example, I think small groups are great vehicles for learning and fellowship, but without solid leadership a group can get way out in left-field. Without a solid leader with biblical knowledge, discussions can end up being centered on false teachings people may see on TV.

My point is this; it seems impossible to monitor spiritual growth whether we are judging attendance, involvement, or a survery; therefore, the best we can do is to be faithful to Scripture and work to install procedures, systems, or mechanisms that should drive people to a biblical model of growth. The biblical model of growth described in the Bible is discipleship, which I will discuss in the final installment of this series.