Could I get a reference to where Hybels says his “one of the few evangelical churches in the country that had a mid-week service with full-blown Bible study”? That doesn’t sound like him. (Though I have sat in those “new community” services and been touched by their depth.

Why is it so surprising to hear WC do serious evaluation of life change in their congregation. Why don’t others critically evaluate how they can do better? That’s no shock, it’s refreshing to see Willow take the lead again in integrity/transparency. Other are failing to reach goals, but just don’t admit it.

With all the criticism of evangelicalism, I can’t wait for someone to point to the church(es) that are our models for the future. Do they exist? Are they a balance of evangelism and discipleship? Please… someone list them as I want to visit them soon. Hmmm…

I seldom get answers to these types of questions from critics.

PS. I see the faults of WC, Saddleback, etc. but like someone said “I like what they are doing more than I like what I’m not doing”.

When Christ said, “Go and make disciples,” he was speaking as a Rabbi to his own disciples. The rabbinical model was to gather followers, to be “with them,” and to teach them everything you knew. The followers followed in order to be become like the Rabbi. Jesus was not instituting a new program for building the church in Matt 28:18f; he was commissioning his followers to continue what he had already taught them to do–to become rabbis like him who would go out and make new disciples. It was the completion of Jesus’ words in Lk 6:40–”A pupil [lit: disciple] is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.”

But here’s what I have always found interesting. The term “disciple” is used only in the gospels and the book of Acts, and disappears from the biblical text after about Acts 12. It is never used by any of the other New Testament writers. I think there are a couple of reasons. First, the idea of a rabbi and his disciples was a uniquely Jewish construct, at least in terms of religious culture. It would not have the same currency in the “nations” to which they were taking the gospel as it would in Israel. Second, in the theology of the church, Jesus is still present and is the “head of the church,” so he is still the head rabbi, so to speak, and we are still all followers, not really rabbis as such. I do not have my own disciples; rather, I make disciples of Jesus, who is present in the “body of Christ.” Let me repeat that: I do not make my own disciples.

The concept of “discipleship” is entirely extra-biblical. It is not even a biblical term, and I wonder if, because of the individualization of Christianity that it has helped foster over the past fifty years, it has done more harm than good to the biblical concept of the body of Christ. There are terms in Scripture for a “disciple, student, learner, follower” and for “make one of those,” but not for “a process or program for making those.” I see that idea embodied only in the body of Christ, the church. And, I think a good argument can be made that the language of discipleship was replaced after Acts 12 by the language of “koinonia,” or “fellowship, partnership, community.”

Biblical discipleship, then (IMHO), is simply the process of being the church, the body of Christ. It is Christians within the body helping others become more like Jesus. Sure, we can and will create programs to help facilitate and foster that process of maturation (which is really what becoming like Christ is all about), but the program is NOT discipleship. The practices we learn are NOT discipleship. The procedures we institutionalize are NOT discipleship. Discipleship IS the personal relationship in which one believer pours his or her life out for the benefit of another to help them become more like Jesus. Different people do that in different ways based on different spiritual gifts, but the end result, and the real goal of koinonia, is that the body of Christ (not just individuals) grows in unity, maturity and diversity as we help one another become better disciples of Christ, our Head. I wonder if we have so lost the concept of the “corporate” nature of body life and worship, though, that such a true expression of “discipleship” is rarely found now.

I think when the church looks around we will not find a lot of mature believers that can disciple other people. It will be interesting to see how Willow Creek talkles the problem. Perhaps a program on how to mature…:-) Discipleship is a lifetime, everyday, practical walk with Jesus. It is slow, almost mundane process.

I will be praying for WC. The pressures from our modern way of doing things are stacked against discipleship and disciplemaking. I think the fruit of this will only be seen in about 10 to 15 years and we are not good at waiting. Immediate results is in demand…:-)

Thank you Bill Hybels! Thank you for your constant transparency and authenticity that keeps the armchair quarterbacks of pastoral ministry second-guessing your signal calling as they invest more time in critiquing your honest admissions than performing the same kind of self-evaluation in their own ministries. May we be as vigilant and honest as we study, analyze and critique the effectiveness of our own churches!

Thank you Pastor Hybels for offering a warning or disclaimer in every talk, every book and every conference you lead, asking leaders to use what they can from your church and your ministry, but to focus first and foremost on being who God wants us to be within our unique context. Thank you for repeatedly cautioning us not to go back and try to replicate what you are doing in Chicago, or to try and become one of your clones in ministry.

Thank you Bill for the many times I’ve sat in your sanctuary and at Moody Bible Insititute when you have bared your soul, and made impassioned pleas for men and women in ministry not to “cut and run” or “bail” when things get tough because time is too short, the Kingdom of God too near and the urgency of the Gospel to great to have any more of God’s called ones jump ship! Thank you for your sense of humor that often laughs at something you’ve done.

Thank you for planting churches around the world and devoting a significant amount of your church budget to training pastors and leaders in the 3rd World countries. Thank you for the global difference you are making in AIDS, poverty and world hunger.

Thank you for the thousands of people you have reached for Christ and the overhwelming percentage of your church membership who came to Christ through Willow Creek (even some of your programs) as adults when most of us were growing, but mainly through transfer growth of members from other churches, instead of new Christ-followers.

Thank you Bill for the passion in your voice, the quivering lip and the tears from your eyes when you plead that those of us in pastoral ministry will have a “Holy Discontent” and not be comfortable until we have exercised it for the sake of Christ, while never losing hope and realizing that the local church is God’s plan to reveal the hope of the world, Jesus to the world.

Thank you Bill for your books, talks, and sermons that always challenge, engage and teach me timeless truths rooted in Scripture. I may not always agree with everything you say ( I don’t 100% with Peterson and Piper either!), I certainly don’t employ everything WC does, and we aren’t even on the same radar in terms of size, cultural and geographic context, but you never make me feel that I’m “just a small church pastor”.

Thank you Bill for baring your soul in 1991 or ‘92 at Moody Pastor’s Conference before 1,500 pastors telling your own story of workaholism and burnout as you cautioned all of us not to let doing the work of God, “kill God’s work in you.” Your words challenged a very young, second-career pastor who was already recovering from workaholism in my first career. It seems I also remember you smiling and singing without a hymnal to the words of a traditional hymn supported by that massive organ in R.A. Torrey auditorium. And back then you were being tarred and feathered for leading the way with all that “contemporary” music and drama, ha!

Bill, my church membership is not at Willow Creek, my tithes, offerings, spiritual gifts, talents, and time are not invested there either. So I really have no right to criticize what you do or do not do. You answer to the same One we all answer to in pastoral ministry and as Christ-followers. I have enough trouble of my own just trying to stay on my knees for my own mistakes, failures, imperfections and leadership in pastoral ministry. But in the paraphrased words of Pastor Jim Cymbala, “I do have to pray for you because if we profess the Lordship of Christ, we are ALL on the same team. We all wear the same uniform and we need each other. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”

And Bill, as an adult PK who is soooooooooo tired of the all too ready cynicism, judgment and criticism coming from those in pastoral ministry toward those in pastoral ministry, I’m having some difficulty seeing how it’s any different than the criticism many shepherds receive from their own flock and bristle over. I’ve come to realize how much we need each other. Those of us in smaller contexts need those of you in larger and mega contexts to be faithful, authentic and strong. And you need us to be faithful, authentic and strong. You lose, we all lose. Thanks Bill for simply being you.

According to a United Brethren preacher bud of mine from rural PA, the tradition of Wed Night services began in rural agricultural areas, as farmers would be more likely to attend. Since then, it’s become an established tradition.

As for the Navigators, at Cal Poly Pomona in the late Seventies they were not anything to brag about. (We had three main Christian groups on-campus — Campus Crusade, Navigators, and an independent third called “Studies in the Word of God” or something similar. All three were seriously affected by Hal Lindsay (Christian Celebrity Syndrome of the period) and Wretched Urgency; this was also a time period where the Jesus People (Counterculture Christian) movement of the Sixties had aged enough to go sour with fads of the time but before the resulting problems burned themselves out.)

Of course discipleship is relational and informal, as well as congregational and formal. What hapens congregationally must be informed by what is happening individually. Anything less falls short of what Jesus did with the 12.

Perhaps we are now suffering the backlash of all the church growth studies and bigger and better church programs and less and less interpersonal involvement. More than perhaps. The truth is that we NEED accountability with humility and mercy and grace in a loving relationship of ‘iron upon iron’ that gets past all the facades and masks of ‘polite’ society. Is this a surprise?

Discipleship is along-the-way Christianity in the everyday. Until it is everyday, it is commonplace programs only. Until it is along the way, it is just a footnote to another push by another leadership group.

I don’t want to sound overly cynical, but when we get past selling the next book or study series and get back into living the deeper life that seeks out God’s presence in every waking moment of life it will surprise some what is there. And until WE who lead are there, we can in NO way take anyone else there.

Begin with the word itself – disciple. It forms the root of what it means to be disciplined in the ways of your master. And who cares what it costs? What is there in this life that isn’t worth less (worthless) compared to the glory of knowing Jesus in the everyday – every single day? Did you think you were agreeing to be part of something else? Did you think Jesus died for the latest programming fad at the mega-church nearest you? He died for you to walk with him and the Father. No more and no less. And it costs everything about you – and especially you.

One of my personal mentors used to put it this way: “you can’t re-kill a dead man. When you come to Christ, you become a dead man on furlough, expected to make your furloughed life count.” Thanks for your blog-thoughts, Michael. But I have to admit that combined with the responses, it almost felt like I was reading the musings of folks who have a “three dollars worth of God” (have you read that book?) brand of Christianity instead of the real thing.

Thankfully, my love compels me to disregard those feelings – unless they have something to say to inform my walk with Jesus. Today such thoughts are telling me to pray…and so I will.

So, anyone else want to chime in who’s not an attendee/member of an SBC church or doesn’t live down here in God’s country?

I will grant you that Willow has been a pioneer in small group ministry. I’ve personally made use of their small group Bible study curriculum numerous times. The thing I find so disconcerting, though, is that after all these years of being a so-called authority on “rediscovering church” it turns out that to a large degree, what they were rediscovering wasn’t really church at all.

It also highlights the “suckling pig” mentality that permeates America’s program driven church’s today. This is a problem that Willow’s ministry strategies have helped to foster in many ways. For me this issue has become one of my greatest pet peeves. If we’re really serious about “rediscovering church” I think the first thing that we need to rediscover is that church is not a product to be consumed.