Willow Creek Community Church Repents….are you listening Pastor F.?
Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.
And
We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.
And
Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he’s asking us to transform this planet.
The opining by the very well-meaning and the good Christian Protestants on this forum is generally that people are “hungry for the word of God.” and that seeker sensitive churches do not adequately deliver that. One member said the following:
Sorry if I am so cynical, but I find it amazing that there was no mention of what the Holy Spirit wants, and what Jesus told them to do. Haven’t they ever read Jesus saying “Do you love me? Feed my sheep.”? It is His church for crying out loud. Why not ask Him what it is He wants done? Why not look to what the church in Acts did, that produced “Christ-followers” that turned the world upside down, and followed Him willingly to the cross, and the coliseum, and stake? No - we’d rather poll another 500 churches that have been following us in the corporate marketing approach to churchianity to see what they think we should do. [Emphsis mine]
To which every fiber of my being wants to cry out, YES!! That is EXACTLY what they want. In fact, I think they were driven from their non-seeker sensitive churches looking for it. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Word of God that people are hungry for is Jesus in the Eucharist. John 1:1″ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” You will notice that the Word is a Divine Person sent from God, not a book.
We are to feed on every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God!! Matthew 4: 4 “He said in reply, “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”
We are to feed on the Bread from Heaven (John 6), Jesus, who is the fulfillment of Manna a substance that looks like bread but acts like meat (rots and gets maggots Exodus 16:19).
Yes, we are to know Sacred Scripture which contains the words of God (ignorance of Sacred Scripture is ignorance of Christ) but we are to FEED on the WORD of God, the fruit of the Tree of Life (the cross)!! And the WORD that we are to feed on is JESUS himself in the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
YES!! we are to become the church of Acts. That would be the same writer of the Gospel of Luke who told us in Luke that the disciples recognized Him in the breaking of the Bread (Luke 24:35). Their hearts burned when He opened the Scriptures (Luke 24:32) for them but the KNEW Him in the breaking of the bread. This would be the same Church of Acts that devoted itself to the breaking of the bread (Acts 2:42) (and the Apostles’ teaching….that would NOT be the NT since that wasn’t written yet.) I have seen very few Protestant churches (I know they are out there.) where it could rightly be said that they devoted themselves to the breaking of the bread.
But it isn’t necessary to “bring back” the Church of Acts. It never went anywhere. It’s alive and well and just down the road at your local Catholic parish. We’ve devoted ourselves to the teachings of the Apostles, to prayers, and the breaking of the bread (Acts 2:42) for the last 2000 years. There have certainly been some rocky times but the gates of hell are not prevailing against the Church founded by Jesus led by His steward on earth currently in the person of Benedict XVI. I wonder if the same could be said even 100 years from now of Willow Creek Community Church or churches like it?
And as loathe as I am to type it all out in one word so the search engines can find it, given what happened the last time. I really think that this is part of what I was saying in reponse to Pastor Furtick when he posted on Church Shopping earlier this year and the Willow Creek article just illustrates it…SO Pastor Furtick, are you listening? Are you learning from Willow Creek Community Church? Your congregation (and others all across the world like yours) is hungry for the WORD (See John 1:1), the Fruit of the Tree of Life, The Bread of Heaven. Come on home to Rome….we’ll leave the light on.
There. Now I’ve said it. Maybe I can behave myself on the other forum.
