Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church

Rating:
Summary: A very informative book
Review: Beginning in the 1970s, pastor Bill Hybels, and a group of excited young believers began for a new way to "do church." Focusing on the church's duty to evangelize unbelievers, Hybels studied what kept people out of church and what would bring them into church, and they reformatted their church service for these "unchurched Harrys." And now, more than twenty years later, the Hybels' church, Willow Creek, is one of the most influential churches in Evangelical circles and beyond. In 1983, sociologist Dr. Gregory Pritchard examined Willow Creek, how they operate and why, and what they do that is good and what they do that is not so good.

This is a very good book. The first section is a sympathetic look at Willow Creek, which is sure to please supporters and inform those unfamiliar with the Willow Creek way of doing things. The Second section is a critical look at Willow Creek, examining what some of the unintended consequences of the Willow Creek way are. As the author is at pains to point out, every church's modus operandi is bound to have positive consequences and negative unintended consequence, with Willow Creek being no different.

If you are interested in an evenhanded analysis of Willow Creek, then I highly recommend this book to you. Having read it, I now understand a great deal more about this phenomenon.

Rating:
Summary: Balanced View on Willow Creek
Review: Dr. Pritchard's book on the seeker sensitive movement rightly examines the "mother" of seeker churches in Willow Creek Community Church. Willow Creek seems to be defining church these days along with Saddleback Community Church. Entire denominations have reshaped their methods to adapt to the seeker movement. Is it any wonder than that a book such as this is needed?

Pritchard examines Willow Creek Community Church after attending the church for over a year and having unlimited access to the pastors and staff of the church. He divides his book into two formats. He first gives an insider's view of Willow Creek and their history, philosophy, and practices. He covers Senior Pastor Bill Hybels in-depth. The second section of the book offers a critical review of the church's practices and theology. To be fair, Pritchard is not overtly critical of the church but he does find some faults but I'll leave that to you to read on your own.

Rating:
Summary: Scholarly analysis, fairly written on Seeker sensitivity
Review: I used this book on a Master's level class for History of Christian Worship (pre-Christian/synagogue roots to present).

Gregory A. Pritchard wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Willowcreek movement, which is the prototype of all "seeker sensitive" or "seeker oriented" movements. Whether churches like it or not, they may all try to emulate Willowcreek, or utilize some of their methods, methodologies, or even philosophies. "Seeker oriented" tends to indicate that the church is primarily directed towards finding and ministering to seekers, e.g., even changing to be better accommodating toward seekers (which is what Willowcreek is). "Seeker sensitive" tends to indicate some desire to also incorporate seekers into services. Willowcreek is the prototype, as it is the first most-successful and most well-advertised church that utilizes various art forms such as contemporary drama, visual and fine arts, music, multi-media, contemporary and relevant preaching.

Pritchard tries his best to be neutral, neither being an advocate of Willowcreek, or being one who would be anti-Willowcreek. Pritchard reports in this book, which is a summation of his findings of his doctoral dissertation about his experiences at Willowcreek, interviews with Lee Strobel, Bill Hybels, and others.

Pritchard splits his book into two halves, the first half is more reporting what is going on and why they do what they do (history of Willowcreek, background, personalities, philosophies, methodologies), and the second half is more of an analysis of how these are effective and how they could be improved (i.e., how some of these fall short or how the methodologies need to be brought in line with theological/biblical principles).

For instance, Pritchard discusses in the first half of the book how Willowcreek uses the arts, the relevance of Christianity and the gospel, Willowcreek's use of rhetoric/oratory/persuasion, the speaker's identification with the audience, building the credibility of the speaker, programming (i.e., Willowcreek's development of their program), and reaching out to the unchurched (specifically, Willowcreek makes an assumption that it is harder to reach men and get them churched than it is to reach women, so they go after a fictious "unchurched Harry") -- and profiling unchurched Harry.

In the second half of the book, Pritchard tries to analyze what the rest of Evangelical Protestantism has to learn from Willowcreek, both good and bad. For instance, that positively, we could do more with rhetoric, persuasion, and oratory, and being relevant. This agrees with what I've been taught about any type of ministry ("Meet them where they're at, take them where they need to be.") However, Pritchard also looks in-depth at the difficulties of this philosophy of church ministry, for instance, how they import the psychotherapeutic culture/worldview directly without thinking about it critically. Or how they use [church] marketing as a way to figure out what to sell people. Without giving too much away, a major problem in the Evangelical church is that we fail to examine things through the lenses of Scripture and theology, and Pritchard applies this to Willowcreek.

This book makes an excellent addition to any pastor's or seminarian's or elder's library, as something to be cautious about when thinking about the issues of seeker sensitivity, or thining about joining such a church. It would be excellent in conjunction to other books like Mark Nolls' Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, or David Wells' books.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Balanced Read, Check it Out
Review: Of this book, John Armstrong writes, "Before you move your church in the "seeker" direction, be sure to read Pritchard's amazingly fair and truthful analysis. The first two-thirds will tell you what is happening - how and why. The last third will raise all the right questions for those who have a serious theology of the church. Get this book into the hands of everyone you know who is attracted to this philosophy as soon as possible. It might well be used to open eyes before your church is moved in a whole new direction and few bother to ask where they are really going."

Rating:
Summary: Dated and with a negative slant
Review: Pritchard did the work on this book > 10 years ago, and as we all know, any thriving church has had tremendous changes in that time. I agree with other reviewers that he had a biased slant to criticizing Willow Creek, rather than finding the areas to emulate.

Lastly, having been to Willow Creek, Pritchard criticizes the church for its theological content, yet fails to mention or critique their mid-week service. It is unfair to critique the theological depth of a church when looking only at the service intended for seekers (and believers), while missing their mid-week service which is intended for believers.

Having not been to Willow during the time he wrote this book (early 90s), I can assume that this book may have had some validity during that time, but I see little benefit in reading this today. A much better and useful book to understand the seeker movement and gain some practical steps to implement in your church today would be Mark Mittelberg's Building a Contagious Church.

Rating:
Summary: A Flawed But Informative Book
Review: Pritchard does the evangelical christian community a service in his painstaking study of America's most influential church, Willow Creek Community Church. Willow Creek is the prototype of the "seeker-oriented church," a church that employs contemporary musical style, drama and multimedia, and relevant preaching to convey the gospel message to the unchurched. Pointing to deficiencies in Willow Creek's preaching and programs, Pritchard sides with the critics who have accused Willow Creek of watering down the gospel in an attempt to appeal to the unchurched and achieve numerical growth at the expense of "depth". However, it is doubtful whether other evangelical churches would fare well if subjected to the same careful analysis. Do other leading evangelical churches preach the gospel in such a manner that unchurched people profess Christ and grow as disciples? Other studies have shown that, in fact, most evangelical churches grow predominantly by attracting members of other christian churches and are relatively ineffective in achieving growth through conversion of unchurched people. Moreover, many members of evangelical churches have a shallow understanding of the truths of scripture and evidence little of the godliness one would expect of fully formed followers of Christ. Pritchard has done an admirable job of documenting Willow Creek's deficiencies. What he has failed to report is that Bill Hybels and other leaders at Willow Creek have been no less willing to identify deficiencies in their ministry and take steps to address them (for example, in their emphasis on small groups and the hiring of teaching pastors such as John Ortberg). I admire Pritchard's careful factual analysis but find his conclusions sorely lacking. The ideal evangelical church against which Willow Creek could be measured simply doesn't exist. Willow Creek has displayed creativity and courage in proving that unchurched people will respond to the gospel if it is preached in a language they can understand. Pritchard merely proves that it is easier to criticize than to create.

Rating:
Summary: Pritchard quicker to find fault than see benefits
Review: Pritchard leans a little bit towards being an armchair quarterback who sits back and criticizes the efforts and motivation of a church that has served America well. He does do a good job of explaining the technical side of how Willow Creek produces a service, but the book is dated and not entirely objective. I felt that at times he missed the heart of the leaders at Willow Creek. Don't judege Willow Creek by this book.

Rating:
Summary: Disagree? Probably... while you agree
Review: So my title sounds goofy. However, "Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church" by Dr. Gregory A. Pritchard solidly examines the processes of an internationally influential church. Churches across the world, of all denominations, are utilizing Willow Creek's ideas.

Dr. Pritchard, with his background as a adjunct professor at acclaimed schools like Wheaton College, and executive director of a communications institute/think tank, has established credentials in the field of contemporary church leadership analysis.

Willow Creek Community Church, for all the fame it enjoys, is also controversial for its leadership methods and for its contemporary-style worship.

Does Willow Creek Community Church water down its message? Or is it showing the Christian Church (Catholics included) a new way of thinking about church and its members?

Does its leadership development resemble the MLM/Amway method of raising up the shining stars... the quarterbacks and class presidents... to develop followers drawn to beautiful people?

No one can say Willow Creek Community Church isn't leading people to the Lord. Despite being in an extremely affluent community, it addresses aggressively pride, greed, materialism and lust. But by what model should a church follow?

Dr. Pritchard looks at both sides. Willow Creek leaders themselves will likely applaud and be frustrated by the truth of this evaluation. Detractors of Willow Creek will see the complexity of the church's mission and the successes, while acknowledging the clear struggles faced by such a megachurch.

In all, "Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church" is valuable food for thought. Starting a Willow Creek-style church? Consider some of the dilemmas this puts you in. Rejecting the ideas presented by your pro-Willow Creek elders? Read more about the foundations behind the mission.

I fully recommend "Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church."

Anthony Trendl

Rating:
Summary: Disagree? Probably... while you agree
Review: So my title sounds goofy. However, "Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church" by Dr. Gregory A. Pritchard solidly examines the processes of an internationally influential church. Churches across the world, of all denominations, are utilizing Willow Creek's ideas.

Dr. Pritchard, with his background as a adjunct professor at acclaimed schools like Wheaton College, and executive director of a communications institute/think tank, has established credentials in the field of contemporary church leadership analysis.

Willow Creek Community Church, for all the fame it enjoys, is also controversial for its leadership methods and for its contemporary-style worship.

Does Willow Creek Community Church water down its message? Or is it showing the Christian Church (Catholics included) a new way of thinking about church and its members?

Does its leadership development resemble the MLM/Amway method of raising up the shining stars... the quarterbacks and class presidents... to develop followers drawn to beautiful people?

No one can say Willow Creek Community Church isn't leading people to the Lord. Despite being in an extremely affluent community, it addresses aggressively pride, greed, materialism and lust. But by what model should a church follow?

Dr. Pritchard looks at both sides. Willow Creek leaders themselves will likely applaud and be frustrated by the truth of this evaluation. Detractors of Willow Creek will see the complexity of the church's mission and the successes, while acknowledging the clear struggles faced by such a megachurch.

In all, "Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church" is valuable food for thought. Starting a Willow Creek-style church? Consider some of the dilemmas this puts you in. Rejecting the ideas presented by your pro-Willow Creek elders? Read more about the foundations behind the mission.

I fully recommend "Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church."

Anthony Trendl