Does your church satisfy you?

Willow Creek have recently released a book entitled Reveal: Where Are You? based on congregational research which they have conducted over the past few years. The research reveals that, like most good churches, Willow Creek caters well for people who are exploring Christianity or in the early stages of growing in their faith. However, most churches do not cater well for people who have moved beyond the initial stages in their faith, and more committed Christians are increasingly dissatisfied with their churches.

Once a person has reached a certain level of maturity in the Christian faith, weekend services and small groups are no longer able to provide significant increases in spiritual growth. Further growth can only come from personal spiritual practices. Perhaps churches create unhelpful expectations about what they can provide by way of teaching. Tim Stevens and Daniel Decker both have posts on what Bill Hybels had to say about this at this year’s Leadership Summit.

My personal view is that many churches misunderstand the reason for their existence. Many churches seem to assume that their purpose is to grow people in their faith by teaching them stuff. In my view, the main purpose of churches is to provide communities for deploying people into ministry roles. Learning more about God is something that committed believers should be doing themselves. Active ministry, however (such as finding ways of introducing people to Jesus and helping people who are poor or oppressed), needs to be done in the context of community.