Tuesday, November 01, 2005

My church was founded as a church that wanted to be like Willow Creek. It took us a while to figure out that what Willow did worked for Willow, but wouldn't necessarily translate to our church in this community in this time. My church also had a legacy (myself included in this) of church pride, in a bad way. For the longest time, we had this additude that we were better than the other churches out there, that we were the only ones who were really doing church right. We had a real chip on our shoulder. This additude came from the leadreship on down. I wonder how closely the Willow discipleship and this church-pride are tied together. Willow's Senior Pastor, Bill Hybels, recently made the following statement (which may have been taken horribly out of context):
"The average church on the corner of Elm and Vine doesn't give a flying rip about people far from God. They're an annoyance. They use bad words. They sleep in the wrong bed. They drink too much booze. They're an annoyance."
I used to agree with Hybels wholeheartedly on this point. I now think it's a self-righteous load of crap. Of course the quesiton now begs to be asked: If churches care so much about people apart from God, why aren't they having a more positive impact on the world around them? Or are they?
Here's a more indepth discussion on the topic.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

just drink the kool-aid david k

Noel Heikkinen said...

As one of the pastors at the best church in the world, I'm glad you finally realized the truth about your church.