It's About Jesus, Stupid!

Those words, at least Jesus and stupid, don't really seem to go together. For those of you up on political culture, however, you will remember a similar slogan for the first Clinton campaign--It's the economy, stupid. It was a reminder to Bill Clinton to stay on task, to keep repeating the Big Idea--the economy and how he could fix it. And it won him the election.

In the church world, we often get caught up in building the church when in reality, it's all about Jesus and growing in our followership of him. The church doesn't exist to build the church but to build disciples. It exists as a community of disciples to tell others about Jesus in word and action.

Recently Willow Creek, one of the most influential churches in the history of Christianity, came to a humbling realization. For years they have taught thousands of congregations about how to be more effective in reaching and discipling people. And they have been used mightily by God to re-invigorate congregations all around the world. I am one of their admirers. And I admire them even more for their public honesty.

A recent study of their congregation revealed that they had not been effective in making disciples. They assumed that people would grow in their faith by becoming involved in the various activities of the church. So they poured millions of dollars and thousands of hours into creating a program-heavy congregation believing the more programs they had, the more opportunities for people to get involved, the deeper the growth and discipleship.

Wrong!

Bill Hybels said that what they learned is that they need to teach their people how to feed themselves--how to read the Bible, how to pray, etc. I would add how to live as Jesus followers in real life. In other words, discipleship doesn't happen through busy church programs. It happens when we connect to Jesus. The church is there to support us in that. It's about Jesus, not about being busy at church.

Willow Creek is committed to making the necessary changes to get at that. The advantage for us at Grace is that we haven't built a program-heavy church. That was never our intent. We want to build disciples and be a community of disciples who take Jesus to the world.

The question for us as individuals is: Do I want to feed myself or be spoon fed? Crassly put, but to the point. I hope we're building a community of self-feeders--feeding at the trough of worship, prayer, Bible reading, loving our neighbors, etc.