Follow Me - A Review

A few months back, I reported on the REVEAL study done by Willow Creek Church (here and here). They have recently produced a follow-up report called, FOLLOW ME. Greg Lueken writes a helpful review for Christianity Today.com. I found the 2nd half of his piece to be most convincing:

...I remain unconvinced that the right question is, "What's the most important thing you want from your church?" This emphasis on an individual's expectations and preferences reveals a core problem in American Christianity—the unchallenged assumption that people can accurately evaluate their church based on whether or not it meets their needs. How does this prevailing attitude alter the biblical purpose of the Church in the world? We are a culture of Christ-followers who pay far too much attention to whether or not our needs are being satisfied. And we have become a culture of church leaders who spend far too much time orienting our ministries around the ever-changing preferences of our people.

"Christ-centered church critics" is paradoxical. The spiritually mature person should be learning how to live in this world where, as Ronald Rohlheiser says, "all symphonies remain unfinished."

Reading Follow Me, I wondered how Jesus' invitation to die daily to self changes the way we handle the inevitable dissatisfactions of life.

As we mature in Christ, might the goal be to develop a gut-level instinct to give less attention to what we aren't getting from our church? Perhaps a step on the way to growing more Christ-centered is to accept our dissatisfactions instead of assuming they have to be resolved. Churches that spend too much time alleviating their people's dissatisfactions may be nurturing a self-absorbed attitude of the heart that needs to be nailed to the cross.

The church, on this side of eternity, is an unfinished symphony. She needs our energy, our passion, our love, and our unwavering commitment regardless of whether she always looks and acts the way we want. Follow Me can help bring structure and focus to our spiritual formation efforts. But to authentically lead people into deeper apprenticeship with Jesus, we must graciously and rigorously confront the raging selfishness that is alive and well in all of us.

Read the whole thing.

I think it is important to note that leaders certainly do need to listen to their people, but Greg is pushing here (and I tend to agree) on the notion that we need to constantly stand with our finger in the wind, trying to gauge the direction of our congregation's preferences. This certainly is a futile pursuit.

You can get more info about FOLLOW ME, here.