I should have been ready for it, after my supersized lunch at the 24- hour Denny's, a quick tour of the area's tony residential enclaves (four-car garages, expansive lawns) and the drive north on Barrington Road past the 32-screen cinema.
Forget Texas. The southwestern suburbs of Chicago grows 'em big.
Still, when Willow Creek Community Church comes into view along the winding entry, I almost drive off the road, saved by a small parking area and lookout where I can take in the full scale of the 63-hectare property, the two-hectare lake, the 69,582-square- metre building. Put into perspective, the property is 19 hectares larger than Vatican City. The sprawling church building -- with two auditoriums, three basketball courts, cafeteria, chapel, espresso bar and offices -- is three times the size of the Basilica of St. Peter's.
And incalculably bigger than the small rural church I attend.
I park in one of the 4,740 available spaces, then make my way into Willow Creek, the church some call the most influential in America, and all agree is the best practitioner of polished contemporary Christian worship on the planet. It's church with a secular soundtrack like I've never heard it before, "big" in every way. If success consists in bringing large numbers of people without a religious background into a life that includes fairly orthodox notions of Christ and his church, clearly Willow Creek is doing what works. The question is whether its techniques can be imported north of the border, while leaving the more conservative theology at customs.
People are still fidgeting and chatting in the auditorium when pastor Mike Breaux, with a shaved head and goatee, blue jeans and untucked dress shirt, appears larger than life on the 12-metre wide plasma screens mounted high alongside the 24-metre auditorium stage. Video footage shows him sitting in the back of a pickup truck in his suburban driveway, talking about how people relate to each other, what his neighbours are up to.
Tonight is part of a series called Curb Appeal. On the stage, the "set" is a false-front suburban home complete with porch, garage doors and a shiny new John Deere lawn tractor. The big screens fade and auditorium cameras pan to Breaux -- one of the church's team of pastors -- who materializes for real on stage, introducing a "garage band" to add a musical score to his take on suburban life.
The band launches into high-volume snippets of rock 'n roll classics from the 1970s, starting with Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water and winding up with Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama.
Breaux, in a long-haired wig, takes a passable turn on vocals. By now everybody is clapping (except for the black woman across the aisle, who might be listening too closely to the lyrics of Skynyrd's 1971 New South anthem). The band ends with a high-volume blast as Breaux tosses and stomps his wig, getting a big laugh from the audience of largely aging baby boomers.
Breaux's over-the-top stunt out of the way, the rest of the evening segues into well-planned and professionally presented worship focusing on modern themes of connection and community. The teaching (what Willow Creek calls sermons) is about friendship and belonging. "What we all crave is a place to belong -- authentic relationship," Breaux says. Scripture mingles comfortably with cultural references: TV's Gilligan's Island, Survivor and Lost; video clips from the film Castaway, when Tom Hanks' character finds and loses his volleyball/friend Wilson. They ring true -- understandable without being trite. There's more Scripture from Proverbs and Corinthians, then a final plea: "Open the garage door of your heart and let Jesus come in."
From a seat that reminds me more of my rec-room couch than a church pew, I have a great view of the stage and side screens. If children in the nursery or in the busy Promiseland children's program downstairs need their parents, a personalized code will be flashed on the screens.
Guests are told they are not expected to participate in the offering. Prayers are low-key. There's a praise song, with the words projected on the screens, some spirited congregational singing and a sendoff. Communion, for those who want to partake, is down at the front. No complex rituals. All over in about an hour.
I was welcomed on the way in by smiling volunteer greeters in maroon Willow Creek golf shirts. They're still on duty on the way out, and there are plenty of easy ways to connect with church people or programs. But I choose to slip away quietly and do that easily too. Seekers can watch and listen until deciding to take the plunge into a new life with Christ. For those who do, there's full- immersion baptism at the church's lake in the summer.
Tonight, at six Internet-connected computer stations in the lobby, people can sign up to take part in one of the regionally based small groups being organized across the broad area served by church.
It occurs to me after the service that Willow Creek is in many ways a mirror opposite of The United Church of Canada. It's a theologically conservative evangelical church with high-tech, pop- culture infused worship. The United Church is a theologically liberal church with (in most congregations) low-tech, traditional worship. Can United Church people learn how to rock their neighbourhoods with a liberal riff? Or are liturgical pyrotechnics and conservative theology two sides of the same song sheet?
Back in 1975, a close-knit group of young Christians, many from a booming youth ministry at a nearby congregation, started the church at the rented Willow Creek Theatre in the southwest Chicago suburb of Palatine, Ill. Its first Sunday worship service drew 125 people. By the end of the first year, it was attracting close to 1,000 with its mix of contemporary worship and traditional Christian beliefs. Within three years, attendance at worship was 2,000.
Five years after the launch, Willow Creek's young leaders purchased a sprawling tract of suburban property and built a large auditorium (initially 1,600 seats but later expanded to 4,500).
It's hard to imagine the congregation, with a current annual budget of about $50 million, struggling to pay rent on the theatre or scrambling to pay for its initial $6-million building.
It has weathered the bumps along the way by sticking to a basic tenet: people want a church experience that goes beyond tired rituals and is relevant to their daily lives. It was the first church to coin the term "seekers" and has always aimed its message at people who have faith questions and are looking for answers. More than 30 years later, that vision still drives Willow Creek, and it remains as unapologetically evangelical today as it was at the outset. "We want to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ," says its mission statement.
Today, Willow Creek mines popular culture for Christian meaning, for stories that drive home Christ's teachings. Along the way, in the Christian world at least, it has become part of that popular culture. It doesn't bob in the wake of societal trend waves but rides them. It can be a rollicking ride. And thousands of people are happy to be along for it.
Some 4,500 people filled the Saturday evening service I attended at "Big Willow" (as some "Creekers" call the main campus) in early October. Another 6,500 attended two identical Sunday morning services at the church's South Barrington, Ill., campus the next day.
Three new regional congregations in the area regularly attract an additional 2,822 to weekly worship. A fourth, in downtown Chicago, was launched the weekend before my visit with 2,700 in attendance.
About 5,200 come out to mid-week services, aimed at the church's committed core of 6,100 members.
Beyond weekend worship, about 17,000 adults and children meet regularly in 2,700 small groups; there are more than 400 full- and part-time employees. On any given week, Willow Creek engages and involves 11,500 volunteers.
The size of the church, its programs and now its satellite congregations make Willow Creek seem more like a small denomination working in a closely defined area than a single congregation. As influential as Willow Creek is in its own neighbourhood, the Willow Creek Association (WCA) reaches congregations around the world, with 12,000 members in 90 denominations and 45 countries paying $280 a year for a monthly inspirational CD from Willow Creek co-founder Bill Hybels and discounts on church equipment and Willow Creek seminars and resources. Three new members join the WCA daily.
How do they do it? Large as Willow Creek is, Hybels points out that "if you look closer, you'll find that in many ways we're small. In fact, we're actually a network of groups." Hundreds of them, in fact -- a supersized smorgasbord. There are groups for people battling grief, addictions and obsessions, recovering from divorce, suicide in the family or financial problems. There's also "help" for people who are "struggling with same-sex attractions."
There are ministries reaching out through auto repair and donation, hairdressing, outdoor adventure, a food bank, Habitat for Humanity and more. Groups handling everything from parking to children's programs are recognized as ministry. Small groups gather around shared interests or shared neighbourhoods. In each group, lay leaders weave in Bible study, prayer and care.
Willow Creek is also a trial ground for outreach techniques, communication and "worship arts." As longtime WCA communication director Paul Braoudakis puts it: "Willow Creek is sort of the laboratory. And we take best practices and lessons learned in the laboratory and we will disseminate them to the church at large. So when Willow Creek has a big win, or something like that, we will pass that on to you. If that helps you, great, run with it, modify it. If it doesn't help you, toss it aside. It was never meant to be a `one size fits all.'"
One certainty, though, is that messages must be more visual than verbal, says Willow Creek church communications director Cally Parkinson. That change in the congregation has come quickly.
Four years ago, she says, most of her job was preparing text -- information for brochures, flyers and the website. "Today, 50 percent of my job is visual. Especially with the new auditorium with the side screens." Even when text is needed, as on the worship bulletin, only a handful of events or ministries is highlighted, and always with the use of strong visual images. Since she began using more visuals, says Parkinson, attendance at events and attention for ministries that were highlighted has jumped dramatically.
The same push for visual and artistic relevance and quality is reflected in worship, says co-founder and teaching pastor Nancy Beach over coffee at Dr. B's, the fair-trade espresso bar in the Willow Creek lobby. When non-church people are asked to describe worship services, words such as "boring," "irrelevant" and "mediocre" are used. "We try to use the arts because the power of story and visuals and video and music really connects with people," says Beach. "And then our teachers work with our artists so it's really one experience. So it's not just part one and part two. The arts are used to prepare people, pretty much in the first half-hour, for the teaching time and really identify the issues that we wrestle with."
But for Willow Creek, the medium -- small groups, pop- culture and high-impact visuals -- is irrelevant without the right biblical message.
In Hybels' book, Rediscovering Church (co-written with his wife, Lynne), he lists the belief that "the church should be culturally relevant, while remaining doctrinally pure," as one of 10 core values for flourishing churches.
"Seeker services merely apply Jesus' methods to our generation," writes Hybels. "While He told parables, we use drama.
While He built upon the common knowledge of His day, we tap into our current events. While He addressed crowds from a mountainside or boat, we enhance our communication through 20th-century technology.
"The pitfall is to concentrate so much on being timely and topical that we lose our biblical distinctiveness. If we do that, we become just a Christian Oprah Winfrey Show, mirroring the culture but not bringing scriptural truths to bear on it.... And both seekers and the church lose."
Not surprisingly, Willow Creek's understanding of "scriptural truths" is literal. "We believe in the Bible; we believe it's the word of God," says Beach. "And what we're trying to do is take the timeless truths of Scripture and communicate them in a way that people today can understand and say, `How does that make a difference in my life, Monday through Saturday when I'm not in church?'"
Surprisingly, doctrine aside, the approach is more than palatable. The services I attended at Willow Creek had none of the stage-managed nonsense often associated with evangelical U.S. preachers, none of the Bible-thumping, off-beat blessings, fainting, speaking-in-tongues or rolling in the aisles. Just upbeat music, amusing drama, thought-provoking and inspired preaching. Willow Creek has no truck with politics and doesn't sweat what it sees as the small stuff -- like drinking or dancing. You won't hear calls for husbands to take charge of the household; Willow Creek preaches equality between the sexes.
Though Willow Creek doesn't see homosexuality and abortion as being among the small stuff, it stays away from the strident anti-gay, anti-abortion stances of many other U.S. churches.
Cultural relevance comes from the modern music, enticing images and lessons that make sense in real life, but ultimately, Willow Creek's ongoing success probably comes down to its ability to persuade people that, having embraced a new life in Christ themselves, they are called to share it. In the congregation, that means taking an active role in organized church life, such as involvement in a small group or ministry, as participant or leader.
In their own lives, in the community and the world, that means inviting others to share the experience at Willow Creek and what it means to be a Christian.
A brand new satellite church in a downtown Chicago theatre itself underscores the notion that you have to go into the community and share the Christian experience with others. It's only the second Sunday, but Hybels preaches to a congregation of about 2,000. The theme is among Hybels' favourites: the radical vision in Acts 2 of a church where devoted disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit, believers share what they have, praise God and daily add to the numbers of the saved.
Using Scripture (God's promises in John 10:10 and John 8:36) and props, Hybels compares his day as a Christian to that of an average urban working person. He talks about the value of community and asks people to "be mindful of God throughout the course of the day." Christian life, Willow Creek-style, won't include a lot of rigid, nonsensical rules, he says, but it will provide a different way of living and looking at the world.
Plenty in the crowd are already among the converted -- including about 200 volunteers who helped launch the new congregation -- but a few among the young, ethnically mixed group are not sure. They're the ones not clapping during the praise song, holding back.
Depending on their comfort level with fundamentalist beliefs, many in the United Church may find themselves wary as well.
More comfortable with open interpretation and a degree of ambiguity, many congregations in the United Church would be hard-pressed to come up with anything like Willow Creek's succinct but clearly worded 421- word belief statement. When seekers at Willow Creek decide to change their lives and walk with Christ, their pathway of faith is clearly laid out.
The bigger question is around evangelism. If progressive or liberal Christians are able to elucidate clearly the faith they want to share, they probably must also figure out how to spread God's love and the joy of a life in a Christian community. At least that's how it has worked at Big Willow.
The medium of popular culture can reach more people with the Christian message. But it's not just about numbers. It's about sharing a faith that can change lives.
