I was at a meeting about the Willow Creek Leadership Summit yesterday afternoon. In addition to talking about the conference, the subject of some changes at Willow Creek Church came up.They did something last year which surprised a lot of people. They did a survey of their congregation as well as the congregations of six other churches to find out what was working and what was not working. What they found surprised them.
They found that people were not growing in Christ the way they thought. As a result they are making some changes to the way they "do church." This is impressive to me. Not only are they willing to set their pride aside and say, "We were wrong about a few things" but they are willing to admit it to the world. (To read more about this go here.)
Bill Hybels, the senior pastor at Willow, has taken an incredible amount of heat over this. There are many who are laughing at him for being wrong. Many are inferring that because he was wrong in a couple of areas that he is wrong about everything.
That could not be further from the truth. What Bill Hybels and the leadership of Willow have shown is strong leadership - admitting when an error has been made, making corrections and moving on. We can all learn from this!
6 comments:
Good leaders are always willing to admit when they're wrong. It's one of the traits I respect MOST in anyone I have ever worked under in whatever capacity. It displays extreme humility.
No Bougt Adout it!
By the way, I made a mistake in my last comment.
I forgive you.
When churches are doing nothing they always focus on other churches and what they aren't doing right instead of looking to why they aren't growing new believers. As the saying always goes if you're not making mistakes your not doing anything. I make them every day. Many of the things that I did 20 years ago I now realize I would never do again today. That is why senior leadership means so much in the church and as a nation.
You are right on Jim! Thankfully, making mistakes is part of leading, otherwise I couldn't lead myself out of a wet paper sack!
As we heard today in church, God's definition of success oftentimes involves eating humble pie.
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