Willow Creek Community Church in the News

The CBS local news did a story tonight on area megachurches, including Salem Baptist, Harvest Bible Chapel, New Life and Willow Creek.

The story itself was not very insightful (at one point Mora intones "they call them min-ist-ries") but the extended interviews with Bill Hybels and James Meeks (pastor of Salem Baptist and one of the speakers at this years Leadership Summit) are worth checking out.

A couple of my favorite parts (paraphrased):

Mora asks this strange question: "What you do - are there greater similarities to a Falwell, a Graham, a Meeks, an Osteen, or more differences?" I would've been flabbergasted by that question but Bill didn't miss a beat, "When people ask me what we teach, I tell them we teach the same thing Billy Graham has taught for 50 years. Now stylistically we would compare one way or the other, because methodology changes over the decades."

Another interesting moment was when Mora tried to get Meeks, who pastors an inner city church, to speak out against Osteen and prosperity gospel. Meeks response was that God is not against people having wealth, He is against people having wealth and not using it to do God's work. "To whom much is given much is expected. " Those who are more focused on materialism eventually come back to the truth because material things don't satisfy the way a right relationship with God does. If there are people in a church who are off balance, they'll come back into balance, they have to.