WILLOW Magazine, Spring 2002 The Heart of a Seeker Service Putting together a service for spiritual seekers requires a whole lot more than just simple know-how. If you’ve attended a Willow Creek conference, listened to a tape, or read any of our resources, then you will certainly have heard the phrase, “the Church is the hope of the world.” It has been used repeatedly as we have come to see that only the Church can provide people who are far from God a place and a community where they can enter and grow into a thriving relationship with Jesus Christ. But if the Church really is the hope of the world, then how important must a church service be? For some people, it may be the first time they’ve thought seriously about God in years. For some, it may be the beginning of a process of correcting a distorted image of God that they received in childhood. For some, in the midst of marital struggles, serious illness, or addiction, it may be the beginning of healing. And it may provide some spiritual seekers with their very first impression of our God. WCA News Managing Editor Paul Braoudakis sat down with Corinne and Greg Ferguson and had a frank discussion about Willow Creek’s weekend services. Corinne is the director of weekend services. Greg, a songwriter and vocalist, is a member of the creative team. They, along with the team, prayerfully think through how to make the services relevant to seekers and challenging to believers. During this discussion, the values and heart behind Willow Creek’s weekend services were discussed at length. WCA NEWS: Let’s start out really basic. Why are the weekend services at Willow Creek so important? CORINNE: Let me turn that around and ask you, as an attender, that same question. WCA NEWS: Oh, so it’s going to be one of those interviews, huh? OK, I’ll take a stab at it. The weekend services are important to me because I have to know that there’s a place I can bring my unchurched friends so that they can hear the unimpeded Word of God and see the standard of excellence that represents Him well. I need to know that there’s a place where they can sense Him speaking to them through the arts and through excellent teaching. CORINNE: Your answer to that question — as a Willow attender — explains why we design the services the way we do. Because it’s your friend, or your neighbor, or your workout buddy that we’re hoping you’re going to bring with you. Can I ask you another question? WCA NEWS: Sure, why stop now? CORINNE: When you bring a friend, what’s going on in your mind throughout that service? What are you hoping will — or will not — happen? WCA NEWS: Well, if I’m real honest, there’s a part of me that’s saying, “Please don’t mess up. Please don’t mess up.” But, to be fair, those feelings haven’t registered with me in the past few years. I’ve gotten to the place of complete trust of our weekend services. I trust the team, I trust the elements of the service, and I trust the message. For the most part, I just don’t worry about it anymore. CORINNE: So we’ve earned your trust over time. WCA NEWS: Yes, and you’ve created a distraction-free environment where my entire focus can be on God. CORINNE: And we pray that will be true for the seekers who come in the door as well. In our planning we’re trying to put ourselves into the experience of the service as much as we can — imagining how the attenders will respond internally to the songs, the drama, the video, and the overall flow — then adjusting and shaping it as God leads. GREG: We invite the Holy Spirit into the process every step of the way — the initial conception, every song lyric, every script line and blocking direction, every lighting cue. WCA NEWS: Let’s talk about the “excellence factor.” It’s often misunderstood. There’s a notion that excellence is really a thinly veiled excuse for ultra-perfectionism. Sometimes churches that try bumping up the excellence factor receive more criticism than praise for it. CORINNE: We define excellence as “doing the best you can with what you have.” When actors, for example, come on stage knowing their lines, fully in character, fully in the moment, fully rehearsed, they make it possible for the message and intent of the script to come across to the attender strong and clear. If, however, they don’t fully know their lines and aren’t prepared, the discomfort in the room is tangible, and the potential power of the drama is lost. The people sitting in the seats have finely-tuned “insincerity detectors.” And if someone on stage is not connected to what they’re doing, it may come across as insincerity. For instance, if a vocalist goes up on the stage and has not fully rehearsed the song, it’s probably not going to ring true. In order to communicate a song with sincerity, a vocalist needs to know the words so well, it’s almost as if they’ve written the song themselves. And I don’t mean just having the words memorized by rote. We ask our vocalists to “own” the song — unpacking it line by line, in order to fully understand the meaning behind each word and phrase as though they were a speaker communicating the lyrics as a spoken message. GREG: Authenticity and transparency are such a big part of what makes effective communication. CORINNE: What’s a little confusing about the “excellence debate” is that when you go to the movies, or the theater, or any kind of arts outside the church, the expectation is that excellence would be very high, otherwise you wouldn’t go. It seems like it shouldn’t be any different in the church, where the message matters all the more. WCA NEWS: How have the weekend services changed post-September 11? CORINNE: The spiritual sensitivity and openness in our culture is at an all-time high. GREG: And the hunger. CORINNE: Yes, hunger is an even better word. “Seeking” has a new urgency to it. We found there were a lot more first-timers coming to our services post 9/11, looking for answers. GREG: Now, half a year later, with all the repercussions in the economy and loss of jobs, the need for hope — and for answers — has intensified. CORINNE: One of our major changes in the months after September 11, was that we could no longer program our services three or four weeks in advance and remain current with the changing needs of our community. We wanted to be flexible and responsive enough to adjust at very short notice. We were canceling previously planned message series and replacing them with topics more relevant to the current crisis. For example, we had originally planned to begin a three-week series called “The Art of Grace Giving” the weekend of September 15, but instead, we built a service around the topic of “Responding to a National Tragedy.” The following two weekends were devoted to the topic of “Strength for the Storms of Life.” WCA NEWS: How were the artists affected by all this? CORINNE: A lot of our artists were saying things like, “If there was ever a time when I wanted to convey hope and to show that God is there to hold on to, it’s now.” When we put together the “Songs of Hope” medley, a collection of songs on the theme of the strength and hope we find in God in difficult times, there was a sense of urgency that I felt from all of the vocalists. I remember when we were sitting in the practice room just two days earlier, many of them were in tears, saying, “I believe these words to the core of my being, now more than ever before. And if I can give that kind of assurance to the people out in the congregation, then I want to do that.” GREG: And as much as we were “singing hope into” the congregation, we were also singing hope into ourselves. One of the amazing side effects of using your spiritual gift to strengthen someone else, is you end up being strengthened too. We came away from that weekend with renewed faith and resolve. WCA NEWS: But the “shift” in our weekend services didn’t really begin on September 11. It had actually begun about a year or two prior. We started to challenge some of our own assumptions about what seekers want and don’t want. What did we discover in the process? CORINNE: For one thing, we’re learning that our culture has a greater need for interaction, and we’re exploring ways to encourage seekers, who aren’t always eager to join in singing, to participate in the service. Also, we’ve been experimenting with dedicating the first 10-15 minutes of the service to simply reintroducing people to God. Most people are living fast-paced, chaotic lives. Often they’re rushing and racing just to get to the service on time. So by the time they get into their seats, they’re panting and saying, “OK, I’m here. Now what?” It takes some time just to remind people to breathe for a moment — to remember that there is a God and be reminded of who He is. So we’ve been exploring how we can creatively use the arts, with emphasis on scripture and spiritual direction from Bill and others, to slow down people’s RPMs and help focus their thoughts Godward. We’re realizing that for many seekers, this may be the only moment in their whole week when they’re able to reflect on their lives and begin to look to God. Also, we want to continually increase our flexibility to adjust to what we sense is happening in the auditorium over the course of the weekend. After our first service (we have four identical services), the team meets to pray and to debrief. We talk about what was effective and what didn’t seem to work, and we seek God’s direction as to what changes to make. All of our teams — musicians, vocalists, drama, video, sound, lighting, etc., — are committed to making whatever adjustments are needed between services to make them as effective as they can be. WCA NEWS: We talk a lot about making the auditorium feel “small” and intimate. How will that be accomplished in the new, larger auditorium that Willow Creek is building? GREG: Our efforts to try to make our current auditorium feel smaller helped shape the design of the new room. In fact, the distance from the stage to the back of the room will actually be closer than it is in the room we’re in now. And there won’t be any segments of the auditorium that feel partitioned off from each other or isolated. It’s built into the design that everyone will feel included. WCA NEWS: What’s your hope for the weekend services as you look to the future? CORINNE: That we stay committed to reaching more and more of the lost, hurting, and lonely in our community. That we increasingly reach beyond our community through the ministry of the new regional centers. And that we continually deepen our love for God, and stay passionate about the unchurched. GREG: It’s so much about passion — the kind of joy and energy that pours out like spiritual adrenaline over the whole room. Being seeker sensitive must never mean ratcheting back our joy or passion level. CORINNE: Part of the reason we’re so passionate about this is because in 1984, Greg and I were sitting out there in the auditorium. We were seekers — we were lost, confused, and hurting. We had just started visiting Willow because of some friends who were concerned about where our lives were heading. They had been trying for three years to get us to come to a service and hadn’t given up on us. I still remember the message Bill gave the first weekend we attended. Like so many people have said before, it felt like that message was written specifically and only for us. GREG: When I’m on stage singing, I can look out and see where Corinne and I used to sit — halfway back, in the center section. God reached for us, right there. It changed everything forever — our marriage, and our whole lives. CORINNE: I shudder when I think of the roads we might have gone down if it hadn't been for God reaching out to us through the ministry of this place. Every day I’m thankful and overwhelmed that now we get to be a part of reaching out to other lost and hurting people. Top