Kent Carlson - Renovation of the Church: What Happens When a Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation

T his book, at its core, is an expression of love between a couple of pastors and their congregation. The people of Oak Hills Church have submitted themselves to many experiments in spiritual formation over the years, and their patience and unwavering encouragement has been a constant source of strength and endurance. This book is their story, and we are deeply grateful for them. The pastors and staff at Oak Hills have carried the weight of this ministry for years, and we would never have been able to make this journey without them. There are obviously too many names to mention here, but you know who you are and you have the scars to prove it. In addition, the elders of Oak Hills, and many official and unofficial spiritual leaders in the church, have never stopped believing in the vision we have been given of inviting people to experience life in the kingdom of God. Here we especially acknowledge and thank Gino, Steve, Dave, Valerie, Ben and Jerry, Caryn, Candy, Andy, Dick and Dan. During the most discouraging days, you never let us give up and never stopped believing in us. That has meant more to us than words can say.

We thank Dallas Willard for his teaching, his availability, his wisdom and most of all for demonstrating that a transformative life with God is indeed possible. We will spend the rest of our lives trying to live up to the foreword he has so graciously written for us.

A special thanks goes to Valerie Harrison, Jenny Jiang, Katie Albert, Abbie Lueken, Julie Lueken and Diane Carlson for reading parts of the manuscript, offering many crucial suggestions and saving us from certain literary death. Thanks also go to Dave Deroos for his help in getting this book started. And since this is our first book-writing experience, we would have been lost without the amazing help of our editor, Cindy Bunch. She patiently put up with our ignorance, foolishness, inexperience and penchant for the absurd, and carefully guided us toward some semblance of coherence. If this book makes any sense, she is largely responsible for it.

We thank our wives, Diane and Julie, for believing in and loving us. This book would not exist without you. We love living our lives with you. We thank our children, Sam, Abbie and Izzie (Mikes), and Holly, Heidi, Helena, Noah, Brooke and Torunn (Kents, including a son-in-law and two granddaughters). You make us remember every day how precious this life is.

We are grateful for many pastor friends who have influenced us. Thanks to Jerry Worsham for putting up with both of us when we were young pastors and teaching us how to love a church. We will never forget you. Thank you, Dave Johnson, for many unprintable things and for making us laugh. We thank Keith Meyer for connecting us with other church leaders who long for a new way of being the church. We thank Parnell Lovelace for his friendship as he has pastored our sister church, Center of Praise, for twenty years. And to our Folsom pastor friendsBill, Brad, Chuck, Dennis, Derek, Glen, John, Nancy, Stu and Tima big thank you. Your friendship and prayers over the years have helped to make the church in Folsom a unified presence in this community. It is an honor to serve with you.

Thanks also to Donny Jastrebski and Johnny Tofilon, for getting me (Kent) started on the Way. To Ernie Banks for teaching us how to lose. Lets play two. To Vince Lombardi for taking us back to the basics. And now, shut er down Mike G. Youve earned it.

1

The Creation of the Monster

KENT CARLSON

O ak Hills Church began with seventeen people on a Sunday morning in November 1984. We had rented space in a strip mall in the heart of the quickly growing but still quaint little suburb known as Folsom. For a number of weeks I walked Folsoms streets, going door to door, inviting people to this brand new church. I hated it. I cant think of a person who came to our church because of all that door knocking. But it was all I knew how to do. Finally, a number of young families from another church visited us, and we began to grow slowly from there.

Almost everyone in the church joined a small group of some kind. Whenever we had a party or some sort of an event, almost everybody attended, and there was a sense throughout the church that something very good was happening. I had no particular philosophy of church planting, an intentional strategy of outreach or even a well-developed theology of the church. I just had a rather vague interest in leading a community of people who wanted to learn how to follow Christ together and live fully. Those were very enjoyable and deeply rewarding days.

We were young and everyone shouldered the responsibility of leading. The leadership team of this small church met every week for four hours. We went on two leadership retreats a year. We had regular poker and cigar nights. We all played on a softball team together. We took vacations together. We simply enjoyed hanging out with each other. And the church grew slowly.

By 1990 there were close to two hundred people coming to Oak Hills, but there was a sense among the church leadership that something was not quite right. Most of the people in our church had come from other churches. This was not bad in itself because the majority of them had recently moved into the area. But we had not seen many new believers become a part of our church. Like most churches, one of our stated purposes, one of the reasons we existed, was to reach people who were outside the family of God. We simply admitted to ourselves that we were doing a lousy job of this.

While we were discussing all of this, the phenomenon of Willow Creek Community Church, in South Barrington, Illinois, was bursting on the church-growth scene. Willow Creek had spent the 1980s orienting its church around reaching nonchurched people by the thousands through their seeker-targeted services, and the world was taking notice. I had a very good friend who was intimately involved with Willow, and he kept telling me I had to come to one of Willows church leadership conferences. So in October 1990, seven us from Oak Hills (affectionately referred to in Oak Hills Church lore as the Chicago Seven) hopped on a plane and spent a week at Willow.

We sat through four days of one of the most inspiring events I had ever attended. We were in awe of the facilities, the professionalism, the music, the dramatic sketches, the multimedia, the messages and the Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. But there was a moment at one of the sessions that remains the most memorable for me. Bill Hybels, the founding pastor and visionary architect of the Willow movement, was speaking. His message was simple, believable, convicting and highly motivating. He asked a very straightforward question: If lost people matter to God, then why dont they matter to you?

I can still remember the moment when Hybels said those words. I was leaning forward on the edge of my seat with my head in my hands and tears in my eyes. I remember vowing at that moment that if God allowed me to remain as the pastor of Oak Hills, I would do everything in my power to reorient our church around reaching lost people. And then I just raised my head an inch or so and looked down the row at my six friends, and each was sitting in the same way, edge of the seat, leaning forward, head in their hands. We caught each others eyes and knew that something had happened. We got it. We were hooked. As we gathered in the evening in our hotel, we made plans, we prayed, we dreamed, and we began to prepare ourselves for the adventure ahead.

Since 1988 our church had been meeting on Sunday afternoons at another local church. It was the only place large enough in Folsom that we could afford. We knew that Sunday afternoons were less than ideal to begin new seeker-targeted services, so we decided to begin a Saturday night service. These began in the spring of 1991, and those were wonderful and exciting days.