At the same time, we were reading Dallas Willard, and we had the opportunity to take a leadership retreat. It was at that retreat that we had a real encounter with God that challenged our understanding of the gospel. That is, we realized the gospel is not simply about how to get sins forgiven and go to heaven when you die, but is rather an invitation to a different kind of life. Then we had to conduct a rather rigorous evaluation to determine whether our church programs reflected that understanding of the gospel and whether the sermons we were delivering demonstrated the life-changing power of the gospel. We became convinced that we—and much of the evangelical entrepreneurial subculture—were extremely consumeristic. We realized our ministry was oriented around providing religious benefits for people, and that we'd been encouraging people to choose the church they wanted to attend based on those benefits. So we pulled away from consumerism and became enthralled with our own process of formation as leaders. We began to attend to the details of our own lives, and then had to try to communicate this new focus to the people in our church. Sadly, the church did not respond very well to the shift of emphasis, and we witnessed mass a exodus from the church during this time. But we continued to stay faithful to the vision we believed God had given us for the church.

Mike: Prior to changing the emphasis of our preaching, we began to realize that if we compartmentalized spiritual formation in our preaching, then no matter what we said about it, people would see formation as an optional accessory they could choose to have—or not have—if they wanted. That meant the pulpit had to be the place where the vision of life with God, our role in the process of formation, and the means of realizing new life with God was regularly proclaimed.

It sounds as though you believe you've made the right decision. Is that true?

Kent: We never questioned the decision, and we're actually kind of professional questioners! We knew the decision might be costly, although I don't think either of us realized how, or how much dissatisfaction we would face. We would probably do some things differently. But this was a unique event in the history of our church, and most of us in leadership have tried to remain faithful to this encounter with God.