Wearing blue jeans and sporting a gold earring in his left ear, Dieter Zander - worship leader and teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church - throws back his head and jams away at the keyboard. The experimental service he leads in Willow Creek's gym looks nothing like the one held earlier that Saturday night. For starters, the average age is 23, not 40. The worship band plays alternative-rock praise music. And instead of sitting in posh, theater-style seats, the congregation sits at round, candle-lit tables, which promote discussion.

"We're starting to put into place the leaders, musicians and ministers for the next run of Willow in the 21st century," says 35-year-old Dieter. "Bill Hybels [senior pastor at Willow Creek] felt if we don't start now, there's going to be a day when we want to hand the baton to somebody and no one will be there." The South Barrington, Ill., church has seen spectacular success in reaching baby boomers, who comprise many of its 16,000-plus members. For the past two years, however, Dieter - together with his wife, Val - has pioneered new territory at Willow Creek by heading up an effort to reach those born after boomers, known as Generation X or the baby busters.

The skills he and Val picked up in seminary days at the International School of Theology are helping them carry out this new ministry. Dieter jumped into classes in 1984, after spending two years at a Portland, Ore., church leading worship and challenging college students to grow spiritually. The Oregon native considered seminary a necessary evil in preparation for a lifetime of music ministry. "Three years of just studying about God leaves your heart cold," a friend had said, "unless you're actively applying what you're learning."

Dieter, a man of action, did not want to put ministry on the shelf while studying. "The thing that sold me on ISOT," he says, "was this combination of theological training and participation in ministry. I wanted to be with people who integrated what they believed with what they did."

A class in pastoral studies, taught by Don Weaver, D.Min., brought Dieter face-to-face with the reality of leading a church. Don created an environment much like that which the future pastors would find after graduation. "The class had a safety net because it wasn't real," says Dieter, "but it felt no less real than what I experienced later on."

Dieter's understanding of himself also deepened. He pinpointed spiritual gifts of leadership, teaching and faith. Perhaps the greatest personal lesson came when Don had the class come up with one-word descriptions for each other. "Don's name for me was bulldozer," says Dieter, chuckling. "He was right on the money. Had he not highlighted that for me, I'd still be pushing people around." Don spoke the truth in love, and it changed Dieter's life.

During his first year, Dieter lived in a house with three other students. In a foreshadowing of Dieter's future ministry, the group worked side-by-side with two pastors planting a church. He coached a soccer team on the side as well, and invited players to the young church. Few returned for a second visit, citing church as boring and irrelevant. Dieter and his roommates, troubled that traditional college and singles activities didn't attract the young soccer players, batted around ideas of how to reach them.

One day, while Dieter was waiting at a stoplight, God gave him a vision for starting a church just for young people. He discussed the idea with his professors, as well as local pastor Bob Logan. "If ISOT is all about practicing and learning simultaneously," Dieter said, "it would make sense to me that all the pastoral and theological kinds of things I'd be learning, I could apply immediately."

During that first year of seminary, the tireless student threw himself into laying the groundwork for this church. In November, Dieter met Valerie Anderson, a Campus Crusade staff member. Two days later they had their first date and dated steadily thereafter. The two married in December of 1985. Val enrolled in the Master of Arts program and worked alongside Dieter in planting the church.

"My ISOT experience would have been far less had Val not been right there with me," says Dieter. "If she'd been off working at some job and I'd been in class learning, it would have been very different."

The two worked together out of their house. To the surprise of neighbors, the punk rockers frequenting the Zander home were forming a church, not a band. In July, New Song - the church where the flock likes to rock - moved to a grade-school cafeteria.

"Here we were trying to figure out how a church works and how evangelism works within a church," says Dieter. "We were in seminary with professors who could help us work through some of these issues. The thing that struck me was the amount of support we received from the school."

Dieter graduated with a Master of Divinity degree in 1988. Pregnant with the first of three sons, Val cut back on her studies and finished three years later. Using what they learned, the young couple turned around and shepherded those in the New Song flock. During the next three years, attendance skyrocketed, going from 150 to 1,200. Dieter preached, led worship and coordinated services. Val helped people discover their spiritual gifts and their place of service at New Song.

She took a class on the book of Timothy to hone her Greek skills but found that the practical principles of dealing with people kept her afloat. "Starting a church with this age group had more challenges than I knew," says Val. "In seminary, I not only learned to preach and write, but also to deal with people in pain." When a single woman Val met with got pregnant, Val turned to her pastoral-counseling class for guidance in how to deal with the situation.

Passing on to the new believers what they had learned, Dieter and Val ultimately raised up 13 people from within the church body to lead the fellowship. "I couldn't have done that without ISOT," Dieter says. "It's because of Don Weaver's strategic thinking, reflective listening and leadership development that I was able to survive the church plant, thrive in it and see growth at New Song."

In October of 1993 senior pastor Bill Hybels asked the couple to come to Willow Creek to help them reach Generation X. "You've already shown that you can start a church with busters," he told Dieter. "But there's a huge question out there for boomer churches - how to build a bridge to the next generation. Figuring that out could be very helpful to the cause of Christ in the nation and around the world."

So for the past two years, Dieter and Val have applied what they learned at seminary in a new church plant within Willow Creek. Dieter recruited four people to oversee AXIS - the ministry for baby busters - and is giving them knowledge, encouragement and tools to lead the ministry. Just as his professors trained him, he trains these men and women, who will someday take his place.

Val, meanwhile, teaches lay people at Willow Creek to deal with people in crisis. Her heart for the hurting spawned an outreach that gets busters involved with people in the inner city.

The Zanders and the AXIS leaders create a place where unchurched busters can experience the love of Christ. A place where friendships are built while hanging out over cappuccino in Willow Creek's food court, reaching out to the homeless or meeting in one of nearly 35 small groups. And through it all, Dieter and Val take what they learned at the International School of Theology and help Generation X create Willow Creek for the next century.

Check it out. If you've got questions about AXIS, call Sandra at (847) 765-0100 ext. 312, or e-mail Axis4U@aol.com.