The Collapse and Fall of Willow Creek: When Vision Outpaced Responsibility!

Willow Creek and Harvest Struggle to Move On

The departures of Bill Hybels and James MacDonald leave churches waiting for new leadership and hoping to rebuild trust.

ABBY PERRY

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

Digitalhallway / Getty

It’s been 22 months since Bill Hybels resigned from Willow Creek Community Church, and the Chicago-area megachurch—one of the biggest in the country—is still without a senior pastor.

The multisite congregation, once celebrated as a model and training ground for Christian leaders, has struggled to transition to steady leadership in the aftermath—leaving the well-being of its eight locations and thousands of congregants at stake as attendance and tithes dip.

In the fallout of Hybels’s departure over sexual misconduct allegations, the esteemed megachurch lost other top leaders: The church’s elders, as well as Steve Carter and Heather Larson, who were slated to be Hybels’s heirs, resigned the same year. Steve Gillen, who has served as interim senior pastor since then, recently announced his plans to step down next month.

And there’s no successor in sight. The new elders said in late January that after narrowing a months-long search down to two senior pastor candidates, they decided to release both and start over. (The announcement came with another blow as elders confirmed claims of inappropriate behavior by Hybels’s mentor, Gilbert Bilezikian, and the church allowed “Dr. B” to continue serving and teaching despite knowing the reports against him.)

The elder board has passed its goal of naming a senior pastor by the end of 2019 but hasn’t announced a public timeline for the continued search, only stating that “filling this pastoral role is the top priority.”

The current tumult at Willow Creek and at its greater Chicago neighbor, Harvest Bible Chapel, showcase how long lasting the effects of a fallen pastor can be.

The Bill Hybels News Isn’t Just Another Pastor Sex Scandal

Quick to Listen/Episode 122 | 43 min

Willow Creek changed how Americans do church. What happens now? 

CT Editors | August 8, 2018





Image: GLS Site 219 / Flickr 

Last year, Willow Creek Community Church founder and lead pastor Bill Hybels announced he was passing the baton to two heirs and would be retiring in October 2018.

A lot has changed in 10 months.

Since that announcement, 10 women have accused Hybels of misconduct. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that one of leader’s former assistants accused the Willow Creek founder of repeatedly groping her. And on Sunday, Steve Carter, whom Hybels who indicated would succeed him as teaching pastor, announced his resignation.

All of this occurred several days before Willow’s Global Leadership Summit, an annual event hosted at Willow’s Barrington campus and streamed at hundreds of locations around the world.

As CT, the Chicago Tribune, and now The New York Times have reported on allegations of sexual misconduct and complaints about the Willow Creek board’s response, some less familiar with Willow Creek wonder why the ministry deserves all this attention.

“Willow Creek was revolutionary in that previously, churches assumed that all that was needed to reach unbelievers with the gospel was simply to say it one more time and not do anything particularly different,” said Marshall Shelley, a longtime editor for Leadership Journal.

Rather than just continue to sling religious language at the world, Willow’s leaders realized that “our culture is spiritually blind and is not going to respond to positively to a message that has grown overly familiar or has grown stale,” said Shelley. “Willow Creek said ‘We need to communicate in a way that is going to get people’s attention. Not say it the way we’ve said it thousands of times before but say it in a way that they’ve never heard it before.’”

This insight grew the ministry of the church and spawned the Willow Creek Association, a network for like-minded churches thousands of congregations strong. It’s this latter ministry that organizes the annual Global Leadership Summit, which is simulcast around the world at hundreds of locations.

Shelley joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss what influenced and drove Hybels to do church the way he did, what inspired the church’s leadership and business mentality and focus, and what’s next for Willow in the wake of allegations of misconduct against its founder and former leader.


Source

Calvary Chapel, Bill Hybels, and Jesuit Mysticism

Commentary by Roger Oakland
Understand The Times International: Roger Oakland Ministries
www.understandthetimes.org
1.800.689.1888


While contending for the faith risks the chance of being ridiculed and scoffed at by men, the apostle Paul said we should stand up for Jesus Christ and the truth of His Word whatever the cost. Writing to the Galatians, he stated:

As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. [1]

In order to qualify as a servant of Christ, Paul is telling us to beware of false teachings that can and will enter the church. Paul also indicated that false teachings can be introduced in a manner so cleverly devised by Satan that these doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1) creep in unnoticed. He warned the church at Galatia with these words:

O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? [2]

These words, inspired by the Holy Spirit, are not just for the church that was in Galatia in the past. The words should be powerful reminders of the danger of following men today who may be led by the words of other men who are led by doctrines of demons. This, of course, can happen without recognizing it has even happened. This is what deception is.

As a result, millions of undiscerning sheep are led away by men posing as shepherds who are not following the Good Shepherd. Instead, these “shepherds” are playing a very significant role in setting up a false ecumenical belief system designed to reach the postmodern generation that does not believe God’s Word is absolute.

Before you have a chance to read the rest of this commentary, I am going to predict the reaction there will be from some in the body of Christ. When one lovingly attempts to point those who are being deceived back on the right path, there will be those who will be cynical, sarcastic, and will lash out. Comments like this will appear: There he goes again, another “old grumpy man” who is against everything. He is just like the Pharisees. We are living in a whole new generation, and he is out of touch. I am addressing these issues before I present my case.

Recently, I was informed about a conference held this week in Budapest, Hungary where Willow Creek senior pastor Bill Hybels taught leaders. According to comments posted on Phil Metzger’s Facebook page, the event was held at Calvary Chapel Golgota Budapest where Metzger is pastor. He is also the director of Calvary Chapel Bible College Europe (also located in Hungary). On Metzger’s Facebook, Hybels was not only endorsed, he was praised. [3]

Perhaps most who read about this event will not be alarmed. But I was because I see the significance. I know that what Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel once stood for is not at all what Hybels stands for. Bill Hybels was mentored by Peter Drucker along with Rick Warren to “reshape” Christianity for the 21st century. Hybels, from the famous Willow Creek Church located in South Barrington, Illinois, fathered the “seeker-friendly” movement.

When Hybels and his cohorts discovered that the seeker-friendly model produced spiritually illiterate believers, they said they “repented” [5] from this model of church; but in actuality, they delved right into teachings associated with the emergent church and contemplative mysticism, seeing those as the next “great” step. Interestingly, on Metzger’s Facebook page, someone defending Metzger’s promotion of Hybels said that it was irrelevant to talk about the emerging church because it was no longer an issue. But nothing could be further from the truth. While often called other names now, such as progressive, the ideologies of the emerging church are very much at work today (as you will see below).

Whatever Is Going on at Willow Creek (?)

March 28, 2018 by D. G. Hart


Is not good.


According to the story at Christianity Today, reports have surfaced that Bill Hybels has acted inappropriately with women:

Nancy Beach, a former teaching pastor, told the Tribune that she traveled to Europe with Hybels in 1999 and that he asked her to stay a few extra days. She declined. But during the trip, he allegedly said his marriage was unhappy. Instead of work, Hybels wanted to have long dinners and walks on the beach.

One night, he allegedly asked her to his room for a glass of wine, then gave her a long, lingering hug.

“He would always say, ‘You don’t know how to hug,’” she told the Tribune. “‘That’s not a real hug.’ So it was like a lingering hug that made me feel uncomfortable. But again, I’m trying to prove that I’m this open person.”

Hybels also allegedly asked Beach to hang out at his house after midweek services, when his wife was not at home. She did at first and then stopped.

Vonda Dyer, a former Willow Creek employee, told the Tribune that Hybels told a joke about oral sex while they were out on his boat with another staff woman—a claim Hybels denies. She also says he repeatedly asked her to come to his hotel room.

One occasion he allegedly started caressing and kissing her.

Like many of the recent allegations against celebrity pastors, Hollywood figures, and politicians, the truth is hard to discern since such cases involve on person’s word against another’s, and courts need more than someone’s word. They need evidence and witnesses.

As insensitive as it may seem, the bigger issue at Willow Creek is the seemingly large animosity that exists between Hybels and the church’s governing body on the one side, and an array of former pastors and current members on the other.

Bill Hybels is having none of it, though:

“This has been a calculated and continual attack on our elders and on me for four long years. It’s time that gets identified,” he told the Tribune. “I want to speak to all the people around the country that have been misled … for the past four years and tell them in my voice, in as strong a voice as you’ll allow me to tell it, that the charges against me are false. There still to this day is not evidence of misconduct on my part.”

“The lies you read about in the Tribune article are the tools this group is using to try to keep me from ending my tenure here at Willow with my reputation intact,” Hybels told his congregation in a statement Thursday evening. “Many of these alleged incidents purportedly took place more than [20] years ago. The fact that they have been dredged up now and assembled in a calculated way demonstrates the determination of this group to do as much damage as they possibly can.”

Both accounts are plausible, in a way. If some sexual misconduct happened, the reports are obviously plausible and the outrage understandable.

But if nothing happened, then the best explanation for such allegations is some sort of personal vendetta.

So far, Hybels seems to be telling the truth and his former associates appear to be willing to believe unflattering depictions:

Jim Mellado, who helped launch Willow Creek’s Global Leadership Summit, had just taken the job as president of Compassion, and he and his wife were about to move to Colorado. At a goodbye party, a friend and former Willow Creek staffer told Leanne Mellado that she had had a long-term romantic relationship with Bill Hybels.

Mellado learned the alleged relationship had lasted more than a decade. At first, she supported this friend and talked through what had happened. Then Leanne Mellado felt she needed to tell the elders at Willow Creek what she had learned.

Her friend balked—afraid that the revelations might harm the church—and said she’d deny having a relationship with Bill Hybels if the elders asked.

“I hope you understand. But if it comes to forcing me, I will be silent,” the woman wrote in an email reviewed by the Tribune. “I feel I should not have trusted you.” The woman did not respond to Tribune requests for comment. She later told Mellado there was flirting and insinuations but no relationship.

Willow Creek says when elders interviewed the woman, she “apologized forthrightly for making a false statement and wrote a full retraction,” noting that she was “very angry at Willow” at the time. Willow also said the woman apologized personally to Lynne Hybels for lying.

Is it still too early to tell? Unless someone brings charges to civil authorities, will the church or persons conduct other forms of investigation?

Either way, imagining Willow Creek will emerge unscathed is hard. So much of church life depends on trust, good will, voluntarism, hoping the best of officers and members. What seems to have occurred in this case is not simply a tug on the thread of that tapestry of congregational trust, but an indication of deep levels of antagonism among certain elements in the Willow Creek family. Whether Hybels is exonerated or found culpable, it is hard to see how Willow Creek goes on from here.


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Source:  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/protestprotest/2018/03/whatever-is-going-on-at-willow-creek/#BCY3KdVAHUEsf9Sj.99