If we all get 15 minutes of fame, mine occurred with Bill Hybels.  Around 1985 I was part of a panel of four Chicago pastors on a “Meet the Press” roundtable style Christian TV show in Chicago.  I was invited, not because I was famous or even well-known, but because a member of my congregation worked for the Christian television station that produced the show. 

For about 30 minutes in the TV studio, I sat at a table exchanging opinions with Bill Hybels and two other pastors.  These were the early days of Willow Creek Church, when I think they were still operating in a movie theatre and focusing on youth ministry.  Since then, the trajectories of our ministries diverged, to say the least.  Bill Hybels went on to become a household name in the American evangelical community, creator of the “seeker service” model and the first megachurch on the religious map, and, through the Willow Creek Association, venerated by thousands of church leaders all over the world.

A year or so later I attended a leadership conference hosted by Hybels at a suburban hotel attended perhaps by 200 people. From that humble beginning, today Willow Creek Association’s annual Global Leadership Summit is attended by a half million people around the world.  I can testify to its global reach; it was a packed-out event in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where I spent several years teaching theology. 

Watching him around the table in the TV studio and in the small ballroom at the leadership conference, I was impressed with Hybels’ sincerity, candor and humility.  He seemed genuine and forthright. I’d guess these are some of the qualities that fueled Willow Creek’s phenomenal growth.

As his career blossomed and I followed from a distance (from some of his books and videos), Hybels continued to seem to be more interested in sharing the gospel than building a personal empire.  With many megachurch prosperity gospel huckster/pastors now tainting all Christians, it was comforting that Bill Hybels and his West-coast counterpart Rick Warren (Saddleback Church) were megachurch pastors who remained rock solid. 

This past Wednesday the entire elder board of Willow Creek Church resigned.  This was in response to recent revelations from his former executive assistant in the New York Times that Hybels had repeatedly groped her and once insisted on oral sex.  It’s a harrowing article for friends of the Willow Creek movement to read.  Earlier allegations published in Christianity Today and The Chicago Tribune caused Hybels to retire six months earlier than planned.  Faced with the cascading allegations from many women, he has continued to not admit any wrong-doing.

It is a sad story repeated far too often.

1)  Power and fame are dangerous.  

A counselor working with victims of abuse by Christian leaders comments:

“Those leaders feel almost invincible. They don’t feel like the rules apply to them, because they’re doing great things for Jesus, even though their behavior doesn’t reflect Jesus at all.”

This is not a danger faced only by high profile leaders.  I personally know pastors of ordinary congregations whose sexual sin was far more egregious than anything so far leveled against Hybels.  This “too good to fail” spiritual blindness can infect any spiritual leader.  In Hybels’ case, it has apparently clouded his vision for decades. 

2) Churches need checks and balances and honest accountability. 

I remember a pastor friend going through a deeply conflicted time within his congregation who once said to me, “I wish I were Presbyterian.”  As a pastor in a mainline denomination, I was used to good-natured banter about all the problems we faced that his independent congregation avoided.  Now his independence was isolating.  Now he wished for more structure and outside help; indeed, even from denominational leaders who could intervene and help sort out the mess.

Denominational structure is never a panacea.  In my 40 years as a mainline pastor offer plenty of evidence of power used inappropriately.  Such a connectional structure between congregations, however, means no church has to face its issues alone.  Leaders from neighboring churches in the same denominational family have less vested interest and can provide the checks and balances independent churches often lack (and feel they do not need, until such situations arise).  

The Willow Creek elders did an inhouse investigation, then later apologized and all resigned when they realized they had not been objective, or treated the women who had come forward fairly.

3)  “How could he have done all this good, when there were such dark things happening behind the scenes?” 

So concludes Nancy Beach, one of Willow Creeks longtime staff members, who voiced her own accusations against Hybels sexual improprieties with her.  She makes her comment against the background of personally hearing hundreds of pastors around the world tell her they owed their church’s success to Bill Hybels.

Nancy Beach’s question asks the paradoxical question of all human life.  Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Carl Sandburg:

“there is an eagle within me that wants to soar and hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.”

None of us are aloof or immune from Sandburg’s paradox of good and evil within each of us.  (I devote a whole chapter to this human paradox in my book, Paradox Lost: Rediscovering the Mystery of God).

As Nancy Beach points out, we Christians often encounter this paradox most deeply—whether we are famous like Bill Hybels or unknowns like me. Hybels has done much good for the advancement of God’s kingdom.  He has also significantly seen his work undone.

Christianity is no guarantee of morality. If we learn anything from one more prominent Christian’s fall, it might be renewed soul-searching humility for ourselves, famous or not.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Question:  How do you respond to another public failing of a high profile Christian leader?

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