Willow Creek Elders and Pastor Heather Larson Resign over Bill Hybels

Christianity Today ^ | 04 Aug 2018 | Bob Smietana

[US Navy Vet]

In the summer of 2008, Bill Hybels stood in front of thousands of pastors and other church leaders gathered at Willow Creek Community Church and admitted his megachurch had failed.

“We made a mistake,” he told the crowd gathered for the 2008 Global Leadership Summit (GLS). A detailed Willow study had found that the church had helped many people find new faith in Jesus, but had failed to teach them how to practice the spiritual disciplines needed to grow their faith.

He vowed the megachurch would do be better in the future.

Ten years later, Willow Creek’s leaders confessed even more mistakes. On the eve of the 2018 GLS, they admitted in a special congregational meeting that church leaders had failed to appropriately handle recent allegations of sexual misconduct against their founding pastor

[US Navy Vet]

...sigh...

[Jonty30]

I don’t get it. If you’re tempted by the flesh, squeeze one off in private. But, I really don’t get those can get into affairs.

[wbarmy]

And yet, the same people who screamed and laughed at VP Pence for obeying the “Graham” rule will scream that this shows that Christians are all hypocrites.

But nobody in Sierra Leone ever questions me about following the “Graham” rule, because they know that sin exists and we must flee from it.

[ConservativeMind]

“We made a mistake,” he told the crowd gathered for the 2008 Global Leadership Summit (GLS). A detailed Willow study had found that the church had helped many people find new faith in Jesus, but had failed to teach them how to practice the spiritual disciplines needed to grow their faith.

Wow, back in the early 1990s, I told this to my friends (one of whom was attending Willow Creek) this was a big issue with mega churches.

[af_vet_1981]

I don’t get it. If you’re tempted by the flesh, squeeze one off in private. But, I really don’t get those can get into affairs.

It's nothing they explain
it's like a diesel train--
you better not be there 
when it rolls over
And when that train rolls in
you don't know where it's been
You gotta try and see
a little further

"They Love Each Other" Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia



Porneia (Fornication) is not a cure for adultery. One grave sin does not heal another grave sin.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut if off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

...

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

...

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.

Matthew, Catholic chapter five, Protestant verses twenty seven to thirty,

First Corinthians, Catholic chapter six, Protestant verses nine to ten,

Hebrews, Catholic chapter twelve, Protestant verses one to four,

as authorized, but not authored, by King James

[circlecity]

We’ve seen this over and over with these “Emerging Christianity” megachurches.

[AndyTheBear]

Spiritual pride is perhaps the most dangerous vice to be tempted to. And pastors of mega churches are subject to that temptation I reckon.

[Lee N. Field]

The quoted part doesn't get to what's going on. This here, from the CT article, does:

Lead pastor Heather Larson announced that she was resigning immediately. The church’s elder board announced that its members would also step down in an orderly fashion by the end of 2018.

Steve Carter, the church’s lead teaching pastor, had already resigned on Sunday, saying he could no longer continue at the church in “good conscience.”

At tonight’s Willow family meeting, elder Missy Rasmussen said she and other church leaders had been blinded by their faith in their founding pastor and had failed to hold Hybels accountable.

“We trusted Bill, and this clouded our judgment,” she said.

I knew their teaching pastor had just resigned. Now the CEO-ish "pastor for running the place" resigns, and the elder board promises to also go away.

Much to say, no time right now.

[Gamecock]

Bill Hybels Resigns From Willow Creek Church Amid Misconduct Allegations
'We Do Not Believe the Stories Were All Lies,' Willow Creek Elders Say on Bill Hybels Allegations

_____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________

YBPDLN* Ping List Ping!

THE SEEKER SENSITIVE PING LIST!

Generally speaking The YBPDLN Ping List is published infrequently, however based on the exploits of the megachurch pastors posts can spike for a season.

Management will not ping members to every thread addressing megachurch pastors, but will tag articles of interest with the KEYWORD: YBPDLN.

If you would like on or off of this list please FReepmail me.

Because 18,000 22,000 People Can’t Be Wrong!

*YBPDLN=Your Best Purpose Driven Life Now

[Jim Noble]

I was raised in a Dutch Reformed church that joined the UCC. At the time I was in Sunday School, the “mainline” churches all had confessions or creeds that defined them. 50 short years later - all gone. Dust in the wind. Even the Episcopalians, who thought apostolic governance was security - finished.

The collapse of the seeker movement is upon us. Rick Warren and Bill Hybels were not fruitful. Leaders, but not fathers. Mars Hill was a flash in the pan.

You Catholics beware. Your model is the strongest but it will not survive an antipope with Facebook. The old antipopes has short lives and limited reach.

Jesus, as they say, calls us o’er the tumult.

[metmom]

It’s clear that churches were never meant to get this big.

They just don’t work as they lose the personal interconnections between people. They become institutions, not a body.

[Biggirl]

To be replaced by what?

[HOYA97]

TRUTH!!! I have been saying this for years. Thank you for saying this and God bless.

[Jonty30]

I agree, but my point was that, if you do give in to the flesh, you can make the choice to give in at the least harmful point instead of the most harmful point.

[Salvation]

More sexual abuse occurs in non-Catholic churches than in the Catholic Church.

It seem the truth is starting to leak out.

[Linda Frances]

Hasn’t Willow Creek gotten into social justice. I know this will come off sexist but I don’t believe in women having authority over men in the church. Anyone know for sure if they compromised on other issues?

[Jane Long]

Got stats for that?

TIA.

[metmom]

More sexual abuse occurs in non-Catholic churches than in the Catholic Church.

First off, prove it. Otherwise, your accusations are not fact but opinion.

Does that make it OK then because you think your church isn't as bad as others?

Do you think God grades on a comparison basis?

You're pretty quick to condemn it in others. When are you going to condemn it in the Catholic church, your own church?

[metmom]

You’re comparing apples to oranges.

This case is about adultery between a grown man and a grown woman. and the church is taking the correct action.

The Catholic priests are involved in homosexual abuse of minors. All the Catholic church does is move the priests around and cover up for them, instead of defrocking them, pulling their priestly credentials, and turning them over to civil authorities to pay for their crime.

WORLD of difference there.

[Wallace T.]

We are witnessing the same trend in the evangelical churches that occurred in the mainline churches a century ago. The mainline Protestant denomination were taken over by liberals through a process of infiltration, acceptance, dominance, and expulsion and silencing of remaining orthodox clergy and laity. Those who credit Saul Alinsky for these tactics must recognize that his tactics were anticipated decades earlier in the religious field by men like Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Harry Emerson Fosdick. What happened to J. Gresham Machen, the last of the orthodox Old Princeton theologians, in the Northern Presbyterian Church in 1932, becoming a nonperson, is happening even today to the deplatforming and electronic exile of Alex Jones and Infowars in the secular world.

The issues are different to the infiltrators of the 21st Century to those of the prior century, but the ends are the same, to destroy active, witnessing and Biblically based churches from within. The "seeker sensitive" movement, the prosperity gospel, post-modernism, etc., are the wedge issues used by the modern equivalents of Rauschenbusch, Niebuhr, and Fosdick, to infiltrate, neutralize, and destroy evangelical churches.