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I will recant on no services on Christmas Eve, it looks like they just haven’t done Christmas services for many years.

But, I also have more to add on this, because I’ve kept it bottled up for the most part.

My little brother was a normal person, he worked in an accounting firm, typical middle class. His current wife got him involved in Willow Creek when he was about 50 years old. The change was dramatic, but measured over time.

Over the next couple of years, he rallied against everything that we grew up with (Chicago Catholic). He became spiteful against my family and my other brothers family.

When my old man passed away, we sold his house, and we let my two younger brothers (Mike and Bill) spit the proceeds.

He lost his job the next year.

Now, my other littler brother worked with him at the same accounting firm in the 80’s and they had mutual friends (I’ll get back to this).

So, Mike (my brainwashed brother) and his wife had a blow out with us one Christmas (and it was over abortion, his wife brought it up AT CHRISTMAS!). We stopped talking after that. They ruined the last (and it wasn’t the first) Christmas with our family. When he left, my wife told him not to come back. That is a LOT for my wife to say. Mike and his wife spent much of the Christmas evening ridiculing my family (but mainly my wife and daughter - taking the “Jesus believes in Women’s Rights” stance, and you should be ashamed of yourself!). My wife was almost in tears, my daughter was devastated and it caused her some grief over a period of time, to have someone who claimed to be so “close to Jesus” attack her for her pro-life stance. It was a crushing and devastating experience for all of us at the dinner table that Christmas night.

Ok, so back to him losing his job. This was before the blow out... My youngest brother Billy explained he lost his job because of Willow Creek. supposedly it’s all Mike would talk about at work (and politics, rallying against “BusHitler”, and he wouldn’t work any extra hours on weekends (accountants work weekends sometimes, especially during tax time). Because he volunteered at Willow Creek on weekends. Billy also said he heard Mike went off on a rant on the owner of the firm about how he was a Jew.... Not a good move...

OK, so, now Mike has his house paid off (because of the proceeds from our mom & dad’s house), but in a YEAR he is broke and loses his house. How? Not from gambling or drugs, Billy said he was giving so much to the church, and basically praying he was going to get a job at Willow Creek (it sounds like they strung him along... give more money... give more money... we’ll give you a job... I have no proof of this, just what my youngest brother implied). I also think Mike thought “it was the right thing to do”. I think he was either brain-washed, wanted to fit in, was naive or all of the above.

He eventually lost his house (but he also leased a Mercedes and was hanging around the Barrington Willow Creekers in that final year)...

Around that time, my baby brother sadly asked if we could help Mike out and get him a job or lend him money (I am part owner in a contracting company). I told him that Mike should come see me... he never did.

Last I heard they moved to southern Illinois to live with his wife’s family (somewhere around Carbondale).

That church sapped him of everything he had, and changed him for the worse. He was no hippy until Willow Creek (and by Hippy I don’t mean the patchouli-get high type, I mean the far lefty fringe type, the commune type I guess, that’s why I call him a “hippy”, but he wore custom cuff shirts and links, dress slacks and Italian shoes...

It’s a cult. All he would talk about was Hybels. He was basically a saint to my brother (and many other Willow Creekers). I remember he was so proud that he called me when he got to sit at the “big table” one dinner with Hybels... it was as if he had met the Messiah himself.

I feel bad for cultists. I really do.

Sorry for the long-winded tale, I just felt like getting this off my chest, there is a lot of pain there, and it is centered on Willow Creek and the Hybels guy.

I never once attended the church. I can only relate the damage it did to my brother, and I’ve heard more and more stories like this over the years from all sorts of people.

And now to find out the “elders” and Hybels were sexually preying on women and children (some handicap), I know I was right in my belief all along.

I feel sorry for all the victims who were taken for money, including my brother, but mostly for the women and kids who were used and abused by these monsters.

Willow Creek took in $75 million last year, and is worth a quarter billion dollars. http://www.ecfa.org/MemberProfile.aspx?ID=6052

I’m not even sure that Rajneesh’s had that much money (converted for inflation) in the day. Maybe they did.