Author: drj1952

A person who was part of Ravi Zacharias’s ministry has come forward with a public apology for his complicity with covering Ravi’s sin. See the below site.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10164642320500327&id=566520326&sfnsn=mo

Why has no one who covered for Bill Hybels written a similar apology to the women violated by him? Is it because, much like it seems Bill has done, they do not want to embrace the humility necessary for seeking forgiveness? Even if Bill, the perpetrator, cannot embrace the grace necessary for entering the broken space of repentance, what about those who, as in Ravi’s case, enabled his behavior? Why has there been no strong endorsement of the shameful way Bill’s victims were vilified? Why no courageous endorsement of the horror of the violation of these women’s sacred boundaries?

Ravi was a classmate of mine at Trinity, and we shared a love of philosophy. We talked many times about intellectual topics as it related to our faith in God. I recognized his immense intelligence even at this stage of his life. We drifted apart over time, checking in over events we attended. I was disheartened when, little by little, information leaked out about his inappropriate sexual behaviors. But, as I reflected on it, I was not surprised. Ravi, though brilliant, lacked emotional/social intelligence. This is a recipe for emotional isolation and vulnerability to the pseudo-feelings that sexual experiences provide. Individuals like Ravi get trapped in the burden of their own success, feeling both anxious and irritated by the demands they take on.

Without the deep accountability that tough and confronting brothers provide, people like Ravi and Bill, formulate a shadow life that soothes their sense of isolation, while forcing them to live compartmentalized lives. They then form a cadre of attendants to their isolated experience by protecting and defending the successful person. These attendants have such a personal “buy-in” to the fame of the person, that they derive “worth by association”, and therefor do not call out inappropriate behavior.

Bravo to this person who owned the fact that it was not only the perpetrator, Ravi, but also those who sinned by association, being culpable in the denial and protection of failed leader. It took guts to say what he did. He recognized that he was caught up in the way that Ravi was able to manipulate the truth. The part of him who benefited from the truth not coming out, was complicit.

Where are those who provided cover for Bill? Why are they not stepping up and owning their complicity in the tragic abuse of these women? Cowards? If they would step up, even though Bill does not have the courage to face his own shadow, it would so powerfully affirm the pain of these women.

As an aside, the strongest indication of the guilt of someone is their running away and avoiding the people they have sinned against. Where is Bill? Why has he not been back? He often said that Willow was the greatest community in the world. He also said that Willow is his home church, and that he would be around and attend. We have all played “where is Waldo”. Should we play “where is Bill”?

After my last blog about the power of culture, the unrest at Willow Creek North Shore (WCNS) campus, has moved me to develop this concept further. Culture is like Pac-Man, where the figure goes after the little elements to consume them, and this is an analogy to how culture will swallow up strategy. This is being seen in the push back of the congregants at WCNS. This is a clear example of what happens when leaders with strategic vision collide with the real flesh and blood needs, values, and feelings of the constituents. 

I have many times noted that those in Christian leadership positions often focus more on vision casting and strategic change, and less on the very powerful elements that comprise human culture. As a result, the culture resists the strategy. The new strategy seeks to change the culture of an organization, which represents a threat to those engaged and loyal to that culture.

I once had a young pastor come to my counseling office who was defeated, dejected, and generally depressed. He had come out of seminary a fresh-faced, enthusiastic graduate, who had highly idealized views of how to lead a church. He was called to a small church in Iowa and set about trying to implement his vision. After two years, he gave up. The church culture was run by three prominent families, who had absolute control and they did not want change. He did not have the skill-set necessary to know how to deal with this. It has always been my view that the courses  seminaries need to teach is about church culture, and how it can destroy pastors who do not understand it. They do not use emotional/social intelligence to assess how to create change in a healthy way. 

What has happened at Willow Creek Community Church (WCCC) is that the elders selected a leadership team who have demonstrated, at this point, a clear tone-deafness to the larger cultural issues. As a psychologist trained in larger systemic elements, my focus is on the system into which the strategy seeks to create change. Systems have to be ready to align with change, and a good part of that is that the culture, in the form of the constituents, has been consulted and are slowly allowed to buy into the envisioned changes. 

People who have insight into the emotional and social intelligence elements of leadership recognize that change, particularly large-scale change, should never be initiated when that culture has experienced a high level of stress from recent events. For instance, a person who has just lost a loved one should not change jobs until they have stabilized from the trauma of loss. At WCCC, it is clear that the church is still in the re-stabilizing process of having absorbed the loss of a senior pastor, who was un-masked as having a power and control style of leadership, along with using that power to sexually abuse women. This was a shock that rocked the emotional rickter scale of the WCCC culture. It has been clear that the leadership of WCCC chose to ignore the substantial trauma that this revelation created, and pushed for change and a future focus. 

The second major stressor on the culture of WCCC has been the Covid-19 pandemic. This has been a destabilizing event, causing a loss of in-person community, which is emotionally devastating to a community that loves and connects with each other. A systemically-aware leader would know that this is the worst time to implement strategic changes to a culture. But the leadership of WCCC, ignoring the need to address the emotionally-destabilizing elements of the two major stressor events at the church, devised the new vision to move forward. They are now beginning to see the consequences of their lack of wisdom or larger systemic intelligence, when they sought to shoe-horn change into a damaged culture. 

The leadership culture at WCCC has been addressed in my previous blogs, primarily, pointing out the narcissistic, top-down, power and control, secretive, and generally damaging approach of the senior pastor and those who were his attendants to the throne (Emperor Who Had No Clothes). I want to point out that a lot of the culture of WCCC  was, albeit created by corrupt leadership, good in many ways. Those that came as congregants to WCCC loved what they experienced. They loved the worship, the opportunities to volunteer as a community in all kinds of service areas, the campus pastors and their leadership, the sense of love and community that was created, and many other things. It can be said that much of the culture of WCCC was loved and valued. Minus the scandal of leadership, much of what had been constructed culture-wise was desired and loved. 

The scandal of leadership that occurred in the revelation of Bill Hybels’ behavior, left a sizable void in the trust of leadership at WCCC. Why would it not? The new leadership at WCCC largely ignored the stressful and traumatic impact of the leadership failure, and certainly failed to recognize the issue of leadership mistrust that had been created. What was needed was a pastoral type that put a pause on any substantial changes and instead focused on binding up the wounds of the church and restoring trust in leadership. Instead, the tone-deaf approach focused on strategy, strategy, strategy! 

The elders are the ones that are primarily at fault for this. They resisted truly dealing with the emotional and sinful elements of past leadership behavior, and instead kept wanting to push forward. They obviously chose a senior pastor that aligned with their desires. Now I believe that they have locked themselves into a decision that is clearly being revealed as unhealthy to the culture of the church, but they do not want to admit that it was bad judgement. This reminds me of something in professional football. Sometimes a general manager will draft a quarterback in the first round, lock into a very expensive contract, and when it becomes obvious that the quarterback may not be talented enough, they will stick with them. They have made a strategic decision and they do not want to admit it because they have spent so  much money.

The culture that has existed at WCCC, as explained above, created a community that allowed congregants to feel connected.  There is never a more important time to preserve the elements of connection than in a crisis of stress, such as the ones where the Hybels’ situation and the Covid-19 pandemic created. To try to shoe-horn a change, that essentially looks like an attempt to dismantle the very elements that bring comfort to people, is highly threatening, and will be resisted. 

The leadership needs to humble themselves, admit the fact that they failed to assess the traumatic elements of the culture at WCCC, put a pause on the vision, focus more on the healing necessary for the culture to stabilize, address the truth about the financial situation of WCCC, address the truth about Bill Hybels’ sin and not just minimize it as a scandal. They need to acknowledge the significant lack of trust in leadership and commit to what it takes to rebuild this absolutely. necessary component. Only then should they help the church look at strategy and change, with the full engagement of the congregation. Communicate rather than assume everyone is good with your vision! 

As a follow-up to my previous post I believe it is important to note that when the church was looking for a new pastor the staff was polled to determine what they most desired in a new leader. Their collective response was that they needed a pastoral type, who would have the capacity to work on addressing and healing the cultural trauma that had been experienced at Willow. In spite of the fact that this was the desire of the staff, it is my understanding that the elders ignored this and pursued a more CEO oriented leader. This again reflects the significant disconnect that the elders have with the true spiritual cultural elements of the church. Basically what they did was hire the new leader, like buying a car, and then gave him the keys to the car and withdrew any effective oversight. As a result he surrounded himself with a close cadre of male leaders. There is a rumor going around, and Dave Dummit needs to address this, that one of the senior leaders, Chris Hahn, was fired from his last job due to excessive power abuse. Even though this was brought to the attention of the elders, they allowed Dave to override any concerns and hire him. All of these decisions reflect the mentality of current leadership, which is to make decisions in secret, not responsive to the overall needs of the congregation, and bully their way through to push their agenda. There is clearly a mutiny of some sort going on, most seen in the angry pushback of the North shore campus. The church leadership should see themselves as a representative government, who seek to ascertain the pulse of the needs of the church spiritually and emotionally, and then lead from this discernment. Instead, as I’ve written before, they completely ignore the culture and the dramatic wounding that has occurred, and push forward. Their lack of any significant addressing of the abuse of the women that have come forward, really reflects an approach that devalues women. Also their lack of placing women in strategic positions of upper management indicates a diminishing of the role of women at Willow. I believe that God is not going to allow Willow to recover and flourish unless they’re willing to heed the admonition of scripture that “if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray I will heal their land”.

I absolutely have to write a response to what’s been going on lately at Willow. I have said for years that if the culture of a church is not taken into consideration, it will eventually destroy any new strategic objectives. Willow Creek has had a culture that has focused on excellence, seeker-sensitivity, the development of multiple ministries, and a certain form of worship. That implicit structure is reflective of the developed DNA of the church. People who have been involved with Willow for years love a lot of the elements of this culture, and many of the elements resulted in wonderful things in the lives of many believers.

Then, into that culture came the tsunami of Bill Hybel’s behavior, that, when it was finally acknowledged, shook the foundation of the church. The core message that was generated was distrust of leadership. How do we know what’s going on behind the scenes in the lives of leaders? And, if we don’t know, and they are engaging in some kind of behavior that could eventually be threatening to the core values of the church, will we re-experience the pain of the original trauma?

The elder leadership has neglected the larger “elephant in the room” elements of the trauma that’s been inflicted on the culture. They continue to operate on the assumption that, in time, a new leader and a new vision will allow for the past to simply dissipate. I have said for a long time that the elders have severely miscalculated what the church culture experienced. I know from personal experience, that my sister has gone to Cherry Hills Community Church in the Denver area. Shane Farmer arrived, and over time, he attempted to produce a significant culture change. It has taken 7 years, but there is finally significant blowback from his attempted changes, and he may not survive as the pastor of that church. When leadership discounts the emotional temperature of a church, devalues the emotional experience of trauma, and pushes forward in an effectively -bullying process, it eventually will backfire on them. And I believe that is what’s happening at Willow. Northshore is a mess right now with the decision of the lead pastor to resign. Dave Dummit is forcing changes on the already-fragile and emotionally- distraught culture of Willow Creek. He apparently believes that he can compel everyone to get on board with his vision of things and it will be so great that any problems of the past will be forgotten. He is forgetting the statement that “culture will eat strategy for breakfast”. And that is true.

I believe what we’re seeing is the systematic dismantling of Willow Creek, led by the hubris and insensitivity of a male-formed leadership team. They believe that they can effectively convince the congregants of their vision and values. They will have a vision-casting night coming up soon, but what they’re doing is not advancing their idea of vision and values. But, rather they are telling the congregation that this vision and value structure has already been implemented, and everyone has to get on board. What they are failing to recognize, at a deep level, is that the congregants are the ones that have funded Willow Creek through their tithes and offerings. They have ownership, and the right to know what is going on inside the church. The way this new management team has operated has simply continued the deeply- flawed principles of deceptiveness, patriarchal decision-making, keeping people in the dark, and believing that they are smarter than the body of believers.

Unfortunately, as I have said, they will eventually find out that culture is more powerful than strategy. The leadership of this church has failed to truly assess the damages of the trauma that Willow has gone through and has inflicted on the people and culture. They have failed to recognize that change must be titrated and massaged over time, versus rammed through by people acting as if they have more wisdom or knowledge than the body. There are substantial changes to the culture of Willow, that can be looked at if you go to http://www.willowcreek.com. The new leadership has essentially created a more complementarian view of women in the church than the well-established values of equality with women. There are no women in the core-operating structure of leadership. The inner ring of power is surrounded by a secondary ring composed of campus pastors who have very little true input.

The new vision of Willow is to pare down staff, pare down programs, centralize leadership to the South Barrington campus, and control the finances of all the campuses. There is very little autonomy given to campuses to develop the very real and unique vision and values that they may have. The process of getting rid of staff has again shown a lack of emotional and social intelligence, leaving many people on staff feeling pushed out of their ministry positions. The current leadership is using the excuse of the Covid-19 to justify this, when the reality is that it is simply consistent with their new vision and values. As has been said and Biblically-supported for years now, unless the church leadership, and the elders, humble themselves, repent, and do deep repair of the damage that has been done over the last two or three years at the church, the leadership will find that the culture, in the form of the people of the church of Christ, will assert the power that the culture holds to resist being forced to accept something that they’ve had no real say about.

Summa Finalem (Summary Final Thoughts)

This will be my final blog on the Willow Creek travesty unless another victim, who has been identified, chooses to come forward. It is clear that despite how I, and numerous others, who have written about how Willow Creek Community Church (WCCC) has handled the revelation of Bill Hybels’ sexual predatory behavior, the leadership of WCCC has realistically done very little to create change at the church.

I have, in earlier blogs, discussed the power of organizational systems, and nowhere is this more true than what has transpired at WCCC. The culture at WCCC is not one of transparency and confession, but rather focuses on how to best minimize the damage of any assault on the image of the church. And I must, sadly, say that the culture has weathered the storm and will continue basically unchanged. That is the power of systems and their self perpetuating capabilities.

The church was formed around core cultural values, and those values have basically been preserved. The pesky nature of all of us that have attempted to expose deep systemic corruption and immorality has been dealt with by the leadership primarily by ignoring what we have identified. The elders that now rule at WCCC were products of the culture and have “won” in some sense by acting like they cared, while substantively, and passive-aggressively, ignoring important change needs. The current picture of the church retains the celebrity model. In some ways it is even worse, since the current plan is basically to outsource the teaching to individuals who have some level of celebrity within Christendom, but cannot fulfill the role of elders/teachers to be immersed in the spiritual climate of the church. It is essentially an entertainment model.

Narcissism As The Enemy of Humility

Most of my writing about WCCC has focused on the impact of a narcissistic founder/senior pastor, and his blueprint for a church that unfolded around his own pathology. I and others have called upon the church to repent and to hold publicly accountable Bill Hybels. Our words have fallen on deaf ears for the most part.

Why have we not heard from Bill Hybels? The best evidence for his guilt in what he has been accused of is his silence. Most of us, if we believed that we were innocent, would vigorously defend our reputation. But Bill Hybels has left in the dark of night, never to be heard from again by the congregation. Remember in the family meeting how he said that WCCC would always be his home church, and that he would continue to stay involved? He stated that the congregation of WCCC was the greatest in the world, and he praised its generosity, etc.

So where is he? The reality is that his abrupt and complete separation from the congregation shows his essential narcissism. Narcissists do not attach well and can sever relationships quickly and without remorse. The reason for this is that narcissists see relationships as having value only so far as they further the agenda of the narcissist. When they no longer serve that purpose, they jettison them because they are capable of easy emotional detachment. If Bill deeply cared about the congregation, and it had real emotional importance to him, he would have attempted to reconnect. All of his bluster about how great WCCC was has not resulted in his showing one ounce of care and concern about the people of the church. Bill would call WCCC great because, as a narcissist, the church was an extension of him. The church is great because he is great. Now that the shame of his being found out has occurred, the church has no more value to him.

Narcissists struggle with humility because they confuse humility with humiliation. Since the core of the narcissist is shame, they cannot acknowledge their own failure, because it evokes the pain of shame. They therefore have to maintain rigid postures of denial to shore up the potential collapse that shame would bring. Failure is not looked at as a component of being a finite and flawed human being in need of God’s grace, but instead exposes the narcissist to the searing flame of public judgement. Bill has used the classic defense responses of those who cannot own their brokenness and flaws. He blames the women, defiantly seeking to portray them as out to get him. In some ways, true narcissists would rather die than admit failure. The Japanese culture used to have this strong, pride based defense against shame. They would commit hari kari to save face.

Organizational Narcissism

WCCC was developed by a narcissist, and developed qualities as an organization that reflect a narcissistic culture. How many times was WCCC talked about as cutting edge, admired in the world of churches as great? In some way the congregants and staff were caught up in the idea of specialness. Having WCCC on your resume was a feather in your cap. This specialness is the foundation of narcissism, and the members of WCCC got caught up in this. The facility had to be the best, and was big and beautiful.

WCCC as an organization shows the same inability to move towards humility as its founder did. The leadership has spent most of its time trying to get ahead of image problems. It basically sought to isolate the problems to the behavior of Bill Hybels, although it did not call him out in any strong way. What WCCC did not do was own that it as an organization is narcissistic, and cannot admit to failure in any real way. There has been no public ownership of the way that the church itself has been in the grips of a narcissistic identity and needed to repent. Everyone who enabled and sustained the organizational level of narcissism needed to own it and repent. The problem, much like identified with Bill Hybels, is that WCCC did not want to face failure, and its potential ill effect on its reputation. WCCC is culpable in enabling and sustaining the behavior of a bully and sexual predator. But, in owning this, it implicates itself and threatens its need to maintain its special status. Because the strategy was to identify the problem as caused by Bill Hybels, the church could shield its responsibility behind focusing on his behavior and attempting to “move on”.

Past As Prologue

I do not see substantial brokenness and honest repentance from the leadership of WCCC. The old system has done what systems seek to do, stay intact and resist change. There is still a pervasive containment of control in a few elders, and the resistance to a more public sharing of information still exists. There is no evident commitment to truth-telling. The overall image of the church is essentially what it was in the past. In some ways it is even worse, going to this model of “out-sourcing”, hiring of celebrity teachers who, as discussed earlier, cannot feel the spiritual condition of the church. If Jesus was walking the earth and came upon WCCC, I truly do not believe that He would recognize it as His church. It essentially maintains its corporate structure and entertainment focus.

If I was a woman at WCCC, I would not feel safe, because the leadership has taken such a tepid stance on the dignity of women and their need to be believed. The trauma that Bill Hybels perpetrated on the women victims has not been honestly faced and acknowledged. It continues to be a great irony that the church that Bill Hybels founded, and professed an egalitarian model of women’s involvement in the church, has essentially devalued women by not taking a strong stand publicly against the actions of Bill Hybels.

When an organization seeks to minimize its failure and does not do the deep cleansing work of ownership, confession, and change, the past truly still resides in the DNA of the organizational church culture. Because of this, the problems of the past still reside deep in the texture of the church as an infection in the culture. And, as any infection not treated by surgery, it is possible, maybe probable, that the systemic sin will emerge again. I do not have a lot of hope for long term change.

On a personal level, I spent time talking to the elders and asked them “Can you give me your Biblical framework for how you are dealing with the crisis that Bill Hybels’ behavior exposed”?. The head elder, Jeff Mason said, in the presence of witnesses, that he would go back to the full elder board and then would get back to me. That was back in November of 2019. I emailed him two times since to ask when they would get back to me, and his response was they would later. It has not happened. When your elders are not truthful, and rationalize their failure to follow up on a promise, it does not create a sense of trust in the honesty and integrity of their leadership. God help Willow Creek Community Church!

The Mindful Christian
Has there ever been a period when we as a people have been more influenced by the uncertainty of events in our lives? I cannot remember a time like this. We are assaulted on a physical level by the possibility of a virus entering our bodies, while on an emotional level we are experiencing a developing angst about the future. We feel vulnerable, and in some ways defenseless, about our safety.
Our brains, sensing this powerlessness and insecurity, does what God created it to do, kick in the fight or flight response. When that happens, massive stress hormones are released into our bloodstreams as an attempt to fight the impending doom. But the things we are scared of are not tigers or snakes, but rather the “what ifs” of our lives. What if I get the virus, what if I never get my job back, what if I go bankrupt, etc.? Since the body cannot fight this vague enemy, nor can it run from it, it instead freezes and feels the sense of anxiety that is created.

The question that all of us that call ourselves Christians have to answer is, do we have in our faith anything that differentiates us from non-believers? We are called to (John 15:19) recognize that we in the world but not of the world. What does that mean? It means that in our values and beliefs, we are to be different from the mindset of the world. So if the world gets caught up in the belief that we are vulnerable and susceptible to the “what ifs”, we are called to stand apart from this and think differently.

This does not mean that we should avoid the measures in place to reasonably protect ourselves. It just is true that we have resources to cope with the things that are out of our control. Humans like to be in control. Christians lean into the reality that God is in control.

A River Runs Through It

2Therefore we will not fear, though the earth is transformed and the mountains are toppled into the depths of the seas, 3though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake in the surge. Selah 4There is a river whose streams delight the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.… Psalms 46
This Psalm, one of my favorites, points us away from catastrophic thinking, and back to the Truth that God is at the center of all things. God is like a steady river that can be the quiet place of dwelling, when the external world seems as if it is fracturing. It is this resource, above all else, that gives to a believer a focus and resource that those who rely only on themselves or the government, do not have.

Peace That Passes Human Understanding

You will keep him in perfect peace,Whose mind is stayed on You,Because he trusts in You. Isaiah 26:3

Peace is the opposite of anxiety. It comes from a steady confidence that as we remember who God is, in all of His power and might, that we can shelter in the comfort of His wings. This verse points us to the fact that God will give us a peace that is hard to explain by the events of the world unfolding around us. This is because, the mindful Christian, stays mentally focused on the Truth that God is in control. Our minds stray, and get distracted, by the events going on around us. Peace does not come easily or naturally, but rather when we intentionally pursue a posture of keeping our mind stayed and settled on the Truth. The mindful Christian stays in the eye of the storm, where turmoil surrounds, but does not inhabit our inner confidence in God as our comfort and strong place of refuge.

Sanctified Souls
There has rarely been a time when we as believers have the opportunity to show an anxious world what it is like to experience peace in uncertain times. To be sanctified is to be set apart, to be different. In the herd mentality of contagious anxiety, part of the experience of “mass hysteria”, we as believers have the ability to stand apart.

15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,.. I Peter 3

When the world is in turmoil, we have the opportunity to show peace. It of course is counter-intuitive in a social phenomenon such as a pandemic. But it is the gift that comes from our daily and moment by moment mindful awareness of the river of trust that is offered to those who have placed their faith in God.

27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14

The Discipline of Staying

The idea of peace that comes from letting our minds be stayed on God does not come easy. The mindful Christian develops an intentional process of focusing away from the anxious state of world affairs, and towards a full awareness of who God is and what he has promised. Mindful Christians remember who God is and when they stray mentally they keep coming back to what they know.

8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. James 4

Drawing near is the discipline of the believer. We are like sheep that go astray, even in our mind focus. We must keep going back, learn to stay with the Truth, and God will honor this with the peace that passes human understanding (Phillipians 4:7)

A suggestion for a book that focuses on being a more mindful Christian is “Holy Noticing” by Charles Stone.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. I John 1:7

 
It would be hard to challenge the notion that sexual abuse issues appear to be on the rise in the Church of Jesus Christ. In fact, some churches have been labeled by wise leaders (Don Cousins, Discovery Church, Orlando Florida) to have a culture that is vulnerable to immorality. Churches today need to recognize that a spiritual war is going on that must be met by humility and prayer. Pastors, elders, church leaders, and volunteers have been guilty of inappropriate sexual behavior, resulting in a predatory climate, unsafe to women. There is no greater assault to the name and reputation of Jesus Christ and His Church than the headlines of sexual acting out in the church. When this happens, it is easy to see how those outside of Christ dismiss the church as hypocritical, and not any different than the secular world.

 
The Church, the Body of Christ, is supposed to be a community set apart from the ways of the world. The Church is to be a new community, reflecting the Kingdom of God, a family of loved and loving children of the Father. Interestingly, when sexual acting out happens in the context of the Church, the family of God, it is akin to incest- sex among family members. Just like in a real family, the violation of trust is powerful, because the assumption is that the spiritual maturity of believers should serve as a hedge against sexual acting out inside the family of God.

 
The Church, as an alternative family for many who have come out of the sexually abusive context of their own family of origins, should be the safe and trustworthy context in which abused people can feel secure and protected. But when the Church has sexual acting out going on within its family, it violates the foundational trust that abused persons are seeking as an alternative to their experience. If sexual acting out occurs, even within the context of the Church, where, really, can anyone go to truly feel safe? If pastors and church leaders, who are often seen as spiritual parental figures, can be predatory, where do God’s children, particularly women, go to feel safe?

 
The Church, reflective of Jesus, is to be the context in which women are elevated to a status of equal value with men. In my church, Willow Creek Community Church, two advocates of the egalitarian position on the role of women in the church, Bill Hybels and Gil Bilzekian, have themselves been accused of inappropriate sexual abuse of women. The core belief of the egalitarian position on women, you would think, should result in a high regard for women as other than sexual objects for exploitation by men. If men who claim to honor women and elevate their status, instead exploit them, how can women trust men in the church? Men in the Church should be safe to women, seen as co-heirs to the Kingdom. The problem, however, is that often men, who are formed in the context of a hyper-sexual secular society, simply bring their unhealthy needs and assumptions about women into the Church. They may be as likely as men outside the Church to approach their sexual needs in broken and predatory ways. So what is the problem, how has it been created, and what is the solution?

The Problem
As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17
Historically men were part of a Band of Brothers, not the isolated and lonely state of most men today. There was a hierarchy of male leaders, with elders at the highest place of respect, who governed the behaviors of the male members. In most cultures, boys were given the soft love of their mothers until they reached the time of what we now call early adolescence (13,14). At that point boys entered what has been called a “liminal” space, a time of training, a time called initiation, that starts with the “calling out” of boys to enter the beginning of manhood.
The best example of this in our day is a man that enters the Marines. He is initially a recruit, not yet a Marine, called into training. After the rigors of training, if he succeeds, he graduates and becomes a real Marine. In the Marines, he begins at the lowest level, based on his experience and training, and then over time graduates up the ranks.The training he receives helps him to internalize the values and behaviors of a Marine. He learns to discipline his own self-centered tendencies, respects a hierarchy of leadership, and slow but sure moves from being an individual to being a co-warrior.

 
With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the fabric of this male connectedness started to unravel. Rugged individualism was propagated as the new male ideal. Dependence on other men was shamed, leaving men isolated and emotionally lonely. The rules and containment of the group broke down, and men, who crave structure and belonging, began to live separately from one another. Rather than collaborating with fellow men to accomplish shared goals, men began to feel competitive, further alienating them from one another. When men are competitive with one another, they are wary of trusting other men.

 
Feelings, the foundation of social connectedness, were frowned upon and even laughed about. In earlier cultures of male brotherhood, sexual behaviors that broke the rules were contained and even punished. The community could not afford to allow rogue men to pursue sexual gratification for their own selfish purposes. Women needed to feel safe, and it was one of the functions of the male brotherhood to provide and protect the culture, so women could feel secure. Men who were in connected communities knew each other, were accountable to each other, and could rely on each other to stay disciplined. The acting out behavior of any man would be quickly recognized and responded to in swift and strong ways. Women could trust this process, because all of the men shared the same cultural set of values and behaviors.

How Has The Church Perpetuated The Problem?

 
The Church should be the path back to the way that things were for men. The Church should have constructed rituals of initiation, structures of hierarchy, values of collaboration, and connections for lonely isolated men. But, in many ways, the Church has not been strong in going back to the way that I believe God intended for men to have community. The average guy who goes to church does not feel connected in any meaningful way. The church has not really addressed the break down of male community and its devastating effects. The accountability structures that were natural and normal in healthy male communities do not exist in the modern day church. Men, who struggle with emotional isolation and fear, do not feel a sense of safety to move towards other brothers in Christ. Instead, they suffer in silence, often using tried and true addictive behaviors to cope with their feelings. All too often these are sexual in nature. The catastrophic rise of online sexual sites has become a simple solution for a man to go from sad and lonely, to a sudden surge of sexual intensity. Sadly, the aftermath of this behavior is a growing sense of further isolation and shame. And so the cycle continues.

No Real Accountability

 
A leader at Willow Creek Community Church (WCCC) shared with me that he had gone to the senior leader of the church and proposed that the church develop accountability structures for the men of the church to stay on top of potential sexual acting out behaviors. He was met with a response that basically said no, we do not need that, and then implied that maybe the leader that proposed this had a problem.

 
WCCC is a church that, in my opinion, is structurally set up for vulnerability to adulterous acting out. Its leader lived a non-accountable life. I have not found one person who said that they had a sense of knowing the insides of the senior leader. The senior leader was isolated, hyper-competitive, unwilling to be governed, showed little empathy, and did not share his struggles or emotional pain. By his behavior he set the template for the average male leader at WCCC. The average male leader at WCCC had to look good, stay in shape, use Willow speak, and endorse the vision and values of Bill Hybels. They often lived in fear of failure, and had no real place to go to get comfort or reassurance for their feelings, and felt a fear of being looked at as weak if they admitted to emotional struggles or even anger at their spouses or fellow employees. This is a culture where all forms of sexual adultery can be a rife alternative to healthy coping.
In healthy cultures it is normative to share struggles and get help. In toxic cultures of competition and fear, it is viewed as weak and dependent to seek help.

Cultures like WCCC, with high perfectionistic demands and lots of emotional isolation, can easily become the “cultures of immorality”, where the evil one proposes sexual sins as the solution to the painful pressure and isolation of many men.

Catch 22

 
In some ways, the modern church culture has created a “Catch 22” for church leaders, particularly pastors of smaller churches. We pay them to be icons of spiritual health, place them on idealized pedestals, and place a perfectionistic demand on them to be holy and righteous. Pastors pick up the signal that they could be punished somehow for admitting their weaknesses and emotional struggles. They may feel anger towards their parishioners or their spouses, but do not believe that it would be acceptable if they shared these struggles. Since churches do not give pastors healthy options for dealing with their intense feelings, why are we so surprised that they often resort to unhealthy, sinful solutions?

Pornography viewing is on the rise among pastors. Acting out sexually is growing. Why? Because we place so much pressure on spiritual leaders to be so perfect, that they cannot bear that kind of burden. They are set up to fail. If we do not normalize structural ways to allow pastors to be simply members of the community of men and women, we are creating conditions for sexual failure. We have created an elitist view of leadership, that becomes a barrier for leaders to simply be one of us, broken and in need of community.

 
My son, pay attention to my wisdom,
and listen closely to my insight,
² so you may carefully practice discretion and your lips preserve knowledge.
³ For the lips of an adulteress drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil.
⁴ But in the end she is as bitter as wormwood, and as sharp as a double-edged sword. Proverbs 5

What Is The Solution?

 
⁷ For the overseer must be above reproach as God’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, ⁸ but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, ⁹ holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict. Titus 1

When a church is vetting a male leader for employment, the first question that should be asked is “How have you been intensively involved in a male community that is honest and transparent about feelings and sexual impulses?”.

Ask these questions: 1. Who do you share with related to anger feelings regarding your wife or children or fellow employees? 2. How is your sex life and are you struggling with fantasies of sexual gratification? 3. Is there a women in your life that you have become enamored with. either sexually or emotionally? 4. With whom, besides your partner, do you share your feelings? 5. What impulses do you experience and who do you share these with to hold you accountable? 6. How aware are you of tendencies to be prideful or to be critical of others, and who do you share this with? Etc.
If the candidate is offended by these questions, cross him off the list.

No leader is too great or important to not have down to earth accountability. Any church that does not demand this is culpable in the potential acting out behavior of its leaders. There is no reasonable justification, in the current climate of sexual acting out, for any leader to not be intimately connected to a community of men who will ask tough questions and hold leaders accountable. The safety needs of women in the Church are dependent upon this strong position. Mega-churches, like WCCC, may tend to attract somewhat narcissistic leaders, who, by virtue of their successes elsewhere, may be offended by a demand for their accountability. Too Bad! The painful consequences of the WCCC narcissistic leaders, who were unaccountable, should support the absolutely essential requirement of a leader’s willingness to enter the crucible of personal vulnerability!

Diminished Value Of Men’s Ministries In The Church

 
In most churches women’s ministries are far more active and vibrant than men’s ministries. WCCC abolished formal paid staff for men’s ministries years ago. It is my belief that the senior pastor did not value a strong men’s ministry because, at some level, strong, aware, mature Christian men could potentially confront his unhealthy isolation. I was annoyed that Bill Hybels would not just be another guy at a men’s ministry event. He allowed the hierarchical and elitist mentality to exist whereby he did not see himself as an equal to other men. That elitist mentality, driven by competitive and hierarchical values, is the absolute opposite of the collaborative and horizontal ideas of a body of men. Any church that allows a pastor to not have deep and accountable relations with other men is going down a path to potential destruction.

The real solution to the sexual acting out behaviors in the church is a return to the initiation and containment structures of the past. The culture of male isolation and hidden sin has resulted in a true spiritual and emotional emasculation of healthy male strength. We must understand the fact that the Evil One, the great divider, is thrilled with the current state of men who are weakened by living in isolation. When men do not understand healthy strength, the kind that is used for Godly good, they default to the counterfeit forms of strength, such as sexual aggression, which can lead to toxic masculinity. Men need a path to transition to manhood in a healthy way. Our culture and churches allow secular structures to initiate boys. These are primarily the media, internet, sports, gangs, fraternities, video games, or the military. The Church must provide healthy alternatives.

 
The exposure of sexual sin at WCCC and other churches simply reveals the symptoms of a toxic culture for men. How many women must be assaulted and damaged by the unwanted intrusion of male sexual aggression before the church wakes up to its complicity in supporting a model of male isolation. The church has vacated its role as the primary socializers of boys becoming men that existed for many years in the past. Men’s ministries should be one of the most essential ministries in the church. Most women, if asked, are thrilled when men create community that helps them to stay accountable to Godly ways of living. They know that healthy men, who are initiated by wise Godly men, are going to have a deep respect for women and are going to be sexually safe in the community of men and women that is the Church. And mothers, who pass off their sons to a community of wise Godly men, feel confident that the wisdom of God will be the foundation of how their boys/men will grow to maturity.

Years ago I, along with some other leaders at WCCC, developed a ministry called “Passage To Manhood”, which created the kind of ritual structures that allowed for a formal process of helping boys move across the threshold from boyhood to manhood. It was a low incidence program at WCCC, and so was not supported. This needs to be pursued again in the church so that the church becomes a haven of safety for women, rather than a place of vulnerability.

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Romans 1 

Hiding And Vulnerability To Immorality

Although the above passage is usually thought of in the context of unbelievers, it can also apply to believers, who move away from the Wisdom and Truth of Scripture. When a church suppresses the Truth, verse 18, they open themselves to all forms of immorality. Truth is like light, it seeks to be revealed. All attempts to suppress it will fail and the efforts used to keep it secret will be exposed in time. 

Sin festers in the darkness, in the hidden things of this world. Organizations like Willow Creek Community Church (WCCC) have created a culture of hiding. This church is one of the most secretive organizations with which I have personally been associated.  Even today, after two years of the traumatic revelation of sinful sexual behaviors, that were suppressed until the church was forced to acknowledge them, the church culture is still one of hiding. You would think that after years of hidden immoral behavior on the part of the senior pastor and others, the church would go overboard in the opposite direction, revealing things to the congregation in real time. But no. Even as recently as a few months ago, at least three immoral sexual behaviors on the part of former staff members and the visionary co-founder of the church, have been revealed. One of these was forced by the coming forward of a victim, the others have not been publicly acknowledged by the leadership of the church. 

A former senior staff member of WCCC, in assessing the situation at the church, came up with the concept that a “culture of immorality” may exist that has not been addressed and changed. From his perspective, this is a spiritual battle, in that the church may be captive to the deceiving spirit of the Evil one. After all, scripture clearly states that Satan is the father of lies and operates in the currency of deceit and truth suppression. He is in fact a thief and a liar. So only his influence could guide an organization into suppressing the truth. God  wants authenticity and transparency, so His grace can abound. Satan’s goal is division and secrecy, because he in fact knows that this is the fertile soil where sin breeds best. So when the siren sound that beckons to protect flaws and sins by deception and suppression is listened to, hiding becomes the fabric of life. Any organization that shows such a high focus on external image and suppression of truth is not following the guidelines of scripture. Satan’s great lie is that of promoting looking good, but not being good. At an organizational level, this in fact is what WCCC’s culture has created. It is in this kind of vulnerable culture, of secrecy and darkness, that immorality flourishes. 

Truth Suppression Strategies (TSS)

WCCC has for years operated on the assumption that a few elite leaders and managers are the ones that control the flow of information to the rest of the congregation. And, as has been developed elsewhere, the church operates on a high degree of control of information that threatens the perfectionistic image of the church. Any problems that risk breaking through to the congregants or the outside public’s awareness of sin or flaws must be met with  Truth Suppression Strategies (TSS). TSS are implemented when there is a red alert to the possibility of negative information getting out to the public. It reminds me of the storm troopers of Star Wars that come to attack whatever is a threat to the rule of the dark forces. 

As a 30 year attender at WCCC, I have witnessed the church going from looking so outwardly good, to slowly but surely peeling back the veneer to reveal years of TSS that operated in the deep state of the organization. What is incredible is the fact that for so long WCCC was able to prevent the revelation of multiple sinful problems due to  well orchestrated TSS. The most prominent forms of the TSS range from the heavy handed power consolidation at the top of WCCC, whereby the ruler, Bill Hybels, had such control over the elders and leadership structure that he, by force of personality, could prevent anything negative about the church or himself, from seeping out. Bill Hybels is the architect of the TSS at WCCC. As has been identified in earlier blogs, it is the dualistic pathology of his inner life that laid down the blueprint for the organizational suppression of truth. He has such an intense need to look good that he built a church structure around this model of perfection. Anything that threatened this outward facade had to be met with the TSS storm troopers. 

TSS are a collection of approaches with the same objective- to get around potential negative information and either prevent them from seeing the light of day, or destroy the sources of potential bad press. Kill the messengers and victims. Kill their reputations, kill their legitimacy, and never allow the potential image destroying reality of their message to surface! These approaches are pretty standard ways of controlling the narrative of a person or organization. See the NBC, Fox News, and Harvey Weinstein, stories. 

As I have analyzed the TSS that WCCC has used in responding to the revelation of sinful immorality on the part of Bill Hybels and other leaders, specific approaches have been uncovered. One of the primary TSS has been that of discrediting the very realities of the experience of victims. Elders supported the attacks on victims by colluding with the perpetrator to call the women liars and  colluders. Although the elders later gave a tepid apology, they never entered into accepting the level of pain they had inflicted on these women victims or one of the elders, Betty Schmidt. That approach worked initially. The elders themselves lied when they presented a rationalization that they had gotten in front of information about Bill Hybels’s sexual immorality by hiring a bogus attorney connected to the church and biased in favor of finding Bill innocent. A weak foundation was then laid to justify saying they had done their due diligence, and could confidently support Bill Hybels’s innocence. They used TSS by not going outside the church to find a truly objective and unbiased investigator of Bill’s behavior. But this Truth Suppression Strategy is so clever! Find a biased investigator who concludes in favor of the perpetrator, so elders can get behind the conclusions of this prejudiced person, and seek to steer, like a red herring, the focus of the congregation away from the truth. See everyone, the Emperor does have clothes! 

Another TSS is to gaslight the victims. In short, gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse “in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.” Essentially, gaslighting is a tactic used to destabilize your understanding of reality, making you constantly doubt your own experiences.

Most of the time, this tactic is used to further uneven power balances with abusive partners, making you second guess yourself when you feel as if you are being abused or attacked. (from everyday feminism).

There have been multiple stories of victims being labeled as psychologically unstable or even ill (ie. Pat Baranowski), thereby discrediting their realities about how they were abused. Another gaslighting technique used was to reverse the culpability from the perpetrator to the victim, by suggesting that the victim was angry at the rejection of the perpetrator and so decided to accuse him or her. Incredibly, at WCCC, a church that supposedly has an egalitarian view of women, female elders entered into this process. The goal of this TSS is to annihilate the credibility of the victim by attacking their legitimacy. This form of the TSS is particularly cruel, since it has no regard for the traumatic damage inflicted on the victims who are not believed. It’s’ only objective is to PROTECT PROTECT PROTECT the church! Protect its founder. 

A clear motivation for the level of protection of the senior leader is the concept of the Key Man. Bill Hybels, at WCCC, was  the Key Man in the insurance structure of the church. When a church is covered for liability or other forms of insurability, a Key Man is identified who is so important that they must be treated in a different way. That is why, I believe, that Bill Hybels was restricted from high risk activities such as piloting his own plane.  The assumption in a mega-church of WCCC’s size is that if the Key Man goes down, the financial implications are huge. Therefore, at all costs, the Key Man must be protected against culpability. The attendants to the Emperor must create a veil of impenetrability around the Key Man. As a result any threat to the image and power of the Key Man must be eliminated at all costs! Anyone that threatens the power or prestige of the Key Man must be neutralized in some way.

As an aside, although the policy of the Key Man concept is to limit risk, the reality is that Bill Hybels engaged in the high risk behavior of sexual behaviors toward women in the church and elsewhere.  This can only be explained by the fact that individuals like him, who believe in their own celebrity, become so entitled that they believe they can control risky situations. He made a calculated decision that he could control and suppress the truth getting out. In this sense, he not only put himself at risk but the whole church as well. I have always said that entitled people hold within themselves the seeds of their own self destruction. They combine being risk prone with entitlement. At some point, they make decisions that they cannot completely control and so get exposed.

Can any real Christian imagine that Jesus would endorse the Key Man concept of the current mega-church model? The very concept bakes in a motivation to protect the financial value that the key man represents. It therefore adds an incentive to suppressing information that could damage his ability to keep the church functioning at the financial level that it has attained. Would Jesus endorse the concept that any man or woman is so financially important that we should give him or her a pass on morality? The ends do not justify the means. I attended a service at Discovery Church in Orlando last Sunday and was refreshed by hearing its pastor, Don Cousins, former pastor at WCCC, say emphatically that there are no celebrities in the church except Jesus. He is the only Key Man!

Then there is the concept of the “key men or women” to the Key Man. Enter the Elder Response Team (ERT). The task of the ERT in the structure of TSS is to get around negative information and do whatever is necessary to eradicate its potential damage to the Key Man and therefore the church. Discrediting the stories of victims continues in this process. As I have blogged elsewhere, the ERT created a “Star Chamber”  court that stacked the power imbalance clearly in favor of the ERT over any potentially harmed individual. Multiple stories of intimidation exist about how the ERT used TSS to catch and minimize the damage to the church’s reputation. The head of the ERT, who was a clone of Bill Hybels, was the “key man” for the Key Man. He helped clean the messes. Things from destroying evidence (ie. shredding evidence of a relationship shared by victim Ann Lindberg), to powering up on vulnerable individuals in intimidating ways was the MO of the ERT. 

Current TSS

The question at this time in the history of WCCC is have the TSS been eliminated? The reason that immorality flourishes in organizations that hide and suppress the revelation of sin is that at some level, individuals who sin in the organization will not be exposed. So the underlying message is that one can sin, or act out sexually, and  they will either get by with it, because of their power, or if found out, will not be exposed publicly.  WCCC should publicly call out Bill Hybels for his sin and call him to repentance. Why? As a signal to others that sin will be exposed. But because the culture of WCCC was formed and is still sustained around the TSS of the past, there is still a commitment to protecting the truth in ways that the leadership believes will not do damage to the image. The current elders, in many ways, are no different from previous elders and leaders. They do not share the truth in real time. There have been affairs among high profile leadership staff, some as recent as a few months ago, that have not been exposed to the people of the church. WCCC is like a dysfunctional family that looks good on the outside but works hard to suppress damaging truth. 

Transparency Supports Healthy Moral Choices

Going back to my opening thoughts about immorality, I believe that even the current culture of limited sharing of truth keeps WCCC vulnerable to continued immorality. When secrecy is endorsed at an institutional level, as it is at WCCC, then, by implication, the message to individuals is that secrecy is acceptable. But every sinful behavior is sustained by secrecy. Every affair that occurs is done in secrecy. Every sexual acting out behavior that exists in an organization is supported by threats to victims to maintain secrecy. Secrecy is the petri dish in which the cancer of sin is free to metastasize. The current elders have just replaced the former elders by being the gatekeepers of truth. They have resisted, by mainly passive aggressive efforts to look like they are addressing the secrecy issues, becoming a transparent organization. And because of this they are culpable in sustaining a culture that is vulnerable to ongoing immorality. All the behind the scenes decisions they are currently making, without sharing openly with the congregation, are simply a continuation of the elitist view of leadership, that a select number of people can know or suppress the truth. Elder updates are so bland and so insufficient as a source of real information, that they are offensive. 

Luke 8:17 For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. 

“Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, because they are hypocrites. Everything that is hidden will be shown, and everything that is secret will be made known.” Luke 12:2

The fable of the Dutch boy (no irony intended- on second thought, irony intended!) who had to work frantically to plug with his fingers the leaks of a dyke on the verge of collapse, seems relevant to Willow Creek Community Church (WCCC) at this time. The truth is leaking out in spite of systemic efforts to keep it contained. It is like new wine in old wine skins, bursting out of the container as it seeks the freedom of truth.  It is inevitable, as the above verse describes. There is no holding it back. Truth is like water that will persistently search for a way of escape.  

So why do foolish men and women instead try to hide it? They fear that the dam will break, the foundation will collapse, and what was a shiny, though infected, church, will be no more. And maybe it should, if those who lead it are unwilling to do a course correction and focus the church on a path of honesty. You cannot build your house on sand. You cannot ignore the infrastructure of hiding while you seek to hold forth a public image that is like a white-washed tomb. 

Rocked Again

The Willow Creek Community Church world was rocked again by new revelations of sexual abuse allegations against Dr. Gilbert Bilzekian, the inspirational founder of the church and mentor to Bill Hybels. These abuse allegations were brought to the leadership of the church 10 years ago, and the repression/suppression machinery went into overdrive, going so far as destroying the evidence that it had been presented with by Ann Lindberg, the victim of this abuse. The Elder Response Team, who dealt with the allegations, acted like they were going to do something to limit Dr. Bilzekian’s ability to teach or lead, but he continued to be used in various ministries. Real evidence of Dr. Bilzekians’s inappropriate relationship with Ann was destroyed by Scott Vaudrey, the head of the ERT. In a criminal court this would be equivalent to tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice. But the lame excuse used was that this was SOP at Willow. 

Ann Lindberg experienced a number of tactics, consistent with other victims at WCCC,  whereby she was treated poorly, excluded from ministry opportunities, as well as being  essentially labeled as a racist by a staff member because she proposed a response to a hypothetical question about prejudice that the staff member decided was an indication of racist tendencies. She was told that until she could free herself of her racism she would not qualify for ministry opportunities. This staff member was a rabid disciple of Bill Hybels’s focus on racism, and apparently could see racism in others.These and other tactics were used to abuse Ann at WCCC. She went from loving the church and growing as a believer, to living in fear and hyper-vigilance, as all sense of safety evaporated for her. She continued to come as she loved the church and wanted to continue with involvement. She believed that she was being monitored when she was at the church. All of this added a sense of traumatic anxiety to her experience at WCCC. 

Only Admit Sins When You Are Being Forced To Do So

This week’s revelation is a continuation of the pattern and practice of the church to keep secrets about any past sinful behaviors of leaders in the church. The image driven leadership of WCCC has been forced to deal with sin because people who have been abused, and should have been able to trust the leadership of the church to do something about their trauma, instead were forced to use outside media to make the church acknowledge what it was hiding. WCCC has been a cesspool of secrecy, going back to the early years of the church.

The church has hidden multiple staff problems, from sexual indiscretions to theft of church money, all because of a culture of wanting to look good at the expense of the church’s corporate integrity. The church has created a culture of adultery, whereby the very dynamics of the church’s fear driven emphasis on perfection leads to the frequent acting out behaviors of its leadership and staff. I will blog more on this “culture of adultery” concept in another blog.

No Confidence Vote

If WCCC had a parliamentary government structure, we could call for a no confidence vote as it relates to the Elders and the leadership. The leadership has always been secretive, following some undisclosed strategy to guide the church, but not letting anyone know what is guiding their decisions. I talked to the Elders back in November of 2019 and they were going to get back to me with a clear Biblical rationale for how they are handling the failure to call out the sin of Bill Hybels and not treating the victimization of multiple women with a deep sense of brokenness and confession. I am still waiting their reply.  They have been spending money on investigative reports, and a senior search organization, as well as expert consultants. They have not been able to identify a senior pastor, essentially going back to the drawing board now looking at 6 new candidates. 

Many people have lost trust in the Elders ability to lead. There literally is no oversight body to investigate what the Elders are doing and why. WCCC has gone from the autocratic leadership style of Bill Hybels to a group of Elders who have been tasked with leading the church out of the swamp of sin. How does anyone know if they have the expertise to lead at this point? There is no one to look at what they are doing and why.  It is back to the mantra of the past. “Just trust us!” I do not know about others, but I do not trust a blind driver to not drive me over the cliff.

 Why do they not, in intimate detail, share their strategies and methods of leading? As has been stated elsewhere, they are cut out of the same cultural cloth that has existed at WCCC for years, where the congregants are supposed to assume that the leadership knows what they are doing. Is is time for the people to stand up and demand accountability from the Elders? I believe so. They are stewarding the tithes and offerings of attenders. I and others have offered to come alongside the leadership as consultants but have been ignored. Many who have asked for feedback from the Elders have been ignored. WCCC looks like a ship that has lost its rudder. Steve Gillen is leaving. The two final candidates, after a long period of vetting, are not acceptable and the Elders will not tell why. It would be informative of what the Elders are looking for if they would share what made the final candidates unacceptable. But the leadership has the arrogant belief that the commoners, the attenders of WCCC, cannot handle the truth. Someone has to step up and provide oversight of what these Elders are doing and why. 

Confess Your Sins So You Can Be Healed (James 5:16)

The clear admonition to confess, repent, and seek the healing of forgiveness has been stubbornly ignored by WCCC leadership. There is a rationale for why confession is essential before healing can occur. The very fact that one confesses shows that they have turned from a pattern of hiding and denying sin to admitting to it and seeking forgiveness. Sin is like moss. It multiplies in the dark cold places of our heart. Confession indicates that we are committed to living in the light of full exposure, so that the shame of hidden sin cannot have its power over our lives and the life of our church. To confess, we need to fully embrace grace, knowing that when we are honest before God he will cover us with His grace and forgiveness. God calls for a broken and contrite heart, in order for full healing to start. WCCC style of letting truth come out in drips and drabs, and only when forced to, is never going to allow full healing.  

Trust The Truth

WCCC’s strategy is not working. Failing to have a deep corporate cleaning of a culture of secrecy and protection of image is resulting in a continual decline of the church. It is like the saying “Nero fiddled while Rome burned”. Only it seems like at WCCC it is more like the Elders continue to gather information and strategise in secret while Willow erodes. What about a “novel” radical strategy like commitment to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Trust the truth, because unlike the dark secret cellar of suppression that WCCC finds itself in right now, the truth sets us free. 

“So every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produces good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Matthew 7:17-19

The concept of the “Fruit of The Poisonous Tree” , which the above verse refers to, began as a legal principle that stipulated that any evidence that came from a compromised source could not have legal validity, and so could not be used against a defendant. The idea has expanded to include the notion that anything that is produced from an unhealthy environment will be tainted. Unhealthy environments are the cultural context from which sickly things are produced. Culture can be healthy or corrupt, and the fruits of this context will follow suit. The tree, in this verse, represents the culture.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” A quip attributed to Peter Drucker.

As I look at months of my (and others) blogging about the dysfunction of my church, Willow Creek Community Church, and its founding pastor Bill Hybels, the question that comes to mind is “has it made much difference?”. Truthfully, my conclusion is that it has not had a substantial impact on anything going forward in terms of real organizational reform. The same hiding of truth exists even now post-Hybels-crisis. The same elitist mentality of leadership seems unaltered. The same failure to let people know what is going on financially at the church is intact. The same image management strategy remains the intact modus operandi of the church. The same failure to admit sin and compensate victims of its nefarious ways continues unabated. 

Why does this seem to be the case? As I write this, I know the answer. I knew it all along, but hoped against hope that it was not true. But it is. And what is it? Culture. Culture is the answer to why there has been no substantial change. Culture operates like a boa-constrictor to squeeze out and kill anything that opposes its need to dominate whatever organization that it controls.

Boy to his talking goldfish: “How do you like the water you’re swimming in?”

Goldfish: “What is water?”

This is the crux of what it is to understand culture. It is something that we swim in, surround ourselves with, operate and direct our behaviors from. If you asked the average person to describe the culture he/she lives in, he/she would not be able to articulate what a culture is, what it is composed of, and how it influences one’s life. It is in fact like a fish in water. It is the unconscious and invisible, while at the same time powerful medium, in which we move and live and have our being. Cultures can be understood at a micro, all the way up to a macro level. Marriage and families are the clearest microlevel of culture, while being a member of the global earth community would be the highest macro culture. There are many cultures in between and we are all nested in multiple cultures.

What Creates A Culture?

Cultures are the glue that holds any kind of organizational system together. Chaotic cultures do not last long. Cultures must have a predictable process based on a number of underlying structure-creating elements. Every culture contains at least the following components:

            Public Mission/Vision-  The mission of any organizational culture defines the goals and objectives of that entity. These are large general descriptors of the organization, such as what we will create and what we will look like. Using a family culture as an example, the overt mission of the family might be “we will look like a perfectly put together family to the world”.

             Shadow Mission/Vision- This is often the non-articulated driving force behind an organization that operates at a deep and unconscious level. It can live in opposition to the public mission of an organization. This is where a competing set of needs are in conflict with the stated public mission/vision. In the family example, the shadow mission might be the “we will not let anyone on the outside see the out of control, raging tyrant father who dominates his household”. This is where the public mission is that as a family we will look good, but the deeper shadow mission of not revealing the brokenness on the inside is what informs the culture with its shadow mission supporting values and strategies. 

              Values-This defines what the organization will value and promote. These are sub-components of the larger mission/vision. In a family, for instance, one of the underlying values supported may be the “we value privacy”.

                Strategies- These are the active elements of a culture and define the behaviors and problem solving processes that are active in implementing the larger mission/vision of the organization. These are often culture protecting and perpetuating actions that do not let the organization deviate from the deep mission values.  Rules provide the sub-structure that inform strategies. Rules, mostly unwritten, in the above shared family example, could be codified as “in this family we do not share private information.” The family exercises a powerful influence and will punish any deviance from the cultural mission, values, rules, or strategies of the family. Anyone in the family that shares family secrets will be systematically shamed and punished for breaking the rules and potentially exposing the shadow core of the family. 

Healthy Vs. Unhealthy Cultures

Willow Creek Community Church (WCCC) reflects the dualistic split of an organization that promotes a public mission, while it  has been dominated by a shadow mission agenda for a long time. This is because the architect of the culture is driven by a shadow mission of brokenness that unfolded the church culture around his results oriented focus on numbers, programs, looking good, building income and buildings. Its public mission may be about inclusive involvement of all members of the body of Christ, while its shadow mission culture values top-aligned concentration of power and the exclusion of any true ownership by the common laity. 

Although I could go into a detailed analysis of the culture of WCCC, one specific area that is clear to me,and has resulted in the frustration of any attempt at change, is the strategy of hiding truth. Many people have appealed to the elders and leaders to reveal a long history of treating anyone that threatened the exterior image of WCCC with expulsion and shame based rejection. Although it is clear in scripture (I Timothy 5:20) that there is a redemptive value in publicly exposing sin, and particularly the sin of those who have a greater influence in the church (pastors/elders), the culture of repression has trumped every effort. In a culture of truth and transparency, sin gets exposed, not to shame individuals, but to purify the church of all the hidden works of evil.

A Jesus-based culture would have a profoundly different true mission, with Biblically validated values and strategies that are loving, redemptive, and restorative. A Biblical culture lives in the light of Truth and exposes the works of darkness. The culture of WCCC has been more about staying in the darkness and protecting the image. Calling those who have been so immersed in the culture of WCCC to see the unhealthiness of the “tree” seems to elicit the response “what tree?”. Culture is so powerful and self-sustaining. 

The Self-perpetuating Nature of Culture

The disappointment that I have felt with WCCC’s response to the revelation of sin by Bill Hybels and the wounding of multiple people in the service of maintaining a culture of image management, has slowly evolved into  reality. WCCC is not going to alter its way of presenting itself to the world because the core change agents are disciples of the culture, and therefor do not appear to be concerned about the years of behind the scenes purging through repression and expulsion of any threat to the image of the church.  Here is how the culture of WCCC has perpetuated and stubbornly resisted any effort to change its fundamental core strategies. 

If WCCC comprehended that the problems at the church are not just a “one off” crisis of one man’s pattern of sexual predation, but in fact are a reflection of a broken culture, they would have focused on this first. Because they do not comprehend the powerful way that culture shapes behavior, WCCC has gone about things in the reverse of what would be appropriate. The people that remain at WCCC have been groomed to accept the culture as the normal way that the church should operate.

If the leadership had recognized that Bill Hybels behavior was the rotten fruit of a sick tree, they would have focused first on the culture. They would have done a deep dive into how the culture of WCCC exists as a significant departure from the culture of Jesus. They would have focused first on cultural transformation, so that the tree gets healed and can start to produce good fruit. The elders would then be selected out of this new healthy culture, and finally the search for a senior pastor would be guided by finding someone who is in synch with this new, Jesus-centered culture. 

Instead, this was the progression. First, after the exposure of Hybels behavior, the executive pastor, who was groomed, and like the fish metaphor, probably thought that the culture she swam in was healthy, put an interim head pastor in place. That person, who as well had been swimming in the murky waters of the WCCC culture, then served essentially as a game manager, to preserve the essential elements of the culture. He worked to minimize the losses of the core shadow mission culture of WCCC. Then, a long time disciple of the Hybels-generated culture, was instrumental in selecting a selection committee who were themselves fish that had been swimming in the polluted culture of WCCC. These people then were key to selecting elders who had also been swimming in the culture for years. It is like an inbred system.

To be fair, all of these individuals probably believed that they were doing the right thing. They just did not comprehend that the rules and the strategies of a broken culture were the abnormal “normal”. No one  recognized the need to stand outside the systemic culture to critique it, so naturally, the actions of the leaders were confirmatory of the mission and values of the culture. Of course, the elders are not going to call out Bill Hybels in any meaningful way. They endorse, in the marrow of their souls, the vision, values, strategies, and rules of the culture that he created. And they may have signed a non-disparagement agreement as part of his retirement package. This would be a strategy consistent with the value of hiding truth. I could be wrong, but how do you find out the truth in a culture that hides the truth so tenaciously?

Voices Crying In The Wilderness

It may be that WCCC will not fundamentally turn from its ways. The elders and leaders may not have ears to hear. The take away for the rest of the church world is that of seeing what has happened as a cautionary tale. Return to Jesus. There can be no other foundation to build the church upon than Christ. The culture of the church must be reflective of the vision and values and behaviors of Jesus. Grow a healthy tree first, and the fruit will naturally flow out in righteousness and love. A big and shiny megachurch may be impressive to the outside world, but as Jesus said, if it is a big white-washed tomb, it cannot survive because it is not Christ’s church.