Several days ago, a friend sent me a link to a story concerning Pastor Bill Hybels from Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.
Right now, it may be the biggest story in the Christian community.
For many years, Willow Creek was the largest church in the United States, and is now sixth-largest.
If you haven’t yet read the story, here’s a link to the Christianity Today website:
The story also hit the pages of the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-willow-creek-pastor-20171220-story.html
In a nutshell, the story states that Hybels – one of the most influential Christian leaders of his generation – has been accused by several women of “a pattern of sexual harassment and misconduct.”
To my knowledge, no one claims today that Hybels engaged in sexual intercourse with them. Several years ago, one woman confided in a top Willow Creek leader that Hybels had a “prolonged consensual affair” with her lasting more than a decade, but she has since written a full retraction, confessing that she “wanted to tear [Bill] and Willow down and get it out of my system.”
But several other women have accused Hybels of “suggestive comments, extended hugs, an unwanted kiss, and invitations to hotel rooms.”
Charges first surfaced in April 2014, and Hybels has undergone two separate investigations since that time: an initial investigation by the elders of his church, and a second investigation by Jeffrey Fowler, an outside, independent investigator.
Hybels is due to retire in six months, and has already named a successor as lead pastor and another person as teaching pastor.
I have read everything I could about this story, including the Christianity Today story above, the Chicago Tribune story, and the written and video statements from Pam Orr, the elder chair at Willow, and Hybels himself. You can find them here:
https://www.willowcreek.org/en/willow-creek-response-to-local-media
I’ve also read comments from the above stories, as well as many comments on Facebook and Twitter.
For many years, I was an advocate of Willow Creek’s approach to church ministry:
*I attended four conferences at the church between 1990 and 2006.
*I pastored a seeker-driven church in Silicon Valley for many years. During my tenure there, our church sent twenty-two leaders to Willow Creek for training.
*My last three churches were all members of the Willow Creek Association.
*Although I met Bill Hybels once, he would not remember me.
However … I’ve never been enamored with everything Willow does, and have sometimes found myself perplexed or even upset about some of their policies.
But Willow Creek has always been known for its authenticity and transparency, and it’s the single trait I most admire about the church.
I believe that both Hybels and Willow’s elders have handled this situation in as transparent a fashion as possible. In both investigations, Hybels was asked to turn over his personal technology devices (which were forensically examined), his emails (many of which were automatically deleted from Willow’s server), personal financial records, personal church records, his calendar, and travel records.
How many pastors could survive such scrutiny?
Some pastors would have resigned before any investigation started so their life wouldn’t be exposed. Still other pastors might have confessed their wrongdoing before an investigation demonstrated their guilt.
But Hybels endured two thorough investigations, and according to Willow’s elders, did not lead or influence either one.
And let me say … as someone who was once investigated for several days … each day feels like a month.
Jeffrey Fowler, the outside investigator, told the Chicago Tribune: “After looking at thousands of documents, after interviewing 29 people, and doing as much as I possibly could, I concluded that there was no basis for believing that Pastor Hybels had engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct, and to the extent any specific incident had been raised with me, I concluded that his actions in those instances were not inappropriate.”
But this has not satisfied some of Willow’s former staff members.
The names that keep being mentioned are John and Nancy Ortberg and Jim and Leanne Mellado. Assuming they are the two couples mentioned in the discussions about Hybels, I’ll just call them The Group.
But John Ortberg is the most prominent leader of the “opposition.”
John Ortberg was a teaching pastor at Willow for many years. He is presently the lead pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve heard Ortberg speak at a church he pastored in Diamond Bar, California nearly thirty years ago and again at Willow in 1994. I also had lunch with Ortberg’s predecessor fifteen years ago, so I have some familiarity with his ministry.
When the woman mentioned above claimed that she had an affair with Hybels, the Willow Creek Association Board voted not to conduct an investigation. Nancy Ortberg and several other Christian leaders resigned from the board in protest … which was their right.
But once they resigned … in my view … they forfeited their right to have any further input into the Hybels situation.
The Ortbergs were no longer Willow employees nor church members. They may have kept some personal ties, but they officially severed ties with the church. And as a founding staff member from Willow once taught me, “The way you leave is the way you’ll be remembered.”
When the elders decided to investigate Hybels internally, The Group evidently relinquished control of the situation.
But then Hybels was exonerated, not once, but twice.
But The Group did not agree with the process used … and presumably not the conclusions reached.
In fact, according to Bill Hybels:
“Unfortunately, it has become clear that when the woman retracted her story, the group of former staff members who brought the original allegation then began to reach out to women who are or who have been a part of Willow, asking if any of them have ever had an uncomfortable interaction with me. Without mentioning the woman’s full retraction, they told women that I had an inappropriate relationship that Willow’s Elders had covered up, and they invited the women to share any negative experiences of their own.”
They have now escalated their attacks against Willow’s elders and Hybels himself, to the point that Hybels is convinced they are colluding to destroy his reputation. Hybels told the Chicago Tribune:
“This has been a calculated and continual attack on our elders and on me for four long years. It’s time that gets identified. I want to speak to all the people around the country that have been misled … for the past four years and tell them in my voice, in as strong a voice as you’ll allow me to tell it, that the charges against me are false. There still to this day is not evidence of misconduct on my part.”
Hybels then told his congregation: “The lies you read about in the Tribune article are the tools this group is using to try to keep me from ending my tenure here at Willow with my reputation intact. Many of these alleged incidents purportedly took place more than [20] years ago. The fact that they have been dredged up now and assembled in a calculated way demonstrates the determination of this group to do as much damage as they possibly can.”
I’m trying to get my head around why a leader like John Ortberg … who was Hybels’ ministry colleague and friend … would do something like this.
The following questions are based purely on speculation:
*Did he and Bill fall out personally when they were both at Willow? Hybels evidently is not an easy man to work for.
*Did Ortberg secretly hope that he would be named Hybels’ successor?
*Does he view himself as the leader of a rival movement to Willow Creek?
*Has he become a public supporter of the #MeToo Movement, especially inside Christian churches?
*Does he know something from his time at Willow about the way the board protects Hybels regardless of any mistakes he’s made?
*Does Ortberg believe he is the best person possible to represent some of Hybels’ accusers?
*Does he really want Hybels to be exposed so he can repent and be restored?
I don’t know the answers to those questions, and Ortberg may not know the answers, either. He was recently quoted as saying, “This information came to us in a way that was unlooked for, unwanted, and it put us in a terrible situation.”
But a more likely possibility is that when Ortberg took his initial public stand against the elders and Hybels himself, he has tried ever since to show that he’s right and the leaders at Willow are wrong.
In other words, this conflict has degraded into winners and losers.
And if Hybels is declared innocent of all charges, that makes The Group look foolish, if not bad … causing some people to wonder if they’re guilty of fostering division and slander.
At this point, I’d like to share my own story briefly.
Like Hybels, I am now nearing the age of retirement. I dreamed of retiring while still a pastor.
But in December 2009, I resigned from my pastoral tenure of 10 1/2 years at a Bay Area church because I was lied right out of the church.
I wrote a book called Church Coup if you’re interested in my story. And I spent a lot of time in the book detailing the steps that lead a pastor to resign under duress.
My predecessor was involved in the coup. After going into retirement for nine years, he wanted to return to the church … but first had to push me out.
He worked with the board, the associate pastor, and others to get rid of me … and their plot worked.
After I left, a nine-person team investigated the charges against me and concluded that there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Another pastor succeeded me. I have never spoken with him nor met him.
But I could never, ever do anything to undermine that pastor.
Why not?
*When I left the church, I left it for good. I have never returned for any kind of service or event … and I have no plans to do so.
*The church chose its own board members without my input. They govern the church. I have no say in what goes on there, and it would be unethical if I did.
*If the church mistreated someone … and many of my friends eventually left in tears or in anger … I might be able to advise them on what to do, but I would never think to advise the board … nor would they want my input.
Let me state this clearly:
It is unethical for a pastor or staff member to interfere with the governance of any church they once served.
God did not appoint John Ortberg to be the elder chair or one of the elders at Willow Creek Community Church.
God appointed him to serve as pastor of a church in the Bay Area instead. That’s where his authority lies.
He may have some moral or spiritual authority in the wider Christian community, but he has zero authority where he is not welcome.
And his ideas and counsel are not wanted by Willow’s elders.
The most breathtaking part of this entire story are the demands that The Group made to the elders at Willow. This is from the WC website:
“The two couples made specific demands outlining how they wanted the investigation to unfold and the control that they wanted to have—demands that our Elders deemed unreasonable and unbiblical. These demands included the following:
- These couples (non–Willow members) would approve the choice of the investigator.
- The investigation would run the full course of Bill’s adulthood (from 18 years old and ongoing).
- These couples would be able to choose the witnesses who were interviewed, and all people interviewed would have full indemnification.
- The investigation reports would all be public regardless of the outcome.
- These couples would insist that there be a public admission of anything that they (not the investigator or the Elders) deemed inappropriate.”
When my wife reviewed the story the other night, she asked me this question: “Who do the Ortbergs think they are?”
Hybels has been thoroughly investigated twice. He has been exonerated both times. Why would Willow’s elders then turn over an investigation to people who seem to want Hybels’ scalp?
The elders of Willow have spoken unanimously. And they have shared their conclusion as to what’s really going on:
“This small group of former staff members has articulated outright to several people that they believe Bill does not deserve to finish his ministry tenure at Willow well, despite the thorough and conscientious investigative process that has cleared his name. It has become clear to us that they have decided to spread this sentiment through rumors and now through the media. They aggressively shopped the story to multiple media outlets. These actions fail to live up to biblical standards, and they have caused much pain for many people. We have deep sadness over the broken relationships with people we have respected and people we love. We are grieved for Bill and his family. After 42 years of faithfully pastoring you and me, our congregation, and after his family giving sacrificially, this has been painful beyond words for them.”
I’m sure there are people who do not like or agree with their verdict, but it’s time to accept it and for everyone to go home and focus on their own ministries.
From my vantage point … and I could be reading matters wrong … it looks like The Group … which includes Ortberg … is doing everything they can to get Hybels fired.
Let Bill Hybels serve out his last six months in peace.
If Hybels has been lying, the Lord will deal with him … either in this life, or the next life.
If the elders engaged in a cover-up, let God deal with them as well.
God is the Ultimate Judge. He will right any wrongs.
In fact, God only uses imperfect people, including pastors, elders, staff members, and investigators.
And the longer this controversy goes on, the wider and deeper the breach will become in the body of Christ.
As Paul asked the Corinthians:
Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers. I Corinthians 6:7-8
For the sake of the gospel and the advancement of Christ’s church … please, let it go.
Restoring Kingdom Builders 
Should a Pastor Know Why He is Terminated?
Posted in Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with Church Board, Conflict with Church Staff, Conflict with the Pastor, Forgiveness and Reconciliation among Christians, Pastoral Termination, Please Comment!, tagged pastoral termination; forced termination of pastors; reasons pastors are terminated; the process for terminating a pastor on December 7, 2018| Leave a Comment »
I recently watched a TV show where a little girl found her single mother right after she had been murdered. The case went unsolved for years.
Ten years later, that girl had become a young woman, but she still wanted to know … indeed, had to know … who killed her mother and why.
The show explored this idea: Is it better just to accept a tragedy and move on? Or can a person only move on when they know who and what caused the tragedy?
One of the great tragedies in Christian circles is the high number of pastors who are forced out of their churches every month.
It’s safe to say that at least 1,500 pastors leave their positions every thirty days … hundreds of them due to forced termination.
In a minority of cases, the pastor did or said something to accelerate his exit, such as embezzling funds … committing sexual immorality … using a controlling, dictatorial style … or engaging in a moral or criminal felony.
But in the vast majority of cases, a faction inside the church conspires to target their pastor by plotting together, manufacturing charges, circumventing procedures, and then forcing his resignation.
After a pastor has undergone such a painful experience, how much time and effort should he invest in finding out who wanted him out, and why?
_______________
There is no easy answer to this question. Maybe this story can shed some light on the options.
Three decades ago, I had a pastor friend who was forced out of his church after nine years. A faction in the church falsely accused his teenage daughter of doing something wrong. The faction insisted the girl apologize in front of the entire church, and the pastor resigned to protect her.
As was my custom, I called him immediately and listened to his story.
I asked him one day, “How many pastors from our district have contacted you?” (There were 85 churches in our district.) He told me, “You’re the only one.”
A year after he left, we met for lunch. He knew the name of the person most responsible for his departure … someone well-connected inside the denomination … but he did not know why he was targeted.
I gave him a book on forced termination … one of the few available in the 1980s … and after reading it, my friend told me, “Now I know why they got rid of me.”
After that, I lost contact with him.
Years later, I opened up the San Francisco Chronicle one morning and there was a front page story about my friend. He had left the pastorate behind and pioneered a new approach to ministering to patients with HIV.
I was proud of him … not only for overcoming the pain from his past, but for directing his energies toward helping others.
_______________
Let me draw four lessons from my friend’s story:
First, most pastors have a good idea of the key players involved in their departure.
The pastor usually knows the board members … staffers … key leaders … and regular churchgoers who don’t like him.
The pastor may not know how their spouses or children are involved … nor the exact number of people who want to see him gone.
But most pastors know the identities of most of the individuals who are out to get him. (And if he doesn’t, his wife surely knows.)
In my friend’s case, he told me the name of the man who was most behind his departure. I have always remembered it.
In some cases, that’s all the pastor needs to know. In other cases, the pastor needs to know more … a lot more.
_______________
When I was forced out of my position as senior pastor nine years ago, I knew the board members were involved, and within two weeks, I discovered that the associate pastor and the previous pastor also played a part in my professional execution.
Over time, friends inside the church informed me of specific individuals who either joined the plot or applauded my departure.
I needed to know the names of those people so I could unfriend them on Facebook … purge them from my mailing list … or avoid them if and when I returned to the city where the church was located.
As it was, I still made some mistakes in trusting people I shouldn’t have trusted.
Some pastors might say, “Since I can never know the names of everyone who was against me, I’ll just cut off all contact with everyone from that church.”
But I chose not to do that. I had developed friendships over my 10 1/2 year tenure that I wanted to keep, so I maintained a small level of contact with specific individuals.
The most supportive group turned out to be the people who had once attended the church but had moved away before the fireworks began. Most didn’t even want to know who pushed me out or why.
In fact, my wife was contacted by one of those individuals this past week, and he asked her to become a key leader in a new missions organization.
But I think it’s important that a pastor identify the individuals most responsible for pushing him out of ministry … not to reconcile (almost nobody who conspires to get rid of a pastor wants reconciliation) but to avoid them socially … forgive them unilaterally … and relinquish them into the hands of a just God.
Second, most pastors don’t know the real reasons for their departure.
In the case of my pastor friend, I suspect that some in the church thought he was too rigid in his convictions. He was very outspoken about his likes and dislikes, and even made me wince one time when he visited our church and criticized the Christmas tree in the back!
But I suspect that his unwillingness to play games may have been a contributing factor in his departure. My friend made his decisions on the basis of righteousness, not politics or denominational priorities.
In many cases, the real reason why a faction goes after a pastor is that they just don’t like him. He’s not “our kind of guy.”
But another reason why the faction doesn’t like their pastor is that they can’t control him.
After reading the book I gave him, my friend thought he knew why the faction targeted him … and maybe he was right.
But a lot of pastors never find out … and I think they should.
What if you keep repeating the same mistakes in church after church?
_______________
Maybe the film Murder on the Orient Express can help us understand the “why question” better. (I’ve seen three versions of the story on film, and each one is captivating.)
The famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is traveling on the Orient Express train when a snow storm blocks the train’s progress. During the night, a shadowy passenger is stabbed to death.
Who killed him … and why?
In the end, Poirot discovers that nine different people put a knife into the passenger’s body … each for a different reason.
That’s often what happens when a pastor is forced from office. The plotters may circulate various public reasons why the pastor has to go, but they don’t share those reasons with others because it might make them look petty or unspiritual.
For example, I remain convinced that hatred and personal revenge are behind more terminations than we could ever imagine, but no self-respecting believer is going to admit those sins.
So there are public, group reasons for eliminating the pastor … and a host of more private, individualistic reasons.
In my case, there were four main parties:
*the church board
*the associate pastor
*a faction of disgruntled churchgoers … including some charter members
*my predecessor and his Fan Club
I might also add a fifth group, composed of a few former staffers and people who had left the church.
I believe that each party had a different motive for taking me out. The associate pastor’s complaints were not those of my predecessor, and his complaints were different than those of the board.
It’s always amazed me … you can have a church of a thousand people, but if two people don’t like their pastor, they will inevitably find each other.
But disgruntled leaders find each other much more quickly.
Third, most leaders never tell their pastor why they think he should leave.
As I wrote above, my pastor friend did not know the real reason why some people wanted him to leave the church.
Why not?
Because church leaders – specifically the church board – never told him to his face.
They wimped out.
This is a huge problem in our churches.
When people are upset with their pastor, they don’t tell him anything directly.
They tell their friends instead.
As some churchgoers pool their complaints, they get organized … hold secret meetings … create a list of charges against their pastor … and rope in sympathetic board members or staff members.
The pastor is arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced … usually without his knowledge.
And then one day, the board chairman tells the pastor that he has a choice: resign with a small severance package or be fired without any severance at all.
And all the while, no one has the guts to tell the pastor what he was doing wrong or how he could correct his behavior.
Maybe it’s just human nature for people to criticize an authority figure secretively, but it’s cowardly for people to create charges against their pastor without ever telling him what they’re unhappy about.
After all, pastors can’t read minds … so how can they change their behavior if they don’t know what they’re doing wrong?
_______________
Over the years, I had to fire several staff members. I hated doing it, and viewed it as a failure on my part, believing that I didn’t hire them wisely or manage them effectively.
I hired one staff member, and a few weeks later, he disappeared for two weeks without telling me a thing. When he returned, we sat down for a chat, and he told me he had every right to go on vacation without my approval or knowledge.
After I fired him, a leader asked me, “What took you so long?”
But when I fired someone, they knew exactly why I let them go. They may not have agreed with me, but they didn’t have to guess why they were no longer employed.
In my case, the official board never formally sat down with me and expressed any concerns about my character or my ministry to my face.
They told my predecessor.
They told the associate pastor.
They told their wives.
They told their friends.
They told key leaders.
They just never told me.
And when the board fired my wife, they never spoke with her, either … telling me to go home and tell her that she had been terminated. (I told them that two of them needed to meet with her, and later that week, they did. But shouldn’t they have done that on their own?)
My wife and I just finished watching the fourth season of Line of Duty … a superb police procedural show from Great Britain about a police unit dedicated to rooting out corruption among law enforcement officers.
When the AC-12 unit has compiled enough evidence, they call in the officer in question, present him or her with all their evidence … and let the person respond after each piece of evidence is presented (including surveillance photos).
That’s the way it should be in our churches … but most of the time, things aren’t done that way.
The pastor’s detractors take shortcuts instead … ignoring their church’s governing documents, avoiding Scripture, and working around labor law.
The single biggest mistake the board made with both my wife and me is that they did not bring their concerns to us personally.
We could easily have rebutted most of them … and if we were wrong, we would have admitted it and asked for forgiveness.
But when you start with a desired outcome, you’ll circumvent a fair and just process … every time.
And by doing so, you violate the rights of the accused to alleviate your own anxiety.
Finally, most pastors wish they could reconcile with their accusers.
A new pastor succeeded my pastor friend in the late 1980s. I shared several meals with him.
I don’t remember the details, but the new pastor invited my friend back to the church. Some in the church apologized for the way they had treated my friend, and asked for his forgiveness, which included the major power broker.
This only happened because the new pastor discerned that unless he dealt with the church’s past, they might not have much of a future.
I was reminded this past week of another situation where a megachurch pastor was accused of having an affair with a woman in his church based on circumstantial evidence. (This pastor taught a theology class I had in college and was considered a great communicator.)
When a new pastor came to that church – and he was someone I had heard preach – he eventually invited the pastor back and the church reconciled with him.
How I wish that would happen every time an innocent pastor is forced to leave a church! But I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard of this being done.
If the church board had just talked to me honestly before making drastic decisions, we could have worked things out. I might have taken time off, or looked for another ministry, or renegotiated my job description, or shuffled the staff around.
But they never talked to me directly, talking to others instead. They triangled their pastor by siding with his opponents.
Reconciliation only works when both parties care more about winning over the other party than winning at all costs.
_______________
Since the board never discussed their concerns with me directly, I had to use alternate methods to find out the real story.
And if I didn’t find out, I would be forced to guess for the rest of my life why I was pushed out … and such speculation often ends in torture and misery.
So I discreetly talked to people inside and outside the church. I wrote down everything that seemed relevant.
I consulted with:
*church friends
*staff members
*former board members
*influential people inside the church
*church consultants
*seminary professors
*Christian counselors
*a Christian conciliation expert
*other pastors
To this day, I believe that I made minor mistakes in my ministry … the same kind everyone makes … but that I did not commit any major offense against the Lord, the church, or anyone else.
I had to put the puzzle pieces together to:
*accurately assess responsibility
*avoid making similar mistakes in the future
*try and eliminate the cloud over my last ministry
*help my wife to heal
*see if I had any future in Christ’s church
*be able to sleep at night
_______________
Could my pastor friend have succeeded in his hospital ministry if his former church had never called him back for a time of reconciliation?
Maybe.
But what a blessing it was for him to return to his former church, listen to the apologies of those who tried to harm him, and grant forgiveness to the entire church body.
As some people write on Twitter, “More of this please!”
Yes, Lord … more of this … please.
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