The Fall of Bill Hybels and the Failings of a Megachurch.

What do Harvey Weinstein and Bill Hybels have in common? 

Well, they are both accused of sexual harassment by a considerable number of women. 

Todate, 80 women have come forward, some famous movie stars, to accuse Harvey of inappropriate sexual advances and even rape.

For Bill, more than 10 have accused him of "improper conduct and abuse of power."

Their modus operandi seems quite similar too, although Harvey's actions are more blatant and daring and he is currently facing criminal charges. Bill however is retiring early.

Basically, it is about the abuse of power and trust, and both assumed that their victims sought them out because of what they can offer to them. 

For Harvey, it was a fast-tracked movie career to stardom that was dangled. For Bill, it was guidance, advice and employment opportunities he offered as a Christian leader of global repute. 

The similarities do not stop there. They worked in largely similar patterns too. It was always about meeting up somewhere private, away from the public eye. 

Harvey had invited many of his victims to his hotel suite so that he could sexually violate them. 

Bill would however do it with more subtlety (in terms of meeting up). While he had met them in hotel rooms, he had also met them in the gym, in his room to watch a movie together, in his beach home in Michigan, on his yacht and in restaurants. 

When they were alone, Bill would have long conversations with them and in one alleged conversation, it was said to have confessed to the victim how unhappy he was in his marriage.

After that, in the same initial advances Harvey would make, Bill would progress from there to be flirtatious. Some of the allegations from women included lingering hugs, rubbing their feet, putting his two hands on their thighs, and telling one woman that she needed to dress sexy more often.

One former assistant from his church (Willow Creek) even accused him of touching her breasts repeatedly, rubbing against her, having oral sex with her on one occasion, and "once asked her to watch porn with him as a research project."

Although Bill has come forward to officially deny the allegations, saying he "never had an inappropriate physical or emotional relationship with her" at any given time, that accusation was nevertheless the last straw for the church (Willow Creek) to bear. 

In April 2018, Bill Hybels was asked to resign six months earlier than he was scheduled to do so in a church that he had led for 40 years. And mind you, the allegations of sexual indiscretions went back to more than 20 years ago. 

It should also be noted that Bill had helmed the Global Leadership Summit ("GLS") for more than 20 years with hundreds of churches participating. He was respected as a leader to the churches worldwide.

After the fall, a pastor (Bill Clark) from Redeemer Covenant Church said that their church staff "decided to take a break from hosting the GLS this year". 

Pastor Clark said he has lost confidence "in the church's ability to host a leadership conference." 

He added: "It seemed hypocritical to us to endorse a leadership training model that was incubated in a climate of sexual harassment and sexual impropriety. I know there is a separation between the summit and Willow Creek. But we could not distinguish between the two."

In fact, many other churches were disappointed with how Willow Creek had handled the whole affair. 

Willow Creek did not deny that they have failed the church at large. 

When they first heard about the allegations years back, they took the convenient road most travelled and "labeled the allegations as lies being spread by disgruntled former church staffers." 

It was then easier to believe Bill Hybels, their founder, than to believe the accusers. You can't get any more human than that.

The default position was to protect the church (not the victims) and this invariably included its founder because the often-denied-but-no-less-true fact is that its founder is inseparable from the church. 

In the normal course of things, the reputation of the church becomes the reputation of her founder or top leader. The charisma embodies the church leadership. Think of City Harvest Church without the power couple, or New Creation Church without Prince, and you get the drift. So you attack the founder, you attack the church. 

Alas, Jesus may be the head of the Church, but most times, the unspoken reality is that the head is the one who is seen most often on stage rather than the one who is being preached about behind the pulpit.

As the accusations piled up, the other leaders/elders in Willow Creek had to take notice. It came to a point when the church admitted that Bill had "entered into areas of sin." This stop short of confirming that he had committed any sexual misconduct.

Despite Bill's consistent denial, even he himself was hard pressed to neutralize this saying: "If one calls you a donkey, pay her no mind. If two call you a donkey, look for hoof prints. And if three men call you a donkey, get a saddle."

In April 10 this year, Bill apologised for "his habit of meeting alone with women in private settings, including in hotel rooms and at his home." 

This is what he said: "I placed myself in situations that would have been far wiser to avoid. I was naive about the dynamics those situations created. I'm sorry for the lack of wisdom on my part. I commit to never putting myself in similar situations again."

From the above, it's anyone's guess what he did to his accusers when he had so "naively" entered into "areas of sins". It's also anyone's guess what the church meant when they said that Bill had entered into "areas of sins" without supposedly committing any sin. One has to ask, why then enter into it in the first place, and repeatedly so if lines were not crossed?

Be that as it may, as far as the church is concerned, the errors of their ways were that they ought to have "defended the vulnerable - the orphan, the widow, the oppressed, and those who suffer under the misuse of power." In other words, they had failed to give Bill's accusers a voice, a fighting chance.

The church admitted that their trust for Bill had clouded their judgment. This clouded judgment had prevented Willow Creek from thoroughly investigating the allegations of sexual misconduct, including an alleged affair Bill had in 2014. 

They said: "We are sorry that we allowed Bill to operate without the kind of accountability that he should have had. Our desire going forward is to retain what is good and pure about Willow, but to drive out the dark places that are unhealthy." Obviously, this lack of accountability was the implied license for Bill to freely enter into (and escape from) the "areas of sins".

De Vries, the Willow Creek's president, said:-

"There is no map for the journey we've been on. We've had missteps, mistakes, slip-ups, blunders not condemning Bill's actions to a greater degree and more publicly; not showing more support to the women who courageously came forward with their concerns; perpetuating a narrative of false allegations and collusions. We are sorry for the places where we could and should have done better."

One leader said: "I know that God is not done with our church, though, and he promises each of us a hope and a future. He is still at work, and we will follow where he leads. Let's pray desperately and fervently."

And another leader added: "We want to be the kind of church God is calling us to be. A church that learns lessons, grows through healing...and demonstrates the love of Christ."

Lesson? Seriously, is there any that we don't already know? 

It is said that history is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living and leading. That may be an extreme position, more of a lamentation, but the kernel of truth in that statement is that we have been down this road before. 

Recent history is littered with fallen pastors. In our own backyard, we have our own church leaders who have fallen from grace in a bitter 7-year legal battle that has proven more costly than is redeeming. 

So when De Vries said above that "there is no map for the journey we've been on," I beg to differ. 

The map for the journey has always been there. The consequences for the abuse and manipulation of power and the tendency for the church to valorize their leaders and villainise their accusers (for as long as they can "pray" for the problem to go away) have always been the script that has been considered, taught about and played out in the entire leadership framework behind the pulpit.

What is different for Willow Creek is that now, the church has to confront it, walk through it and suffer the loss of trust, respect, credibility, legitimacy and membership as a result.

As it stands today, two lead pastors have left and the entire elders board have resigned. More than 100 churches have also pulled out from being the host sites for the GLS. 

Before the ignominious fall, the map for the journey had existed in theory. It existed in forms of reminders, advice and consultations. I am even sure that it has been preached over the pulpit in their many GLSs, for whom Bill Hybels himself had personally led. 

Now, after the scandal and fall, the church as a whole have to put their confession to action, and their words to works. 

In other words, they have to walk the map for the journey towards repentance and change. And when you are taking that humbling journey, you have to walk according to scale, that is, one centimetre on the map in paper is now one kilometre in reality. That is another way of saying that it will take time to restore confidence, build trust, heal the wounds and live out the reformation. 

Truly, if there is any lesson to be learned here, I have two - one, negative and the other, positive. 

First, how do you sift out exemplary, self-sacrificing pastors who are humble, faithful to the call and who persevere to the end and those who are power-hungry, exploitative and have narcissistic personality disorder? 

In a survey done in US, it was reported that "there were 384,000± Christian churches in the U.S. in 2012, 65% reported serious internal conflict in the last 5 years, and...approximately 120,000 had malignant narcissist pastors." (Dr Darrell Puls). 

The numbers in a church is frightening. Although some positive illusions of one's worth may be deemed as healthy, when such narcissistic disorder is however found in leaders leading not just lives but souls, claiming to do so in the name of Christ, the outcome - like in Bill Hybels' case - can be soul crushing. 

He thus becomes not a means to the members' end, that is, an instrument to be used by God to help his members towards the path of redemption, but he and his insatiable appetites become the end, and his members and their lives become merely the means to that end.

And I believe the "malignancy" only worsens in the context of religion because "whitewashed tombs" not just cover the rot inside, it also allows their predatory behaviour to flourish outside under the trance of spiritual infantilization; that is, when it comes to spiritual matters, most believers are generally less discerning, less critical and more credulous. 

"Thus saith the Lord" is the magical spell to somehow put believers' maturity on a perpetual state of mental stasis and arrested development. In such a state, questioning everything is as heretical as disbelieving the holy trinity.

The problem is, you can't sift out the good pastors from the bad ones not because the signs are not obvious when given enough time to observe them, but because nobody in the inner circle has the political will to do it. Who wants to rock a reasonably self-rewarding, smooth sailing boat anyway? They are usually beholden to their superior for the commanding niche he had provided for them. 

And especially for such a larger-than-life personality like Bill Hybels, whose leadership books and conferences were treated like gospel truths in the secular marketplaces and leadership circles, calling him out for accountability would be like trying to catch a leviathan with a fish hook or tie its tongue down with a rope.  

This is the whole problem with institutionalised leadership in organised religion where those at the top are accorded tribal immunity to do as they please because of the long spell of spiritual infantilization and a muted and often jaded pastoral and/or elders board. 

Most times, it takes a sexual scandal of such proportion as experienced by past megachurch preachers like Ted Haggard, Bill Gothard and Jimmy Swaggart to put a stop to the narcissistic and deviant reign at the top. 

For Bill Hybels, he got out just in time for his retirement. His apology did not appear to me to go far enough to assure his victims that he was truly sorry. And the church, although had apologised and some had stepped down, did not appear to me to want to plumb deeper into Bill's dark history of leadership. It seems like the urgent need to press the reset button so as to start on a fresh page for the church stood in the way of the call for more piercing transparency and accountability.  

So, like I said, my first lesson is a negative one. But my second lesson ends on a positive note and it rides on the experience of a pastor I truly respect: Eugene H. Peterson. 

He wrote a memoir a few years back entitled "The Pastor". I devoured the book and learned what it takes to be a true pastoral shepherd of the heart - both of his own and that of his sheep. 

In one part of the book (@ p 281/282), he wrote about Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

If you know the tale, you can imagine the chaos out at sea. Pastor Peterson described it as "a cosmic conflict between good and evil...chaotic sea and demonic sea monster (the great white whale "Moby Dick") versus the morally outraged man, Captain Ahab (whose leg got bitten off by Moby and he was out for revenge)".

While the sailors labored fiercely, "every muscle taut, all attention and energy concentrated on the task," Pastor Peterson noted that "there is one man who does nothing." 

He wrote that "he doesn't hold an oar; he doesn't perspire; he doesn't shout. He is languid in the crash and the cursing. This man is the harpooner, quiet and poised, waiting." 

This next sentence captures the crucial role of the harpooner hell-bent on firing the killer shot. He knows he only got one shot to make it counts. 

The sentence is this: "To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooner of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil."

For Pastor Peterson, the image of the unbusy and still harpooner describes the role of a pastor well. 

He wrote that "our culture publicizes the opposite: big, the multitudinous, the noisy. Is it not, then, a strategic necessity that some of us deliberately ally ourselves with the quiet, poised harpooners, and not leap, frenzied, to the oars?"

Indeed, to be still and know that I am God is an essential discipline to cultivate in a world where either our attention is torn apart by a million demands or our ego is stoked to unearthly heights by them. Give a malevolent narcissist limitless power and you would have given him the keys to his own destruction.

I believe Bill Hybels was a victim of such a world he had unwittingly created for himself. It was a world of attention and he had thrown himself into it, and with every reckless abandonment, he elevated himself to dizzying heights that gave him the delusion of his own invulnerability. 

Let me end with Pastor Peterson's own words and how crucial it is for pastors to distance themselves from the noise, the empty adulation, the lust for power and the appetites of the world so that they, like a harpooner, may continue to cultivate "quietness" and "attentiveness" before God and their congregation and not allow "Moby Dick" (the world) and "Captain Ahab" (man's righteousness) to call the shots. 

"A harpooner? Pastor's are in a position to be reminded daily that there is something radically wrong with the world. We are also engaged in doing something about it. The stimulus of conscience, the memory of ancient outrage, and the challenge of biblical command place us in the anarchic sea that is the world. The white whale, a symbol of evil, and the crippled captain, a personification of violated righteousness, are joined in battle. History is a novel of spiritual conflict. The church is a whaleboat. In such a world, noise is inevitable, and immense energy is expended. But if there is no harpooner in the boat, there will be no proper finish to the chase. Or if the harpooner is exhausted, having abandoned his assignment and become an oarsman, he will not be ready and accurate when it is time to throw his javelin."  

Have a quiet and reflective Sabbath then. Cheerz.