Visiting Chicago and Willow Creek

Yesterday at the end of our MEA trip to Chicago, Amy, Hannah and I attended worship at Willow Creek. Their main campus in South Barrington is right off of I-94, and on the way back to the Twin Cities.  I’ve never been to Willow Creek, so away we went. I’ve read some of the books of their founding pastor, Bill Hybels, and have attended their Global Summit.

The three of us spent four days enjoying Chicago. We did what out-of-town tourists do in the Windy City. We ate deep dish pizza, went to the Art Institute of Chicago, walked around Millennium Park, and saw a show at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. A family friend of Amy’s was in the show. The theatre was delightful and the quality of the show was high. I went for a run with Hannah in the neighborhood near where we stayed. The three of us walked around Navy Pier, drove around the neighborhood on the South Side where I used to organize for ACORN, went to the top of what’s now called the Willis Tower, and ended our trip by going to Willow Creek.

Allow me one rant about visiting Chicago. Tolls! Eliminate them! I’m guessing that we stopped at least twenty times over four days paying tools. What good is that? Tolls tie up traffic and are not user-friendly. I believe that highways are a public good and communities benefit by high quality highways.

As we were leaving Aurora about 11 pm Friday night we ran into a toll. We needed to pay $1.10 to get on the freeway. The only way to do it was to find that amount in change and throw it in the toll receptor. Being from out-of-town we didn’t know the toll was coming and we didn’t know that the tollbooth only took change. I’m guessing we could have driven through and paid later on I-PASS, but we didn’t know that.  My suggestion is to increase the gas tax and eliminate the tolls. The highways would be much more user-friendly—especially for out-of-towners

We ended our trip by attending Willow Creek.

Willow Creek has experienced turmoil in the past year as their founding pastor, Bill Hybels, resigned amidst accusations of sexual misconduct. Heather Larson and Steve Carter were appointed as successors to Hybels. They both resigned along with the board of the church.

A link about the resignations is here: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/august/willow-creek-bill-hybels-heather-larson-elders-resign-inves.html

A link to the independent investigation that is now happening is here: 

https://religionnews.com/2018/09/18/national-association-of-evangelicals-president-others-to-oversee-new-investigation-of-hybels-willow-creek/

The story is a tragedy.

Willow Creek is located on a gigantic complex of land with many buildings. Their worship space seats 7,000 and has three levels. The three of us got to the main building about a half hour before the service started. Hannah found out about a high school worship service that took place at the same time and attended that.

Amy & I sat about six rows from the front. We received no information when we walked in the worship space. There weren’t many people there at the start of the service, but right at 11:15 the worship band started.  The worship order was praise. Three songs, a prayer, announcement, offering, sermon of about thirty minutes, Communion and closing. I’m not sure how often the church celebrates Communion.

A crowd did eventually arrive. Amy & I estimated that about 800 people attended the service.  The band was marvelous, the people who attended worship were engaged, and the sermon by Matt Wright on forgiveness was okay. I appreciated that his teaching on forgiveness was based on the work of Lewis Smedes, whose books I have enthusiastically endorsed. That was solid. But Matt Wright started the sermon with a story about how he fainted when his wife was delivering their third child. He saw the epidural needle and went down. The story related to forgiveness as a pastoral colleague shared the story with the church without Matt Wright’s permission. Of course, that shouldn’t have happened. But the optics of a guy talking about his pain amidst his wife delivering a baby didn’t seem right.

It was obvious that Willow Creek is in transition. Steve Gillen, acting senior pastor of Willow Creek, shared during a “stewardship” announcement that the church is expecting to receive $550,000 a week in revenues in 2019, down from $685,000 a week in 2018. Multiply that decrease by 52 and the challenges are obvious.

I’m glad I went to Willow Creek; I don’t need to go back. I pray that the truth of what happened will come out. And my prayers are with everyone as Willow Creek discerns how to move forward.