CHURCH PASTOR’S DOWNFALL
                                                      

Click your mouse on the underlined words for more information.

There is a saying that the higher you go, the harder is your fall. That applies to Rev. Bill Hybels who built an iconic evangelical church outside of Chicago. As a young pastor in the 1980s, he was becoming one of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States. He was a superstar. Such a pastor is seen as a conduit to Jesus Christ when giving sermons so mesmerizing that congregants rush to buy tapes of them after giving their sermons. In the evangelical world, Rev. Hybels was considered a giant, revered as a leadership guru who discovered the formula for bringing to church people who were skeptical of Christianity. His books and speeches had even crossed over into the business world. I doubt that this pastor could have got any higher than he did as a revered religious figure.  

Alas, his fall from grace destroyed his legacy. The part of his body  that brought him down hard in his fall from grace was what brings other men to shame—his penis.

n 1984, Ms. Baranowski was walking to her car in the vast parking lot of Willow Creek one night after services. She had just been praying about whether to apply for a job at Rev.  Hybels’ church that she had seen posted.

Suddenly a car screeched to a stop beside her.  The driver rolled down his window. It was the church’s pastor, Rev. Hybels.

“Can I drive you to your car or something?” offered Rev. Hybels, who was then 33. Her car was nearby, but she accepted the ride. It seemed to her as a sign from God. Rev. Hybels later also described the meeting as a miracle.  He had been driving out of the parking lot when God urged him to go back and find the woman (Pat Baranowski) he had drove by.

 After the pain of watching her marriage fall apart, Pat Baranowski felt that God was suddenly showering her with blessings.  She now had a new job at her Chicago-area megachurch, led by a dynamic young pastor named the Rev. Bill Hybels.

 The pay at Willow Creek Community Church was much lower than at her old job, but Ms. Baranowski, then 32, admired Rev. Hybels and the church’s mission so much that it seemed worth it. She felt even more blessed when in 1985 Rev. Hybels and his wife invited her to move into their home, where she shared family dinners and vacations.

Soon after, she left her position as a computer systems manager. She found great purpose in working for a church that was adding more than 1,000 new members a year. She served asRev. Hybels’s gatekeeper, fielding calls from pastors across the country eager to tap him for advice.

“It was a wonderful time,” she said. “I thought maybe God was just being good to me, and I think he was. But I couldn’t understand: Why did he select me? Because I didn’t think that highly of myself.”

Once, while Rev. Hybels’s wife, Lynne, and their children were away, the pastor took Ms. Baranowski out for dinner. When they got home, Rev. Hybels offered her a back rub in front of the fireplace and told her to lie face down.

Stunned, she remembered feeling unable to say no to her boss and pastor as he straddled her, unhooked her bra and touched her near her breasts. She remembered feeling his hands shake.

That first back rub in 1986 led to multiple occasions over nearly a two year period of time in which he fondled her breasts and rubbed his body against her. The incidents later escalated to one occasion of oral sex. Ms. Baranowski said she was mortified and determined to stay silent for fear that she might lose her job and her place in his family.

When she was 65 and speaking publicly for the first time, she said, “I really did not want to hurt the church. I felt like if this was exposed, this fantastic place would blow up, and I loved the church. I loved the people there. I loved the family. I didn’t want to hurt anybody but I was ashamed.”

I don’t think that she should feel ashamed at all because she had submitted to the sexual abuse brought upon her by her boss. To her, if she refused to submit to his sexual abuse, her world as she knew it than would totally collapse. 

When this matter became public the sex abuser denied her allegations about her time working and living with him. “I never had an inappropriate physical or emotional relationship with her before that time, during that time or after that time,” he said in an email. He counted on his reputation to support his public denial.

Since the #MeToo movement emerged, evangelical churches have been grappling with allegations of sexual abuse by their pastors. A wave of accusations has begun to hit evangelical institutions, bringing down figures like the Rev. Andy Savage, at Highpoint Church in Memphis, and the Rev. Harry L. Thomas, the founder of the Creation Festival, a Christian music event.

Ms. Baranowski was not the first to accuse Rev. Hybels of wrongdoings, though her charges are more serious than what had been reported before.

In March,  2018, , The Chicago Tribune and Christianity Today  reported that Mr. Hybels had been accused by several other women, including co-workers and a congregant, of inappropriate behavior that dated back decades. The allegations included lingering hugs, invitations to hotel rooms, comments about looks and an unwanted kisses.

The accusations did not immediately result in consequences for Rev. Hybels. At a church-wide meeting where Rev. Hybels denied the allegations, he received a standing ovation from his congregation.  It is not unusual for gullible people who want to believe the statements of persons they revere.

The church’s elders conducted their own investigation of the allegations when they first surfaced four years ago and commissioned a second inquiry by an outside lawyer whose investigation was  completed in 2017. Both investigations cleared Rev. Hybels, though the church’s two lead pastors have since issued public apologies, saying that they believed the women.

In April, 2018,  Rev. Hybels announced to the congregation he would accelerate his planned retirement by six months and step aside immediately for the good of the church. He continued to deny the allegations, but acknowledged, “I too often placed myself in situations that would have been far wiser to avoid.” The congregation let out a disappointed groan. Some shouted “No!”

On 0n a Sunday, one of the church’s two top pastors severed his ties with Willow Creek. After services, the Rev. Steve Carter announced that he was resigning immediately in response to Ms. Baranowski’s “horrifying” allegations about Rev.  Hybels. Mr. Carter said he had a “fundamental difference” with the church’s elders over how they had handled the allegations against Rev. Hybels, and had been planning to resign for some time.

Mr. Carter did not appear as scheduled at Sunday services at the church’s main campus, and the congregation at the second service was told that he was so sick that he was vomiting backstage. No mention was made of Rev. Hybels or the allegations against him at either the service at the main campus.

In many evangelical churches, a magnetic pastor likeRev. Hybels is the superstar on whom everything else rests, making accusations of harassment particularly difficult to confront. In the evangelical world, Rev. Hybels is considered a giant, revered as a leadership guru.  

Rev. Hybels built his church that is independent of any denomination. In such churches, there is no larger hierarchy to set policies and keep the pastor accountable. Boards of elders are usually volunteers recommended, and often approved, by the pastor. Any volunteer elder who denounces the conduct of his pastor, risks being removed from the Board.

Alas, even the most significant reason sexual harassment can go unchecked if the pastor’s victims victims do not want to hurt the mission of their churches.

“So many victims within the evangelical world stay silent because they feel, if they step forward, they’ll damage this man’s ministry, and God won’t be able to accomplish the things he’s doing through this man,” said Boz Tchividjian, a former sex crimes prosecutor who leads GRACE, an organization that works with victims of abuse in Christian institutions.

“Those leaders feel almost invincible,” said Mr. Tchividjian, a grandson of Billy Graham who has consulted with some former staff members accusing Rev. Hybels of wrongdoing. “They don’t feel like the rules apply to them, because they’re doing great things for Jesus, even though their behavior doesn’t reflect Jesus at all.” unquote

Nancy Beach, who joined the staff soon after Ms. Baranowski, said the work was exhilarating. “We were at the center of this grand adventure.,” She, the first woman appointed by Rev. Hybels to be a “teaching pastor,” meaning she could preach at services.

She recalled that Rev. Hybels was an exacting boss who got angry if the sound system was fuzzy or if a Christmas drama wasn’t performed smoothly. Further, he didn’t tolerate personal misconduct. After one staff member had an affair and another was discovered with pornography, she said, “They had to speak publicly to everyone affected. Then they lost their jobs.”

Obviously this pastor didn’t adhere to the teachings found in Luke 6:37; “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”  Rev. Hybels is a hypocrite.

The sudden resignation of Willow Creek Community Church’s top leaders following sexual harassment allegations against Rev. Bill Hybels, their founding pastor, has shaken evangelicals far from the church’s base in the Chicago suburbs.

“When a falling star, a literal star falls out the sky, everyone looks at it, notices it, gasps,” said the Rev. Jack Graham, of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas who said he worried that people would view the scandal as evidence that all evangelicals were hypocrites. “Yet there are millions and millions of galaxies of stars that stay in their place and keep shining.” They don’t apply to over a thousand Catholic priests who sexually  abused young  children.

Now some evangelicals are talking about turning Willow Creek’s painful episode into a teaching moment for churches in the #MeToo era.

The considerations now are far more complex than in the ’80s and ’90s when showboating televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart were ensnared in sex scandals and the lesson drawn was simple: Pastors should not succumb to temptation.

Some evangelical leaders, including those left at Willow Creek, now want to examine systemic problems — and look for lasting solutions. They are asking what kind of structures churches need to keep their pastors accountable, how to handle allegations of sexual harassment, and how to ensure that men working alongside women do not violate boundaries.

The effort began at Willow Creek’s main site in the Chicago suburbs where thousands of Christians from around the world happened to be gathered for the opening of the church’s annual Global Leadership Summit. The event started with an apology.

In the late 1980s, crusading against pornography was a top priority for evangelicals. Rev.. Hybels told Ms. Baranowski that he had been told to educate himself on the issue by James Dobson, founder of the ministry Focus on the Family, who had been appointed by President Ronald Reagan to an anti-pornography commission.

Calling it research, Rev. Hybels once instructed Ms. Baranowski to go out and rent several pornographic videos, she said, to her great embarrassment. He insisted on watching them with her, while he was dressed in a bathrobe.

One night, she said, Rev. Hybels felt too sick to go to a church event, so he sent his wife in his stead to introduce the guest speaker, a famous evangelist from India. He asked Ms. Baranowski to bring him something to eat, And according to her, he fondled her again.

Ms. Baranowski said that during the years of harassment, Rev. Hybels never kissed her, and they never had intercourse. She was particularly ashamed about the oral sex. She grew increasingly wracked by guilt and tried to talk with him. One day in his office, she told him that it was unfair to his wife, that it was sin, and that she felt humiliated.

That night she recorded in her journal what he had said in response: “It’s not a big deal. Why can’t you just get over it? You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”  Those were the words of a psychopath.

His attitude toward her slowly began to change. She moved out of the house after two years. In the office, he began to suggest she was incompetent and unstable. He berated her work in front of others. She grew depressed and poured out her feelings to God, filling 20 spiral-bound journals about her experience and feelings.

She feared that she would be forced to stand in front of the congregation and confess, like the other employees who were fired. She was relocated to work in a converted coat closet.

Rev. Hybels finally sketched out an exit plan for her on a piece of note paper, which she kept. She resigned from Willow after more than eight years of service to that church.

She saw a counselor, who said in an interview that she remembered only that Ms. Baranowski was “humiliated, guilty and ashamed because of her relationship with Rev. Hybels.” The counselor, who spoke with Ms. Baranowski’s permission, requested anonymity because she did not want to be part of the controversy.

Rev. Hybels went on to expand Willow to eight sites with 25,000 worshipers. He published more than 50 books, many on ethics, like “Who Are You When No One’s Looking.”

He was a spiritual adviser to President Bill Clinton and stuck with him through his impeachment.  That president was also a man who couldn’t keep control of his penis.  Rev. Hybels drew speakers like Colin Powell, Bono and Sheryl Sandberg to his annual Global Leadership Summit.

When news of the other allegations against Mr. Hybels broke, Mr. Cousins encouraged Ms. Baranowski to get in touch with Ms. Beach. The two women had a tearful reunion. Both wish they had confronted Rev. Hybels at the time so they could have spared other women from harassment.

Ms. Beach remembers traveling to 27 countries representing Willow Creek and hearing pastors say hundreds of times that they owed their churches’ success to Rev. Hybels.

The sudden resignation of Willow Creek Community Church’s top leaders following sexual harassment allegations against Rev. Bill Hybels, their founding pastor, has shaken evangelicals far from the church’s base in the Chicago suburbs.

Terrance Forbes, a Pentecostal pastor with the Church of God of Prophecy in the Bahamas, said during a break at the summit: “What happened here brings an awareness of the seriousness of the times. It makes us all more conscious, as leaders, of how we should act. I believe we’ll learn how to employ safeguards and safety nets for those in leadership positions.” Amen to that.