WILLOW CREEK CHOOSES CO-ED PASTORS TO SUCCEED BILL HYBELS
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Since “no one
person can replace” Willow Creek Community Church founder Bill Hybels,
the influential megachurch has named two people: its current executive
pastor Heather Larson and teaching pastor Steve Carter.
Hybels announced on Saturday that the pair will succeed him as lead pastors when he steps down in October 2018.
The historic transition will make Willow Creek one of
the largest churches in America with a woman in the lead pastor
position, as well as the only major evangelical megachurch with
male-female lead pastors who aren’t married.
“When we saw this shaping up, we had to ask ourselves,
‘Can our congregation have a lead pastor that’s a woman?,’” said Hybels,
speaking from Willow Creek’s central campus in South Barrington,
Illinois, one of seven locations in the Chicago region that draw a
collective total of 25,000 worshippers each weekend. “And because this
is a deeply held value in our church, we said, ‘No problem.’”
Larson will be lead pastor, overseeing Willow Creek’s
400-person staff and $77 million budget, and Carter will be lead
teaching pastor, continuing to preach most weeks.
The news comes amid Willow Creek’s six-year succession
plan for the megachurch, which was founded in 1975 and has grown to rank
among the 10 biggest in America. The 65-year-old pastor joins a wave of
greying leaders who have opted to go public with their leadership transition, as Hybels first disclosed at the church’s 2012 Global Leadership Summit.
“We know that no one person can replace Bill,” Larson said in
an interview on the Unseminary podcast last year. “That has led Willow
to talk about moving to more of a team approach in leading the church in
the future and what that might look like.”
Larson, 42, has worked at Willow Creek for 20 years and has served as Hybels’s No. 2 since she became executive pastor in 2013.
Image: Willow Creek
“There is clearly a growing tendency to see shared
senior leadership in larger churches, to do ministry as a team,” said
Warren Bird, who consults on megachurch succession and co-authored the book Next: Pastoral Succession that Works.
“Many are experimenting with titles and roles like ‘directional leader’
and ‘chief visionary,’ and giving the No. 2 person a greater role.
Willow is leading another wave of experimentation in role combinations.”
After an outside consultant recommended splitting the
senior pastor duties, the two leaders were selected by Hybels and
approved by the church’s elders.
“The shared leadership dynamic is a wise move for an
organization with the size, scale, and history of Willow,” said Jenni
Catron, a church leadership coach.
Around 5 percent of megachurches are led by a
husband-wife co-pastor team (think Joel and Victoria Osteen at Lakewood,
or Todd and Julie Mullins at Christ Fellowship Palm Beach Gardens), but
none have an unmarried pair named as lead pastors, according to Bird.
Historically, “there have been a tiny number of female leaders in the top spot—Aimee Semple McPherson being
the most prominent, at one point leading the nation’s
largest-attendance church,” he said, noting that for a time, widows
Sharon Daugherty at Victory Tulsa, Betty Peebles at Jericho City of
Praise, and Anne Gimenez at Rock Church International also had lead
pastor roles.
“This is a significant move for not only Willow Creek
Church, but also for the greater evangelical movement,” said Tara Beth
Leach, who became the first female senior pastor at
First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena last year. “Bill Hybels and
Willow Creek have made a move that no church of its size has done
before, and I hope that moves like this will have a ripple effect across
all of evangelicalism.”
The number of female pastors overall has tripled in
the past 25 years, to about 9 percent of all Protestant pastors in the
country, according to Barna’s 2017 State of Pastors report. But the
numbers are just a fraction of that for women in lead pastor roles and
at megachurches, since female pastors tend to lead smaller
congregations. Only about a third of nondenominational churches welcome
women into senior or preaching pastor roles.
Halee Gray Scott, a researcher focused on evangelical
women in leadership, said Willow Creek’s announcement “trailblazes a
path for the Western church.”
“It is a model of leadership that is deeply scriptural,
built not on personality nor an individual’s personal charisma, but on
partnership,” she said. “It is a model that reflects the fullness of humankind, both male and female.”
Since its early days, Willow Creek has not restricted women’s leadership, eventually basing its position on a study led by Gilbert Bilezikian, a longtime Wheaton College professor and Hybels’s mentor.
In a chapter in How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership,
Hybels describes his desire to be proactive about adding women to
leadership teams and being intentional about the women appointed to be
paradigm-breakers as they step into significant roles.
Prior to being named executive pastor, Larson was
involved in Willow Creek’s young adult ministry, global outreach, and
compassion and justice work. She opened up about her leadership role in a
2015 interview with CT’s WomenLeaders.com:
Being a woman in this position is a much bigger deal
outside of Willow than it is inside of Willow. Because it has been so
much a part of the DNA of Willow, I get a lot of encouragement from
women and men in the church who say they’re so excited to see how I’m
leading and guiding the church.
But outside of Willow I get a lot of more shock. That
has been good for me to keep in mind how different Willow is from a lot
of other churches. I’ve never wanted to be on a soapbox about the role
of women. I would rather build influence and lead where God has placed
me, and let that speak for itself.
“She owns the values of this church all the way down to
her toes,” said Hybels. “She has the pure Romans 12:8 gift of
leadership.”
Though Larson was raised as a pastor’s kid, she said she
didn’t expect to end up working for the church; instead she started her
career working for the Red Cross. She has two daughters, ages 12 and
13, and is a graduate of Taylor University.
“This is not something I ever planned for or expected,
but it’s something that God planted in my heart,” she said. “I want my
life to be about building the local church.”
Carter, 38, currently does the bulk of the preaching at
Willow Creek, where he has been on staff since 2013. He was also
involved in The Practice, the church’s experimental worship community led by Aaron Niequist, which concluded in June. (Carter and Niequist discussed their vision for the initiative with CT Pastors in 2014.)
Since he had only just arrived at Willow Creek when
Hybels began his global search for his replacement, Carter initially
didn’t put himself in the running. He teared up as Hybels announced his
new role.
“He’s one of the most gifted, pure teachers that I’ve
ever known,” said Hybels. “Better than that, he is coachable and has an
insatiable desire to get better.”
Carter, a father of two, is a graduate of Hope
International University. He previously served at Rock Harbor Church in
California and Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan.
His book on evangelism, This Invitational Life, came out last year. He wrote:
Over the past ten years, I’ve seen a decrease in urgency
when it comes to sharing one’s faith. I think a lot of it has to do
with the way evangelism has been portrayed and done over the years. What
I want to do is to try and reclaim the essence of the word.
My advice for those who want to live an invitational
life is to show up with expectancy, with one ear attuned to heaven, so
that when God whispers you’ll be ready to respond. God’s heartbeat is
for humanity and He is inviting us to be ministers of reconciliation. He
has given us a story of reconciliation and we are His ambassadors as if
God was making his appeal through us. He wants to use you. When the
spirit whispers, please say yes!
Carter also co-hosts a sports podcast from Relevant. “Because he’s played sports all his life, he understands the dynamics of a team,” said Hybels.
This weekend marks Willow Creek’s 42nd anniversary. Ahead of the news, Lynne Hybels wrote that
her family was “genuinely excited about this announcement because we
earnestly believe it will be a blessing and gift to this church that we
love.”
Willow Creek pioneered tech-savvy and cultural-savvy
ministry with its innovative programming, most notably its Global
Leadership Summit. The annual event has drawn top names in business to
address thousands of church leaders over the past 15 years, as well as pioneered a
new approach to organizational leadership among evangelicals. Willow
Creek spent a dozen years, from 1992 to 2004, as the largest church in
America, according to Outreach magazine.
About a decade ago, the booming Chicago-area megachurch pivoted from
what had been deemed a “seeker sensitive” approach to explicitly focus
more on Christian growth and discipleship among its members.
Research previously featured in
CT indicated that most prominent pastors leave the pulpit by 65 [see
chart below, from CT September 2014]; Hybels will be 66 when he steps
down next year, though he will remain involved in the Willow Creek
Association and Global Leadership Summit.
“We’re going to fight through the funk of succession,” Larson assured the crowd on Saturday night. “We know it’s hard.”
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Willow Creek Promotes Egalitarianism
by Announcing Co-Ed Pastors
BY RICHARD HAAS
SEE: http://pulpitandpen.org/2017/10/15/willow-creek-promotes-egalitarianism-by-announcing-co-ed-pastors/;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
On Saturday, October 14, 2017, Bill Hybels
founder of Willow Creek Community Church announced that following his
departure in October 2018 he will be replaced by co-ed pastors. Willow
Creek has named its current executive pastrix Heather Larson and
teaching pastor Steve Carter.“When we saw this shaping up, we had to ask ourselves, ‘Can our congregation have a lead pastor that’s a woman? …. And because this is a deeply held value in our church, we said, ‘No problem.’ ”
When this troubling transition takes place, this will make Willow Creek one of the largest churches in America with a woman in lead pastrix position. It also should be pointed out that Willow Creek will be the only major “evangelical” megachurch with male-female lead pastors who are not married.
For years it has been clear that Willow Creek and Bill Hybels has had very little regard for Scripture or the biblical teaching in general or its proper context. This latest announcement by Bill Hybels and the Willow Creek Association proves only how depraved and filled with hate their hearts are towards God of the Bible. Hybels and Willow Creek are bent on promoting Egalitarianism and the tearing down of the biblical outline outlined in Scripture. Willow Creek is undoubtedly anti-Complementarian. Scripture is clear in 1 Timothy 2:11-14, 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:6-9 that women are not to be in the position of pastor anywhere in the church.
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BILL HYBELS TO RETIRE AND BE REPLACED BY CO-ED PASTOR TEAM (Friday Church News Notes, October 27, 2017, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
Bill Hybels, founder of Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, is retiring in October 2018, to be replaced by Heather Larson as “Lead Pastor” and Steve Carter as “Lead Teaching Pastor.” Willow Creek had female elders from its inception in the 1970s, but in 1997 all staff members were given one year to submit to this stance or step down. That year John Ortberg, one of Willow Creek’s “teaching elders,” wrote a paper saying that the Bible “teaches the full equality of men and women in status, giftedness, and opportunity for ministry” (“Femme Fatale: The Feminist Seduction of the Evangelical Church,” World magazine, March 29, 1997). This is open rebellion to the clear teaching of God’s Word. Willow Creek was one of the first “seeker sensitive” megachurches. Early on it advertised itself like this: “There is no hell-fire and brimstone here, no Bible-thumping, just positive witty messages.” Its main worship center in the community of Willow Creek west of Chicago cost $73 million and seats over 7,000. About 25,000 people attend weekend services at the church’s eight campuses.