My wife, Kris, and I attended Willow Creek for 10 years, while my daughter, Laura, was a member for nearly 20. She even met her husband there, and they were deeply proud of their church community. When the Chicago Tribune broke the story in 2018 regarding Bill Hybels’ abuse and the subsequent cover-up, I told Kris, “This is going to be the downfall of Willow Creek. This is true about Bill Hybels.” As a theologian who teaches at seminaries, I felt as if a pastor were betraying those of us who had long cited Willow Creek as a model of excellence. For my daughter, the experience was one of deep personal betrayal—a sentiment shared by many at Willow and in other congregations where similar patterns of abuse and denial have occurred.
While pastoral abuse can happen in any setting, churches lacking external accountability are the most vulnerable. The independent, autonomous church model often provides an ideal habitat for narcissistic leadership. This risk extends to megachurches as well; while many megachurch pastors do excellent work, these large-scale organizations can inadvertently attract outsized egos. Power has the inherent potential to corrupt character, making it essential to have an accountability team that consistently challenges leadership. This highlights the vital importance of nurturing accountability in church leadership to prevent such systemic failures.
Congregations should ideally maintain a sense of respect and trust for their pastors, but that trust must be earned rather than assumed. For many at Willow Creek, the trust they placed in Bill Hybels was built upon a carefully crafted persona rather than the truth. When the reality surfaced, members perceived it as a fundamental betrayal of honesty and a display of profound hypocrisy. In the wake of such crises, recognizing the power of apology in leadership can be transformative in beginning the long process of healing and restoration.
Some Christians leave the church over leaders who abuse. Non-Christians who are looking for a reason not to believe or who are looking for the kind of witness and testimony that is totally credible and compelling may have a harder time believing and trusting. Church abuse causes Americans across the map to become cynical of the truthfulness and the transparency of all pastors. I’ve had numerous pastors say to me, None of us is trusted now. That hurts evangelism.
We need to be honest and even candid about the gross sinfulness of some of these leaders when we’re witnessing to our non-Christian friends. Diminishing these sins makes us complicit. Honesty and candor are first. God is dealing with broken people in this world to redeem them, so being perfect is not a requirement. But pastors are held to a more rigorous standard of Christian behavior, and should be.
What churches need is goodness. Goodness goes a long way with people who are wondering about the truth of Christianity. But we never talk about being good, because of Romans 3:10: “There is none righteous, no not one.” People are afraid of saying they’re good, but a fruit of the Spirit is goodness. The Old Testament is filled with this Hebrew word for good, tov.
How do you move from a toxic culture to a tov, or good, culture? Organizational transformation people say it takes seven years to change the culture of an organization. And change starts when people form pockets of tov: small groups that are committed to empathy and grace, to knowing people and telling the truth, to nurturing service and justice and Christlikeness. These people see things and say, That’s not right. Then these pockets have to begin to grow or multiply in churches, and before long, they begin to grow together, and the broader church culture starts to move toward tov. Then it becomes an instinct to resist narcissism, to say, You’re using your power through fear, and that’s not right. We don’t do that kind of thing around here. We put people first. We don’t want any celebrities. The only hero in our church is Jesus.
With tov, we can focus on redemption. I’m concerned about teaching future pastors and current pastors that they need to work hard at nurturing a culture of tov in their churches. If they are tov, they will tell the truth and be humbled before it. They will serve others and do the right thing. They won’t pursue narcissistic power and fear and celebrity and hero cultures.
It takes a special character to have a huge, flourishing, successful church or organization and to do so with Christian grace and character. Every person who claims the name of Christ and who is a leader of a church or organization has an obligation to operate in as Christian a manner as is possible. This impacts the testimony of the church.
The term we use for pastors matters, too. When you call yourself a leader, you see yourself in front of people. They’re following you. When you call yourself a pastor, your responsibility is to nurture the spirituality of people. There is a big difference between those two. Yes, pastors lead people. But not all leaders are pastors. And the fundamental category for those who are called to churches is pastor.
We have to have multiplication of pastors who are actually pastoring people. The bigger the church, the more pastors. That’s expensive, so we’ve learned to centralize. But in centralizing we lose pastoral relation with people. And maybe one of the biggest problems in the church today is that very thing right there: a lack of pastoring pastors.
I want churches to ask, How tov is my church? I would love for people to focus on being a tov church instead of a “successful” one. Tov is the ultimate success.