The story challenging the faith of some of the saints tonight is that the entire Board of Elders at Willow Creek Community Church, a megachurch based in the suburbs of Chicago, announced their resignations. The lead pastor, Heather Larson, announced her resignation as effective immediately tonight, while the lead teaching pastor, Steve Carter, had already resigned the previous Sunday.
This is largely due to allegations of misconduct, misbehavior, sexual harassment, and potentially much more egregious wrongs by their founding pastor, Bill Hybels. These allegations are coming to more light as the #MeToo, and its Christian church related #ChurchToo, movement continues to empower those harmed to speak up, share their stories, and call their abusers to accountability.
It only takes a brief web search to learn how prominent and influential Bill Hybels has been across American Christianity. And power and influence can lead any of us to both idolize and lionize people in visible leadership like that.
Such is the case in this instance as the recent allegations and stories are not the first ones to be made against Bill Hybels. One elder, Misty Rasmussen, said, “We trusted Bill, and this clouded our judgment.” Her remarks demonstrate the ease of the church’s leadership to dismiss the allegations, particularly after the accusers became silent or recanted stories (often after coercion or harassment).
However, Rasmussen’s remarks demonstrate a clear biased fallacy that is baked in to so many of our organizations and networks. People are quick to think, “I know X, and X is a good person,” combined with “good people don’t do bad things,” so we ignore or, more actively, dispute claims against our person X. This happens all the time in politics.
The problem becomes far more than the misbehavior and abuse of a single person in power, like Bill Hybels, but is baked into the system. A system that encourages people who frequently whitewash and glorify their leaders to the extent of nearly deifying them. Christianity, particularly the more fundamental and American strains, tend to put a lot of stock into God-ordained leadership, that is all rulers and authorities have been set in place by God and intentionally so, or as the King James Version of Romans 13:1b says, “the powers that be are ordained of God.”
So, what do you do when the very person who relays the Word of God is the one molesting you? Well, you probably stay quiet: assume “God is testing me,” or believe perhaps that you deserved this, after all, the power that is, this pastor, is harming you. Or, perhaps, you think it mustn’t be harm since it is from God, and so you should try to find a blessing in it, or that you should be thankful God found someone to take interest in you.
When, finally, you share some small portion of this experience with another, you get a mirror to examine how twisted the situation is. Maybe you wrestle with the implications of how this person is a “good person” (more of the time, a “good and godly man”) and how if you say something it might hurt them or hurt God’s ministry they are involved in. But you come forward, make a statement, challenge what is, and tell your story.
THIS IS WHERE THE SYSTEM FAILS, HAS FAILED, AND CONTINUES TO FAIL.
It wasn’t one accuser against one abuser. Instead, it was one accuser against an abuser AND their entire support network, consisting of the power structure of the whole organization, the church itself via the Board of Elders and others.
We cannot continue to believe in this form of Christianity that always, always, ALWAYS, sides with the powerful and will not even hear out the victim in good faith. Nor can we allow those who confess to continue to publicize their own narratives rather than engaging the whole, messy truth and the entirety of discord it caused and continues to cause.
This can be seen in the closing statement of the elder quoted earlier, Rasmussen, “Our board never acted out of malice, and tried to serve the church we love faithfully.” No, it may not have felt like it was acting out of intentional, active malice, Becky… I mean Misty. But, it absolutely WAS malice to silence, avoid, ignore, dismiss, and disregard any challenge to your precious leader. Trying to paint the picture in any other light is playing PR games to save your face.
If Christians are earnest about caring for, and loving, their neighbors, they had better be willing to listen to them. And for those looking to save their face and remain looking pious, the Synoptics share this concept from Jesus, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Mark 8:35 / Matthew 16:25 / Luke 9:24)