THE LEADERSHIP INTERVIEW
In 1996, Jon Krakauer, a journalist for Outside magazine, climbed Mt. Everest as one of eight clients of a New Zealand expedition. Five of the eight made it all the way to the top. Of the five who did, only Krakauer, however, survived the climb. The other four, plus five more climbers from three other expeditions, died as a rogue storm blew in that afternoon.
In Into Thin Air, Krakauer described what it was like to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the highest mountain and ceiling of the world.
“I’d been fantasizing about this moment,” he writes, “and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, I just couldn’t summon the energy to care …
“Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation … But the summit was really only the halfway point. Any impulse I might have felt toward self-congratulation was extinguished by overwhelming apprehension about the long, dangerous descent that lay ahead.”
It was on the descent that Krakauer’s teammates perished due to a series of miscalculations.
Midlife is a kind of summit—you have experience, a network, a decent income. You may be relatively comfortable now. But midlife is only the halfway point. The next stage—of life and ministry—may be the most perilous.
At 47, Bill Hybels is a unique blend of intense and intentional. He still pastors the church he planted when he was 24, Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. LEADERSHIP editors Dave Goetz and Marshall Shelley asked him about the challenges ahead.
As you near 50, has midlife affected your enthusiasm for ministry?
This is the best time in my life, because I’ve had 23 years to put a team together here at Willow Creek. I’ve never derived more joy from those I’m working with than today.
Beyond that, my kids are grown. I used to work a ten-hour day and then come home to two kids standing in the driveway. The second shift went from 4:30 in the afternoon till 9:00 at night. Now that my kids are grown and gone, I have much more time to give to ministry.
Do you stay on top of all the changes in culture and ministry?
I can’t. I’ve taken myself out of certain information loops. I have only so much emotional and intellectual horsepower. I want to develop my mind and my skills in areas that pertain to what my life is mostly about.
What information loop have you removed yourself from?
Cyberspace. I’m not technologically oriented, and I have a strong belief that ministry is fundamentally about relationships. Technology can help us—Willow has an information systems department and is on the Internet—but for me to try to keep up with the meteoric growth and change of that industry is not time well spent.
Where do you invest your energies?
Current events are at the top of my list. I read two newspapers a day and three national magazines a week, and watch the network news and CNN every day. Those are non-negotiables for me. I use current events for teaching moments with the congregation—how God is at work in the world here and now. However, I don’t follow popular culture too closely. If I have time to see a movie people are talking about, I’ll try to fit it in.
I tend to do my reading and personal development in rank-order fashion. At this stage in life, I know what God has gifted me to do. I know how I can have the greatest impact with the remaining years of my life.
My top spiritual gift is leadership. I read more on leadership than I do any other subject matter. I want to be the best leader I can be. And I would like to help other Christian leaders improve their leadership if I can. If there are 15 books put in front of me, I’ll take a pass on all the cyberspace books and read five leadership books—and not feel bad about it.
I’m also quite passionate about boats, and I read a lot about sailboat racing and boating.
Are you ever tempted to coast as a leader?
When I hear of someone growing “at a 45-degree angle every quarter of every year of his life,” I think, That’s not the reality I know. Usually there will be a convergence of pressures or opportunities that force me to grow. When those pressures are taken away, there’s a kind of regrouping. Then something else comes that causes me to stretch.
What has caused a spike in your personal growth?
A few years back we realized Willow was a church of 15,000 with a foundation that would support 10,000. That meant we had to put the brakes on growth and rebuild the entire infrastructure of the church. I estimated the rebuilding would take five years.
I took a lot of long walks, asking, Is that what I want the next five years of my life to be about? God had certainly not released me from my call at Willow, but I knew that I was going to have to learn a whole new way of leading. I had to provide leadership for a complex reengineering that, frankly, seemed like it would be a drudge.
I began meeting with leaders who had rebuilt the infrastructures of their companies. I met with mentors who helped me in leadership. A few years into our restructuring, I actually appreciated the learning from this process. I was a better leader for having led Willow through this. Now we’re on the other side.
Last weekend was the highest weekend attendance in the history of Willow Creek (19,000). Would I have signed up for a five year course? No. Was it profitable for me? Yes.
It took a lot of work with wise people to sort out what a sustainable, fully devoted life looks like.
What was running through your mind on the walks around the block?
One thing was, Hey, a church of 15,000 isn’t too bad. Few people were complaining. We were having conversions, and people were growing. We were debt free. It was all rolling along nicely. But those of us who looked deeply into the inner workings of the church could see the right thing to do would be to rebuild—if we wanted to discover some day the full redemptive potential God had in mind for this church.
Many leaders come to these decision points and decide not to do the new learning and growing. I often hear of pastors whose two services on Sunday mornings are full, and the obvious thing is to start a Saturday-evening service, but the pastor says, “That’s going to be too much work. I don’t want to give up a Saturday.”
Few pastors in their mid-fifties and beyond are willing to subject themselves to the rigors associated with a major change in ministry. They don’t want to subject their carefully constructed life to the risks associated with taking new ground. The price is too high.
These moments of truth happen all the time and are quite hidden to the casual onlooker, but in the recesses of their hearts, leaders with any level of awareness know what’s going on.
Is there a switch in your soul that says, “More for Jesus” or “I’ve done enough”?
I’ve wondered most of my life why I sometimes pay a price and why at other times I’m unwilling to pay it. Sometimes I’m highly motivated to develop my skills and abilities and mind and heart, and at other times I’m a little more willing to coast.
When you’ve stayed at one church as long as I’ve stayed here, there’s a price level you get comfortable paying. Every time that price goes up, I have to do a gut check: What am I in this for? Am I here to be comfortable and reduce personal cost? Or am I here to pour out my life as a drink offering to Jesus?
We’ve just committed to doing more building here at Willow. We’ve been debt free for many years, and now all of a sudden we’re going to have to move back into fundraising, dirt moving—all of the challenges associated with major building programs. We built non-stop for the first 18 years of Willow Creek; it felt good not to build for a few years.
With Willow’s high profile, do you feel pressure to stay “cutting edge”?
Not really. I know some pastors who are “growth junkies.” They spend more time reading and going to seminars and conferences than they do fulfilling the mission for which they were called. There is a balance between learning and doing—a rhythm we all have to find.
Frankly, I’ve never understood the logic of wanting to be on the cutting edge, because I don’t see any biblical imperative to innovate for innovation’s sake. The Bible says, “By this is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit.” When innovation is directly tethered to increased effectiveness, sign me up. But when it’s innovation for innovation’s sake, I suspect there may be something else driving that.
Given the explosion of innovation in the church today, do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and ask yourself, What did I start?
Whatever innovation excess there is, I don’t lose much sleep over that. That usually corrects itself over time. Smart people ask themselves the same question, “Why are we doing this?”
What I celebrate is how over the last 15 years the average church has changed. It’s common now for churches to have mission statements, to have well thought through strategies. It’s normal for people to think how to be more effective in evangelism, small groups, spiritual-gift development, etc. Seeking effective ministry—that’s very gratifying to me.
You have an intensity that burns hotter than it does for most people. What formative things in your life created such an intense focus?
The question catches me a little off guard; I think all of us consider ourselves to be normal—that’s all we know. I don’t know what it’s like to be less intense or less focused than I am. A good portion of it is genes, I guess.
However, when I was saved at 17, I had a dramatic conversion: I went from a performance-based theology to a grace-based theology. In a moment of time, I understood I was loved so much that Christ went to the cross so salvation could be made available to me as a gift. The enormity of that shock has never left me. I have been permanently ignited by the miracle of grace.
I still can’t get over grace. I don’t witness to my friends because I feel any obligation to witness. I can’t get over grace. I am catalyzed by the gospel message.
I also had a lot of deaths in my extended family. My grandparents and six uncles died when I was a young boy. When I was growing up, it seemed like every year, or a couple of times a year in some cases, I stood at the casket of loved ones. The reality of death, the brevity of life, heaven and hell—that has always contributed to a sense of urgency. I can remember seeing my father, a strong unemotional type, at the funerals of his brothers and his mother and his dad, breaking down, crying. As a boy, I remember thinking, This is really serious. There’s a finality about life I have to deal with.
A lot of my friends have yet to go to the funeral of a loved one. They don’t really believe people die.
Total abandonment to the cause of Christ has been one of your life themes. But recently you’ve also emphasized “boundaries.” What is total abandonment with boundaries?
The key word is sustainability. A few years ago, I discovered my willingness to pay additional prices, hopefully for the right reasons, was unsustainable. For example—when I had to give one message Wednesday and Thursday nights, and then a different message twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday—the drink offering I enjoyed pouring out was unsustainable.
That’s when I awakened to the fact that I need to replenish myself. That was one of the most complex times in my life—part of me felt like I was going soft, no longer willing to lay down my life. Another part was saying, If you don’t figure out how to make your life sustainable you’ve got about two years left before they’ll carry you out in a bag.
It took a lot of work with wise people, Christian counselors, elders, my wife, children, and friends to sort out what a sustainable, fully devoted life looks like.
I love local church work. It’s the highest-stakes game in town.
What disciplines did you put in place in your twenties that are benefiting you now in your forties?
The first is family. Listening to the counsel of older Christian leaders, I decided to keep my family on the front burner of my life. I established date nights with Lynne and developed a pattern of being home with my children three or four nights each week. We took frequent family vacations and made sure that our children never saw the church as an encroachment on our love for them. Those commitments served us well. My 22-year-old daughter works in our student ministries department, and my 20-year-old son serves as a volunteer in a student ministry in Southern California. They love God and the church.
The second is physical discipline. In my mid-twenties, I started taking exercise and nutrition imperatives from God’s Word seriously. First Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Glorify God with your body.” I’d never really looked at the managing of my body as being a spiritual discipline. I was challenged by a health-conscious Christian to integrate the stewardship of my body into the rest of my discipleship commitments. I’m 47 now and recently had a physical; the doctor said, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”
Third is the discipline of journaling each day, writing out my prayers to God. I began the classic spiritual disciplines in my late twenties. Today they have become like breathing to me. I couldn’t live without them.
Finally, the rhythms of replenishment keep a spirit of adventure alive. My summer study break and the freedom I gave myself to have interests outside the church, like boating, also serve me well.
I have a lot of enthusiasm for life. I feel more alive and more energetic about life—not just my life as a minister but my life as a person, my life as a family member, husband, father, my life as a friend, my life as a crew member on a sailboat.
What new disciplines are you putting in place now that will benefit you in your sixties?
I’m paying a lot more attention these days to friendships. Now that my kids are grown, I have more relational energy to invest. Many of us at Willow have been together for 25 years—some of us started the youth group before Willow. We may have the pleasure of growing old together. God may let us do the whole run together.
Next week I’m going out with the four founding couples of Willow Creek. We stay close. Sometimes we vacation together. Then there are other individuals God has added over the years. I’m finding great joy in solid, close Christian friendships and want to lean more into that.
How have you built that into your role as pastor?
Every Tuesday the eight people who report directly to me, Willow’s management team, sit around a table in my office. We have food brought in and for the first hour and a half we ask each other one question: “So, how are you doing, really?”
Invariably, we have moments of sidesplitting laughter. One of our leaders dropped off her daughter at school and was in such a hurry to get back to Willow that in front of all the other moms and dads, she reached for the door handle of her car while saying good-bye to her girl and climbed into the back seat of her car. The image of a highly competent, professional, gifted leader sitting alone in the back seat of her car had us rolling in laughter.
On the same day, another person had a devastating experience that resulted in our gathering around, laying hands on him, and praying fervently for him.
Those two incidents are a microcosm of life in all its fullness—doing God’s work shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, soul to soul—enjoying the highs and enduring the lows, making the mundane rich because of each other’s fellowship.
One of our editors recently commented that through the years you have remained fully engaged in life. You read mail from critics. You allow discretionary pain into your life that other large church pastors might not permit. Is that intentional?
Absolutely. When Jesus promised us life in all its fullness, I think he really meant it. He said, “I want to introduce life in technicolor, with surround-sound—life with unbelievable highs and devastating lows, life as full and complete as a human being can experience it.”
I tell myself regularly that this is not the pre-game show. This is the real deal. This is the only crack at life I’m going to get, and I don’t want to insulate myself from it. In the movie Shadowlands, C. S. Lewis says, “If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”
The older I get, the more I want to love deeply, and I know that means being hurt badly sometimes. I want to celebrate raucously, because I think celebration is a gift from God. I want to grieve thoroughly when there’s a loss, laugh heartily when something’s funny, and get really, really mad when God’s sense of justice is violated.
I don’t know many people who are as fired up about what they do every day as I am. I love local church work. I love the people I do it with. I love the rigors of it, the challenges of it. I love the stakes of it. It’s heaven and hell. It’s relationships. It’s families. It’s the highest-stakes game in town.
I love that.
Keeping Your Ministry Tuned
How Bill Hybels is adjusting (and not adjusting) with the times.
How has your ministry changed?
The core needs of human beings will always be about the same. How those needs get expressed, however—the smoke signals people send—need to be discerned and interpreted carefully as society changes.
When we first started Willow Creek, we saw the value of anonymity for the unchurched. Seekers didn’t want to be known or recognized.
Now, however, we have a seeker small-group ministry. Hundreds of seekers say, “While I’m deciding whether Jesus Christ is who he said he was, I’d like to find some friendships. I’d like to get to know some people and experience Christian community.”
Are you adapting to postmodernism?
When I see a trend emerging, I ask myself, How pervasive is this? Is this going to affect large numbers of people in society? Or is this a blip on the chart? I don’t want to engineer a more dramatic change than is necessary.
When the discussion about postmodernism started, our staff read all the books and even wrote some. The few works that I’ve read since then overstate the case. The stereotypes cause me concern. Many authors generalize in a way that doesn’t correspond to the reality I know of people in that age group. I have kids in the Gen-X age group.
Does Gen-X not care about “truth”?
When we first started our Gen-X ministry, my concern was “Let’s not swing the pendulum back toward ‘experience’ too far.” At a certain point knowledge informs experience. If you sit in the woods for a week, you can experience only so much unless you have some information that can inform your experience.”
We try to find the balance between knowledge and experience. One of the highest responses in our Gen-X services was when Lee Strobel gave three messages on “Why believe there’s a God?” “Why believe the Bible?” and “Why believe Jesus Christ is who he said he was?”
I suspect the high response was because much of the experience of those who attended had been devoid of that kind of straight-on approach to the presentation of truth.
How do you keep your ministry sharp?
What has sharpened my understanding most about effective ministry today has been wide exposure to God’s activity around the world. When I watch God at work in Pretoria, Auckland, Singapore, Nuremberg, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, and other places—that keeps God out of boxes for me. I see many creative and effective ways leaders bring the gospel to people in their culture.
Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
