THE LAST THING Bill Hybels ever wanted to be was a pastor. In his late teens he had his sights firmly set on running his family’s produce operation as soon as he finished his college studies. His father and his uncles had spent thirty-five years building the business, and the arrows of Hybels’ life all seemed to be lining up to carry the torch into the next generation. He had the work ethic. He had the business appetite. And soon enough he’d have a degree that reflected completion in all the right coursework—economics major, business administration minor. Everything was perfect, except for one small problem: the church he was attending in those days was so unbelievably self-absorbed that it didn’t care an ounce about people who lived close to the church but far from God. The church leaders and members preached compassionate love; they just didn’t see the need to practice it.
The insanity of poor church services, the uninspired preaching, and a whole slew of Christians who weren’t fired up about much of anything wrecked Bill Hybels a little more each week, but he wasn’t altogether sure what he was supposed to do about it. He stayed focused on his business classes and his business future, but all along the way, he noticed something tugging on his soul. Had he the vocabulary at that point to name it, he probably would have recognized it as an early form of his holy discontent.
From there, his holy discontent continued to build until he sat under the tutelage of Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian at Trinity College. “Dr. B.” painted a vibrant picture of what a thriving, Christ-like church was supposed to look like, and Hybels couldn’t help but cringe in his spirit. He knew he’d never been part of a community like that. More troubling still, he knew from firsthand experience that countless people in the surrounding neighborhoods desperately needed the infusion of life and hope and excitement that only a biblically functioning church could afford.
Finally, he had a clear picture of the beauty, power, and potential of the local church when the local church is working right. He knew then and there that his best-laid plans for business were dissipating into thin air. Seekers matter, he thought. And people far from God deserve better local church options than the ones available to them today. Clearly, starting a healthy, Acts 2 church was to be his life’s “one thing.”
When Hybels was just twenty-two years of age, God said to him, “Bill, I’m going to turn your holy discontent—your firestorm of energy and frustration—into something positive. I know how much this issue of dying, demoralizing churches wrecks you. And because it wrecks me too, I’m going to harness your energy and use you to change reality for those seekers.
I’m going to give you a compelling vision for providing a place where all people—regardless how far they are from me—can be welcomed and encouraged and made better because of people close to me who genuinely care.”
Shortly after that prompting from God, Hybels rented the nearby Willow Creek movie theatre with money earned by selling tomatoes door to door and asking three of his buddies to help him start a church for unchurched people.
Bill Hybels has served as the senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church for more than three decades, and truth be told, the same insatiable desire to see lost people found, lonely people enfolded in community, broken people made whole, anxious people find peace is what drives him to this day.
"You can join God in making what is wrong in this world right!”
-Bill Hybels
