Willow Creek Community Church (Bill Hybels)

Willow Creek Community Church was founded by Bill Hybels in 1975 in South Barrington, Illinois, and pioneered the 'seeker-sensitive' evangelical model — services designed for unchurched outsiders, with topical preaching, contemporary music and minimal Christian jargon. By the 2010s its weekly attendance crossed 25,000 and the spin-off Willow Creek Association trained hundreds of thousands of pastors globally through the annual Global Leadership Summit. In March 2018 the Chicago Tribune (Manya Brachear Pashman and Jeff Coen) published the first detailed sexual-misconduct allegations against Hybels from multiple women spanning decades; The New York Times followed in August 2018 with the on-the-record account of Hybels's longtime executive assistant Pat Baranowski. Hybels resigned in April 2018; the entire elder board and successor lead pastor Steve Carter resigned in August 2018; co-lead pastor Heather Larson followed days later. An independent advisory group convened by the church published a 2019 report concluding that the allegations against Hybels were credible. The case is widely cited as a watershed for evangelical-megachurch governance reform alongside the contemporaneous Harvest Bible Chapel (James MacDonald) and Hillsong (Brian Houston) cases.