This is an excellent article from Jamie Rake at the Phantom Tollbooth on the annual Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. It is an article that needs to be read slowly and carefully (or like me – fast and several times over) to really absorb what Jamie is telling us about the conference, its speakers and its actual purpose.
Hybels and his Leadership Summit has a huge, worldwide influence over many church leaders and their ‘churches’. Whatever Hybels is peddling (and I suspect from the evidence over the years that it is the usual ‘new spirituality’ and its ‘transformational leadership’ of the new gnostics – also known as the New Age and/or Theosophical movements), it isn’t Christianity. But Hybels is crafty enough to maintain a degree of Christianese to deceive as many as possible. Jamie peels of some layers to let you see inside the conference, and raises valid concerns for us to heed.
Below are some highlights from the article and a link to the original:
Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit
“The 2016 GLS teaching would leave a discerning saint hungry and thirsty for more healthy, spiritually uncorrupted fare…”
“Hybels claims God gave him the vision for it, but most of its speakers don’t talk much about Him, especially from a biblically orthodox understanding. Hybels’, to use the Christianese, “heart” for the conference seems to be for non-sectarian leadership development, with an added emphasis on the transformational value of active local church congregations…”
“Amid his assured oratory in his introductory session, presenting speakers, pitching for donations to spread the GLS further about the planet than it already is, another session with psychologist Henry Cloud and Hybels’ authoress daughter, Shauna Niequist about “leadership illusions,” and other duties, Mr. Willow Creek’s dubious affiliations and proclivities became apparent:…”
“GLS’ epicenter may be Hybels, but he is not meant to be its sole attraction. Twelve other main speakers filled out two days of teaching. The one best known out of eccelesiastical and business circles would have to be Melinda Gates, wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
… Conveniently left out of the conversation were any mention the couple’s abortion advocacy and their influence on and funding of the Obama administration’s controversial Common Core public education policy, by which Microsoft stands to reap hefty profit via sales of software to school districts. Hybels did ask her to elaborate on her spirituality, though. Gates is inclined toward the Roman Catholicism of her youth, supplemented by the “contemplative” discipline of silence and daily reading of “spiritual” literature (in the same way the Common Core reading list is “educational”?) by candlelight. It appears Gates would find herself at home during Willow Creek’s papist/new age ecumenical nights of spiritual experimentation called The Practice.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Related Resources:
The Real Roots of the Emergent Church
Peter Drucker: Leadership Network and the Emergence of the Modern Mega-Church Empire
Emergent Catalyst Conference spreads a wider web
The Narrowing Path 
Jamie Lake has some very interesting viewpoints. And I agree that music can lead you astray just like a false prophet, but to get his views across a wider audience, Jamie should tone down his “education” a little. Most ordinary believers don’t have a vocabulary as well as his. They can get frustrated trying to make sense of the long words they don’t use in their ordinary vernacular.
Other than that, Preach on Brother!!!!!
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