WHITTIER, CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- At the end of last year, one of the most generous members of Willow Creek Community Church pulled Pastor Bill Hybels aside and told him he just lost his job, was close to losing his home, and would not be able to make his annual gift to the church – traditionally in the six-figure range.

Whipsawed by declining revenue and growing needs for assistance within the church, Hybels and his team faced hard choices.

Hybels speaking at Leadership Summit 09

“After the rogue wave hit us, we had to decide if we still believe God is the hope of the world,” Pastor Hybels told Christians assembled for Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit. Held annually since 1995, the Summit features prominent leaders including Bono and former Prime Minister Tony Blair sharing their strategic insights.

Convinced that God is bigger than the economic downtown, the team at Willow Creek decided they would live out “the Acts 2 dream” with God’s help. Pastor Hybels embarked on a teaching series titled: ‘What we can learn in a downturn.’ He asked those who needed assistance to humble themselves, and let the church lend a hand in their hour of need.

He challenged others who retained good jobs to step up their giving. “There is nothing like the local church when the local church is working right,” he said.

Hybels’ ministry team began to offer elongated prayer sessions and other spiritual counseling at the end of their services. “We are blurring the end of our services,” he said. “No one is coming to church anymore looking for a mild dose of God.”

The church wanted to offer more help to those in need, yet faced a decline in giving. “The math made no sense from a human perspective,” Hybels admitted. “Planning became more like guesswork,” he said.

Several years ago, Pastor Hybels endured a bout with pastoral burnout. “The pace at which I was doing the work of God was destroying God’s work in me,” he realized. During the last six months, Hybels recognized the same danger signs. “I was slowly falling into a depleted condition,” he confessed.

Hybels’ day usually began in his church office at 6:00 a.m., when he started reading his Bible, followed by sermon preparation. However, stacks of papers surrounding him on his desk cried out for attention – something he found difficult to ignore. He found the economic crisis and its impact on the church slowly strangled his devotional time with God.

“My temptation as a pastor is to work 24/7,” he said. To fight that tendency, and to refill his own spiritual “bucket,” he decided to make a radical change in his work schedule.

“I set up a room in my house where I could start the day more gently,” Hybels said. “I read God’s Word more slowly…I listened to God more slowly.” After his quiet time of communion with God, he arrived at church at 9:00 a.m.—later than ever before.

“Leaders,” Hybels intoned, “the best thing you can bring to your people is a filled-up bucket.”

The Leadership Summit also dealt with the difficult subject of staff layoffs or firings. Carly Fiorina, the former chairman and CEO of Hewlett Packard, argued for honesty in these situations. “A firing should never be a surprise,” Fiorina advised. “The most important gift you can give someone is candor.”

The Leadership Summit is broadcast via satellite from Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago to more than 140 locations across North America. At Whittier Area Community Church in southern California, more than 500 attended the event, held August 6-7.

Pastor Bill Ankerberg, at Whittier Area Community Church, believes the event allows his church to help identify emerging leadership. “We wanted to give our church the opportunity to be exposed to a higher level of thinking about church leadership,” he said.
“This will help us get to the next level of strategic ministry.”