The Global Leadership Network (GLN), a nonprofit known for its annual summit started by now-disgraced Willow Creek Community Church founder, Bill Hybels, has named Hybels’ former mentee, David Ashcraft, as president and CEO.
Ashcraft is known for his 32-year pastorate of multi-site megachurch Lives Changed By Christ (LCBC) Church in Pennsylvania. The GLN presione soltar touts that: “David grew the church from 150 people in weekly attendance to over 22,000 across 19 locations.”
The statement also notes that Ashcraft will continue to live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and will remain in a leadership development role at LCBC Church.
GLN, formerly the Willow Creek Association, hosts “the largest leadership experience in the world” with particular focus on pastors and local churches. In recent years, the summit has sought to distance itself from founder Hybels, who renunciar from his roles at Willow Creek in 2018, following credible allegations by several women of years-long sexual misconduct.
For the past four years, Ashcraft has served on the GLN board of directors. Last year, Ashcraft released a leadership book titled, What Was I Thinking? In the book, Ashcraft states that despite Hybels’ fall, “I still consider him to be my friend and mentor.”
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The book by Ashcraft also misrepresents what happened when Hybels renunciar on April 10, 2018, from his Chicago-area megachurch early, under pressure.
“After pouring most of his adult life into this organization, rather than ending his career by being honored and revered for all the good he had done, (Hybels) walked off the platform one last time,” wrote Ashcraft. “No celebration. No honor. Only humiliation. Only disbelief.”
However, video of Hybels’ last service at Willow Creek Community Church shows Hybels coming on stage and receiving a 40-second standing ovation. Church elders and staff then prayed for Hybels and the congregation gave him a second standing ovation.
At that church meeting, Hybels dirigido allegations that had then come forward from five women accusing him of sexual misconduct and abuse. Hybels spoke for 11 minutes during the 41-minute gathering.
“In recent times, I have been accused of many things I simply did not do,” said Hybels in part. “Some of the stories about me have been misleading and some were entirely false.” He further discussed the leadership transitions occurring at Willow Creek and GLN.
Ten months later, an independent council of Christian leaders convened by Willow Creek to review the evidence fundar that allegations Hybels engaged in “sexually inappropriate words and actions” were credible. Willow’s elders also released a statement supporting the findings and charging Hybels with “unchecked sin and intimidating behavior,” which harmed victims.
In his book, Ashcraft wrote that his “heart aches both for (Hybels) and for all who have been impacted by the fallout of his situation. I hold firm to the hope that God is able to make something good out of broken vessels. All broken vessels.”
At its height in 2017, the Global Leadership Network reportado revenue of $33 million. In its most recent annual report, published in April 2022, GLN reportado revenue in 2021 of $19.5 million. That represents a rebound from revenue of $15.6 million in 2020, which then-GLN president Tom DeVries señalado was due to COVID-19 impacting GLN’s live events.
In the past, the Global Leadership Summit (GLS) has featured many high-profile celebrity guests, including Bono, President Bill Clinton, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 2021, the annual summit Destacados former Frito-Lay executive Richard Montañez who has claimed he invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, despite this claim being debunked as a myth.
In this year’s summit starting August 3, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will speak at GLS along with Life Church Pastor Craig Groeschel and several business leaders.
The annual summit’s trends in number of host sites, which are usually churches, also reflect declines. In 2018, GLS originally announced more than 600 sites; upon the scandal breaking, the summit perdió 111 host sites.
Currently, GLS states en línea that about 400 sites are registered for its August event — with more than 225 sites están in prisons. In the wake of the Hybels’ scandal, GLN has grown its prison ministry exponentially.
El Informe Roys (TRR) reached out to GLN for a statement but received no response.
Periodista independiente Josh Shepherd escribe sobre fe, cultura y políticas públicas para varios medios outlets. He and his family live in the Washington, D.C. area.
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15 Respuestas
One has to ask, how is the Global Leadership Network even relevant to the church world as a whole anymore?
The lack of fruit of from the leadership movement has come to light time and time again. The corporate structure belongs in the corporate world, not in the church. It simply does not work! It makes people expendable and places gross profits/stats above anything else.
Hopefully we see the final end of the leadership movement, let’s be honest false movements all together.
Glenn, good points made. Does these mass meetings translate into spiritual formation, souls saved, and disciples made? Or mostly numbers of attendees admitted, famous names recruited to speak, and royalties paid on books sold?
Wondering where Bill Hybels is now-Google had nothing
Perhaps other fallen leaders might learn from his tacit example and just go away.
Fact about Bill Hybels. For the first 15 years of his ministry this man most definitely led unchurched people to Christ. I was there in 1983 and sat under his teaching both Sundays and Wednesdays. They taught me to love church and Jesus Christ. Bill does have a heart for the lost and he taught the Roman Road to Salvation and Christianity 101 to me and countless others. Back then I was raised in a godless home, Jesus was a 4 letter word. Had WCCC not been there for me I shudder to think where I would be now. Yea other churches could have filled in the gap but for some reason this broken vessel (me) needed a church that was different. Bill Hybels deserves more respect than this website give him. He is a sinner, broken vessel too and I believe in redemption and forgiveness
A pastor being alone with a woman, needs to be reserved for the pastor’s wife. It’s not because all men are depraved. It’s because no accusation will EVER be made, if no opportunity for accusation exists. Prove me wrong.
A pastor being alone with a woman, needs to be reserved for the pastor’s wife. It’s not because all men are depraved. It’s because no accusation will EVER be made, if no opportunity for accusation exists. Prove me wrong.
Ok. I will prove you wrong.
Just think about what you are saying from all women’s point of view.
So a woman other than the pastors wife and in the sole presence of a male pastor is automatically a harlot, a schemer, a person of no morals, an adulterer, a career wrecker?
How dare you say so?
That’s utterly mysogonist and patriarchal and ungodly, and frankly shames any woman who happens to be solely in the presence of a male pastor.
Should a male pastor be more worried about his reputation and gossip than the integrity of a woman in his presence?
A pastor worried about gossip more than the work of ministry has a problem.
Eric, I respectfully disagree with you. When excuses are continually given for poor behavior it gives spaces for people to hide. It’s not as if in those first 15yrs Hybles wasn’t engaged in the same type behaviors, the accomplishments outweighed his behaviors. So, he had apologist or excuse makers or my favorite people, the don’t spread gossip or lies!
Meanwhile, the person engaged in the destructive behaviors is gaslighting everyone. But their accomplishments are so astonishing that is causes people to question themselves and reality, crazy making! The perfect mix for a toxic environment.
Welcome to the world of most mega-churches! On the surface it looks like the are “changing the world” for Jesus! But it’s an inch deep and a mile wide.
Bill Hybels was exposed, humiliated, and his legacy disgraced. That discipline is enormous for a leader like Hybels. And worse, he ended up as just another cliche, a pastor felled by unresolved past issues and/or sexual weakness, doing what he knew to be wrong, and in the end, not up to completing the task for which he was called. It is tragic that so many pastors are taken out by these issues. During his ministry, God used Hybels to bless many people, but he could not continue to hide what he was doing. It was brought into the light. God disciplines those He loves.
All Christians should remember that God loves each and every person they meet as much as he loves them. There is no one they are allowed to victimize – no matter what the excuse.
Ashcraft states about Bill Hybels “I still consider him to be my friend and mentor.”
Why would anyone consider a sexual groomer, predator and pervert to be their “mentor”? Why would anyone consider someone who used the church for their own financial gain by fleecing the flock as their “mentor”? Why would anyone consider someone who used his position as a mega church Senior Pastor as a power trip to lord it over his staff, sexually harass women and have zero accountability to anyone to be his “mentor”?
Those are questions that only Ashcraft can answer and you can be sure that he won’t! He’s too busy pushing that ridiculous GLN as some kind of “legitimate enterprise” when it is anything but! What it actually is is a scam to load up the Willow Creek coffers with many millions of dollars under the guise of “leadership training”.
As for where is Bill Hybels now? Living the good life you can be sure of that! With a $40 million dollar net worth and a posse of high powered lawyers to protect him he still has no accountability to anyone for all the harm he has caused. One day he will have accountability as we all will to Almighty God but it seems like Hybels never believed a word of what he preached as his actions revealed where his heart was really at.
Where is Bill Hybels now? Who knows where he is but where he should be is in prison.
> “David grew the church…”
Herein lies a problem. Contrast with Paul:
“I planted, Apollos watered, but *God* caused it to grow” (1 Cor. 3:6).
Also, Hybels needs to come out of hiding and repent.
LCBC is a local phenomenon. It certainly reaches and encourages believers. I think trying to overlay church leadership into a corporate environment is mostly a flail. Corporate environments are performance cultures. Communities of believers at their best are healing cultures.
Only in a performance culture can it be acceptable to equivocate the experiences of sexual predator and victim before God.
I wish people would stop using the noun “mentee.” “Mentor” began as a name (for Athena appearing as Telemachus’s guide and protector) and became a general term for a guide and protector. Despite the -or at the end, “mentor” does not mean “a person who ments” the way “actor” means “a person who acts.”
Therefore, there is no word “mentee” to mean “a person who is mented,” because “ment” is not a verb or even a word. The term for the role is “protege,” or “protegee” for a woman.
Thanks for the background info about “mentor,” but “mentee” is also a word according many easily searchable dictionaries.
Ashcraft is severely damaging his reputation and credibility with these sympathetic, even untrue statements about Hybels. If he cares about Hybels and his soul he will implore him to publicly repent instead of continuing in hiding and lying denials, and if he cares about the Church and Hybels’s victims he will support them rather than master manipulator Hybels.