Willow Creek in national spotlight for work toward racial harmony
The nearly decade-long effort of South Barrington-based Willow Creek Community Church to strive for racial reconciliation in both its own congregation and society at large is spotlighted in the most recent issue of Time magazine.
Senior Pastor Bill Hybels believes there's at least a couple reasons why this ongoing effort would receive national attention at this time.
"I certainly think the election of an African-American president opened the door to higher levels of intelligent discussion about racial issues," Hybels said.
He added that the recent nationwide emphasis on immigration issues has raised questions among people of faith on how to converse and interact with the Hispanic community.
Hybels said he expects the matter of race relations to be a lifelong mission for him, though he admits that much of his life passed without recognizing its importance.
It was just over 10 years ago that a book called "Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America" by Michael Emerson acted as "a bolt of lightning" for him, even though interaction with people of different races had been part of his life for a long time.
Only then did he come to recognize how strongly anti-segregation messages ran through the scriptures he'd been studying all his life.
"Certain passages that today rock my mind and heart about racial reconciliation make me wonder how anybody could miss them," Hybels said. "But I was that 'anybody' for a long time."
He refers to this awakening to racial issues as "a second conversion" and said it is a necessary step in one's spiritual development that still awaits many people of faith from all racial backgrounds.
As the Time article points out, Hybels' suburban megachurch recently reached 20 percent minority makeup, a level reached by less than 8 percent of congregations in the United States.
Its current membership is 80 percent Caucasian, 6 percent Hispanic, 4 percent Asian, 2 percent African-American and 8 percent other ethnicities.
Hybels said he hasn't set any specific goals for his mission to promote racial harmony. He expects the mission to consume the rest of his life and would never consider any aspect of the work to be "done."
He said it has caused him to seek out meaningful inspirations for racial harmony. Inspirations that have resonated strongly include his visits to concentration camps in Europe and standing in Nelson Mandela's former prison cell in South Africa.
He said he believes the national spotlight afforded by Time magazine could be a boon in its ability to inspire other church congregations around the country to strive for the same goals.