An interesting article was written by Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries. She talks about the 2009 leadership conference or summit lead by Bill Hybel’s Willow Creek Association. Two of the guest speakers for this “leadership” conference will be Tony Blair and Rock Star Bono.
Why would any Christian go to a Christian leadership conference to hear from Tony Blair and Bono? They both are all-paths pseudo Christian heretics. Seems to me that Bill Hybels job was to first dumb down Christianity with his seeker friendly program and then steer the pseudo Christians under his influence into the end time one world religion Harlot of Bible prophecy described in Revelation chapter 17.
Notice that Rick Warren is a board member of the Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation. Warren is even more influential than Hybels in the seeker movement. Also be aware that Tony Blair’s recent conversion to Catholicism was not just some coincidence it was for darn good reason. At some point that church will head this world harlot religion. With Tony Blair and Bono as speakers, this Willow Creek leadership conference ought to be named “The making of a Harlot”.
If you count all the churches under the influence of Hybels Creeker Network and Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Movement we are talking about half of the so called evangelicals in America! So, in just two decades these two people destroyed the meaning of the term “evangelical Christian”.
So go ahead and continue to tell me that God is behind Rick Warren and Bill Hybels but anyone with an ounce of Christian discernment can see that these men are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Maybe this is relavent, one time I go to help a youth group at a church and it is one of those stay up all night deals. I look over and these kids have broke out guitar hero. I am not a fan of guitar hero in the first place let alone in a Church setting. I say something about it ,becuase of the music being played and the visuals on the TV screen niether which I thought not to be Christian at all, all the grown folk look at me like I am stupid but a couple of the kids agreed with me that the whole guitar hero was a lil too much “of the world.”
Guitar hero is wicked, no doubt. If you play the guitar well enough, a devil with horns comes up from the back of the stage. Unbelievable that so-called Christians buy this filth for their kids. Parents don’t understand that they will be held accountable.
To keep this on topic, if Rick Warren knew his Bible, which he doesn’t, he wouldn’t be conversing with people such as Tony Blair.
But then again, Warren IS a member of the wicked Council on Foreign Relations.
I think Dr. Rick Warren lacks proper understanding of the Bible not knowledge of what it says. Postmodern leaders like him often put meanings on passages that will please the world and their own generation. The CFR is working toward world governance and it sees a role for religion to help bring about that agenda about. That is why certain powerful religious leaders are invited to be members.
Amen to that. I really tried to read Purpose Driven Life. Both my wife and I had copies and tried to read it before we got married. On day one, I thought this might be borrowing too much from popular self-help, but dismissed it as an aberration. By the end of the first week, I was convinced the whole thing was drivel. I never finished the book and have been distrustful of Warren ever since.
Oh. And my wife couldn’t read it either. I guess we both had an ounce of discernment! 🙂
I think we all have to be careful of anyone who interprets God’s word. I am not sure that Rick Warren started out with the intent to decieve but I do not know enough about him either way to say for sure. I try very hard to spend time in study after every sermon I hear, because I fear if not I will become lazy and just let someone else interpret for me. Many have and will be deceived because of spritual sloth.
I currently attend a church that is a satellite of Saddleback/Willow Creek. I have not seen or heard anything that has given me concern. But I remain alert and ask God daily for discernment, but admit it is not always easy. I fear we may see more and more of this kind of deception in all kinds of churches. It seems to me that the only defense is constant time in prayer and in God’s Word. Now is not the time to become complacent: I must remain vigilant. The time may soon come that I am no longer able to access articles like this, or even my bible.
I don’t know enough about Rick Warren to comment, however I’ve attended Willow Creek for the past 6 years, and at various times 18 years ago when I was in high school.
Bill Hybels is definitely not a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing,’ and I take offense and anyone making negative comments about a person when they haven’t even met them. Also, these people that are making negative comments haven’t seen enough messages or attended enough services to make any comments.
I am the daughter of a pastor that attended Wheaton College for Seminary and his master’s and also has a Phd. in Theology from Marquette University. He has attended numerious services at Willow Creeek with my sister and I over the years, and has not found Bill Hybels to be the anti-christ, nor has he found the Willow doctrine or statement of beliefs to be anything other than biblically sound.
I challenge these people making all the negative comments to come to the South Barrington campus of Willow Creek for the next few months before making any further comments. Don’t we all have enough problems without Christians attacking other Christians? Do these people even know the personal sacrifices that Bill Hybels and the original Willow members made to start the church?
A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions.
Proverbs 18:2
If Bill Hybels and Willow Creek has such a sound bible based program why has he even said that his seeker friendly model is a failure and why is he now hobnobbing with heretical all-paths and Emergent leaders? Why does he have conferences and then invite people like Bono and Tony Blair to speak? Tony Blair has a interfaith foundation that promotes a great world Harlot – interfaith religion.
You cannot tell a wolf in sheep’s clothing by meeting them. You can tell them by what they do with the message of salvation and what they say about Jesus the author of our faith.
I am sure Rick Warren and Bill Hybels have plenty of degrees and people with degrees obviously follow them. However, degrees do not seem to help leaders or followers stay on biblical ground. If you do not believe me and Jan Markel about what is going on at Willow Creek I can drop plenty of other names for you that are saying the same thing.
As for Christians attacking each other. That is not the real problem here. The problem in Christianity today is that Christians are not holding their leaders accountable in their churches to the word of God. That is because most “Christians” in these churches no longer know the word of God and they also tend to put their pastors on pedestals. The only people holding these national leaders accountable is outsiders that still read the Bible with some understanding. We can find out about the Creeker program from what they themselves publish for the public and their conferences. We do not need to continue to attend your church services to know what is taking place.
I am sure there is nothing wrong with their official statement of beliefs . But you won’t find the gospel of salvation in the service on Sunday either and you will not find it at their conferences. If you remember, Paul warned us that wolves in sheep clothing would come and told us to check out everything by the word of God. There is nothing more wolfish than Emergent and Interfaith spiritualists with their subtle messages of deception leading the sheep down slippery slopes toward the New Age.
By the way, I have visited a Creeker mega church many times over the years. I have yet to hear the gospel of salvation in the Sunday service after it turned Creeker. But, it was first class entertainment. Before it became a Creeker church the gospel of salvation was preached within every sermon and literally dozens of people came down for salvation or re-dedication every Sunday. The membership of this mega Church changed almost one hundred percent after it went Creeker. The people who actually read the Bible generally went elsewhere. Going Creeker at Grace Church in St Louis was some improvement!
Bono, Hybels, Warren and Blaire have an evil agenda for sure. They want to feed the poor, get malaria medicine to thousands dying in Africa, and fight Aids. Be careful that they don’t suck you into their hellish plan of fighting poverty. We all just need to invite Jesus into our hearts and watch this sinful world burn in hell. I’m sure God sent those malaria infected mosquitoes to Africa as punishment against their sin. All those orphaned children of parents who died of aids and malaria are probably Satan’s spawn anyway. Read Matt. 25:31-46 or Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” if you don’t understand what I’m trying to say.
Nobody said they are not men of good will. Do you really think the world hates its own? What you failed to mention is that they do not use the riches and the world platforms that God gives them to help the poor, to dispense the gospel of salvation that would also give life to their lost soul. To whom much is given much is required.
Most Christians in the Chicagoland Area know of the Willow Creek church.
Usually when I speak with someone in person who attends there I am puzzled
that they would attend there. There must be a reason.
That is simple. It is a mega Church. It is upbeat, requires little Christian participation for those who want to get lost in the crowd, and for those that want to participate in a group it has all sorts of programs that aim to please.
I have been at Willow as my church home for a long time. I take God and the bible and serving others inside and outside of my church very seriously. Many others at Willow do also. BUT — the difficult thing with a big church is that there tends to be a revolving door of staff, and things can get a little dicey amongst the congregation. There are as of late a tougher set up standards coming into play for participating members. I am proud of how hard my church works to serve the poor and disenfranchised, but it is difficult for me to deal with some of the out of line behavior that can and does happen. But as I have spent more time recently at a smaller church to check things out, I found some equally loose behavioral standards.
The difficult thing about smaller churches is that many of them are mostly one ethnic group or another. Willow is slowly but surely becoming a more mixed church. It is easier to cover up things at a big church and then for that junk to eventually ooze out. And this is where my own church has to be careful. And sometimes we put a happy face on things and do not deal with the junk head on. And I think too many people who interview to be staff members and leaders snow whoever interviews them, and we wind up having some staff members and volunteer leaders who should not be there. But it is probably that way at most churches. Sometimes I think Christians in general are pretty naive and too trusting. Jesus sure wasn’t, so why do we tend to do that? Like with the Ekhart Tolle stuff. I do not think that many believers understand how deadly he is. But I watched my spouse get into Tolle stuff and then snap. But I find few people can absorb what I am trying to tell them about Tolle. I for sure, am no longer a naive Christian.
In the end, what really matters is how we as individuals follow God and use the life he’s given us to do his will.
Small churches or large churches, they all have their problems. Being the daughter of a pastor in my teens and early twenties, I was privvy to everything that went on at our church. Let me tell you, there are ‘bad’ (for lack of a better word) people everywhere.
No matter what church, there are problems and people that aren’t really there because Jesus is their savior and they want to worship him. Again, this is why people can’t stand Christians. We are so judgemental of everything and everyone, myself oftentimes included. I doubt this behavior is what God had in mind when he created us.
In the end what really matters for Christians is what they did with the gifts God gave them to carry out His will on earth. Exposing error is part of the program for those with any discernment.
The idea that Christians are any more judgmental than non Christians is a myth. Try Comparing Christians to Muslims. Furthermore, since true Christians do have the truth they should have good judgment and that good judgment certainly should be used to discern what is of God and what is of the world in the affairs of the Church.
God knew our behavior before He even created us that is why Jesus was His plan of salvation before the world was even created.
All churches have problems like you said but Christians should try to deal with those problems and not just let the “bad people everywhere” corrupt the local church