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We live in a world that measures success by size. Bigger, we're told, is better. Willow Creek Community Church certainly fits the model. Every weekend 17,000-plus people attend six services (two exclusively designed for Gen-Xers) programmed with cutting-edge music, drama, and teaching to reach the unchurched. The services' "wow" factor is aided by 50 vocalists, a 75-piece choir, seven rhythm bands, a 65-piece orchestra, 41 actors, a video production department, and an arts center with 200 students that serves as a farm club for future talent.

But what if size is not the goal? What if you wanted to create the kind of intimate spiritual community in Acts 2, which describes early Christians caring for each other as if they were family? Can you create that kind of environment with thousands of people? Willow has spent 25 years figuring out how.

"The original concept of Willow was a kind of grand experiment," says Senior Pastor Bill Hybels. "It was based on the belief that it might be possible, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to build an Acts 2, biblically functioning community on the northwest suburbs of Chicago in the 1970s."

Hybels caught the vision from Gilbert Bilezikian, one of his instructors at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and still his mentor and close friend.

Bilezikian repeatedly shared his dream with Hybels for a contemporary Acts 2 church.

Hybels had been leading a youth ministry called Son City that in three years had mushroomed from 25 to 1,200 attenders. The loud, cutting-edge Christian music, the gritty realism of dramatic skits, and the use of multimedia were wrapped around Bible studies delivered without Christian jargon on topics that young people could relate to. The church's more traditional leaders struggled to accept what—in that time and place—seemed like radical methods for communicating the gospel and "doing church."

In May 1974, during a Son City outreach event when 300 kids stood in long lines waiting for counselors to lead them to Christ, Hybels knew he could never go back to doing church the traditional way. He and other Son City leaders began to dream about a different kind of church where seekers could come with their messy lives and not feel judged while God cleaned them up. It would more fully unleash the arts in service to the kingdom. Straight, expository sermons would be replaced by talks that connected the Bible to daily problems.

A year later, Hybels resigned as youth pastor and, together with a core group that shared the vision, rented a movie theater in the nearby suburb of Palatine to start the church they dreamed of. To pay the rent and buy sound equipment, 100 teenagers sold 1,200 baskets of tomatoes door-to-door.

On October 12, 1975, 125 people showed up for the first service of Willow Creek Community Church. Hybels preached on "New Beginnings." He was 23.

Mistakes were inevitable. Getting the church off the ground and managing its rapid growth demanded long hours from its leaders. Financial pressures forced some staffers to moonlight at second jobs. Exhaustion and imbalanced lives exerted pressure on marriages. Philosophical and personality differences surfaced in the leadership team, which was heavily weighted with mavericks who chafed under the accountability that became necessary as the church grew more complex.

Then came "The Train Wreck of 1979." The elders confronted a staffer for an ongoing pattern of misbehavior and an unrepentant spirit.

The person chose to resign rather than address the situation. To protect the privacy of innocent parties, the elders chose not to explain what happened. People filled in the information vacuum with answers of their own. One scenario accused Hybels of a power grab. Some staff and lay leaders left the church. The church was in the middle of a $6 million building program with a $3.5 million loan, but it looked like the dream was dead.

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November 13 2000, Vol. 44, No. 13