“Willow Creek’s leadership chose what I said immediately was an egregiously unwise decision: it chose to narrate the allegations as lies, the women as liars, and the witnesses to the women as colluders.”
(Stoyan Zaimov – Christian Post) New Testament scholar and author Scot McKnight, who attended Willow Creek Community Church for 10 years, is speaking out on the sexual misconduct accusations against founder Bill Hybels, saying that he and the church have “undone 40 years of trust.”
McKnight, who is a professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois, revealed on his Jesus Creed blog on Wednesday that at least 50 different people have asked him to comment on the Willow Creek scandal, given that he attended the church for nearly a decade.
“My aim is not to act like I know all that happened. I do not. I believe the women on the basis of what I have learned,” he said.
“What I do know is this: Bill Hybels and Willow Creek’s leadership have undone forty years of trust for many.
“A church that has stood valiantly for women in ministry, that has always stood for Christian grace and truth and forgiveness for repenters, that has supported #metoo in various places, that then responds to women as they did to these women unravels the thread Willow has woven for four decades.”
Back in April, Hybels resigned prematurely from the church he founded in 1975, after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct in an investigation published a month earlier by the Chicago Tribune.
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