Word: whiteness
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...custom, Hybels was working a small semicircle of easels arrayed behind his lectern, reinforcing key phrases. Hybels' preaching is economical, precise of tone and gesture. Again by custom, he was dressed in black, which accentuated his pale complexion, blue eyes and hair, once Dutch-boy blond but now white. Indeed, if there is a whiter preacher currently running a megachurch, that man must glow. (See the top 10 religion stories...
...neither Hybels' sermon, nor his 23,400-person congregation, is as white as he is. Along with Jesus, he invoked Martin Luther King Jr. Then he introduced Shawn Christopher, a former backup singer for Chaka Khan, who offered a powerhouse rendition of "We Shall Overcome." As the music swelled, Larry and Renetta Butler, an African-American couple in their usual section in the 7,800-seat sanctuary, exchanged glances. Since Hybels decided 10 years ago to aggressively welcome minorities to his lily-white congregation, Renetta says, few sermons pass without a cue that he is still at it. "He always...
Since Reconstruction, when African Americans fled or were ejected from white churches, black and white Christianity have developed striking differences of style and substance. The argument can be made that people attend the church they are used to; many minorities have scant desire to attend a white church, seeing their faith as an important vessel of cultural identity. But those many who desire a transracial faith life have found themselves discouraged - subtly, often unintentionally, but remarkably consistently. In an age of mixed-race malls, mixed-race pop-music charts and, yes, a mixed-race President, the church divide seems increasingly...
Hybels and his Willow Creek church are already headed down that path. Though Willow is not the most advanced example of multiracial church, it makes an excellent window into the new desegregation because of its size, its influence and the ferocious purposefulness with which Hybels has deconstructed his all-white institution. Willow may also be emblematic in that Hybels appears to have stopped short of creating a fully color-blind church. His efforts illustrate both the possibilities and the challenges that smaller churches may face as they attempt to move beyond black and white...
...Making of a (White) MegachurchWillow Creek Community Church's main complex, in South Barrington, does not tower so much as sprawl: eight low-slung buildings, landscaped on a swampy and thus underdeveloped grassland amid Chicago's bustling, affluent northwest suburbs. As the church has grown - especially with the 2004 completion of a new sanctuary building with an escalator and interior waterfall - it has become more self-consciously handsome. But like Hybels himself, it abandons pious overstatement for corporate efficiency: church as conceived by Jack Welch. (Read "Church Group Attacks Christmas Commercialism...