Preaching: Have you found that your preaching style has changed, based on where you are now as opposed to previous settings in which you were preaching?

Hybels: Actually, Willow Creek is my first Senior Pastorate, and it's the only church that I've preached in consistently for the last sixteen years, so I can't really answer that.

Preaching: So your own preaching style has developed within this setting?

Hybels: Yes, the people have paid the price of me growing up in my preaching over the years and, quite frankly, they're still paying the price, I think!

Preaching: How important do you think this particular approach to preaching is as a factor in Willow Creek being able to so effectively reach unchurched people?

Hybels: It's a major factor, Mike. It's a major factor because non-churched people are not quick to relate to traditional preaching styles where the illustrations are about Dwight L. Moody and Spurgeon and missionary stories. That's not the world they live in -- those aren't the players that non-churched men relate to; as so many non-churched people told me before we started Willow Creek, "We dropped out of church. We don't go to church because they're giving answers to questions we're not even asking."

What we have attempted to do at Willow Creek with our weekend "seeker services" is to be very careful about addressing the whole counsel of God but addressing it in as relevant a way as possible, because we want to get the ear of that non-churched person whose attention is not easy to capture and maintain.

Preaching: During the 1980's and into the 1990's, we've had a lot of social change. The Chicago area, like most other parts of the country, has experienced a tumultuous period. Have you seen, even over the past eight or ten years, your preaching changing to adapt to some of those changes taking place?

Hybels: I'd say it's a very insightful question that you're asking. I have found a dramatic change in the sixteen years that Willow Creek has been in existence. In the mid-to-late 1970's, if we led people to Christ through the preaching ministry of the church, the next challenge was to encourage people to shift over to the midweek service where they could receive expository teaching and get into small groups and become disciples.

Sixteen years later, now in the early 1990's, we find that much of what we have to do is attempt to speak to people's brokenness, their addictions, their wounds, their victimizations. We're finding that instead of just discipling people we lead to Christ, we have to almost reparent them before they're capable of being discipled because they have lived with so much trauma and have been wounded and broken so badly that most of the time some form of counseling is necessary. We put on seminars regularly sponsored by our counseling center on addictions and on forms of violation and heartbreak that you really have to address if you're going to be relevant in today's world.

Preaching: That's a different idea, the idea of healing as you reach people even before you can disciple them. How would you recommend a traditional pastor approach that whole idea in the preaching ministry?