https://chuckdegroat.net/2018/08/08/bill-hybels-and-the-future-of-the-church-after-churchtoo/

In the wake of every inevitable failure two common responses emerge:
1. Systems are evil, tear down all systems.
2. The currents systems are corrupt. We need a new system.

The two responses are of course contradictory, but we tend to flip between them IF we have no system. But once we do something twice, we have a new system. We sometimes then live in system denial which of course eventually is corrupted too. Systems are of course simply patterns of authoritative practice, even when everyone in the system says “there is no hierarchy” (more denial).

The moment of hope is always the moment of apocalyptic destruction. This could of course become Bill Hybel’s finest hour, but if it is it is likely we’ll never see it through the industrial-media-lens. “Bill Hybels” “prophet” “leader” “anointed man of God” was always a persona, as much a projection of our needs and his narcissism. Together we created him because we needed an idol, an image, a manifestation of what we (especially pastors) were hoping to become.

There’s a reason the RC only canonizes the dead.

The irony of the often helpful responses post apocalypse accountability systems is that they too are systems subject to corruption. The victim was also a perp https://wgntv.com/2018/08/20/actress-asia-argento-metoo-leader-paid-sexual-assault-accuser/ The supposed “safe” and “woke” are not safe from themselves. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/sexual-harassment-nyu-female-professor.html

We have not the stuff in ourselves to construct the city of God with our own hands. This is not a surrender to cynicism, it is the observation that God works in the small and quiet, in places where cameras do not go, but that one day the apocalypse will come and the glory of the small will be seen.