Bill Hybels

Bill Hybels is the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., with a weekend attendance of twenty thousand. He is also chairman of the board for the Willow Creek Association, a not-for-profit fellowship of over twelve thousand like-minded churches located in forty-five countries.

Hybels is the best-selling author of more than twenty books, including Holy Discontent, Just Walk Across the Room, The Volunteer Revolution, Courageous Leadership, and classics such as Too Busy Not to Pray and Becoming a Contagious Christian.

Willow Creek Community Church began in 1975 when a ragtag team of young people gathered in a rented movie theater with a vision of turning irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. Today, it is one of the most attended churches in North America. Drawing on well-honed wisdom acquired over the past thirty-two years, Hybels speaks and consults internationally, bringing to bear passionate style, relevant teaching, and cutting edge leadership.

He convened The Leadership Summit in 1995 following a God-given prompting to help pastors develop their "Romans 12:8" spiritual gift of leadership in the context of their ministries. Since then, he has become a highly sought-after expert in equipping and training Christian leaders to transform individuals and their communities through the local church.

Held every August, The Leadership Summit attracts more than eighty thousand ministry and marketplace leaders in North America, and another twenty thousand to Global Leadership Summit each fall, which is broadcast in more than twenty countries such as Brazil, Germany, Ukraine, and South Africa.

Hybels received a bachelor's degree in Biblical Studies and an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Trinity College in Deerfield, Ill. He and his wife, Lynne, have two children and one grandson.