Senior Pastor Dave Dummitt Leaving Willow Creek: ‘Sorry bloggers, there’s no dirt to dig up’
Willow Creek Community Church senior pastor Dave Dummitt has announced he’s stepping down to pursue “other dreams” and that South Barrington campus pastor Shawn Williams will be taking the helm.
Willow Creek is the multi-campus 10,000-member church founded by Bill Hybels that pioneered the church growth and seeker-sensitive movement but has seen its fortunes over the years as it hemorrhaged money, people, and reputation.
During his message on Sunday, Dummit, who was named senior pastor in April 2020, explained that his transition was healthy and he was not leaving under a cloud of suspicion or scandal.
Guys, I want you to know that I believe this church’s most beautiful seasons are ahead. I’ve been doing this job, senior ministry, for over 20 years, and I’m ready for a break. And I’ve got some other sandboxes that I’m looking forward to playing in and dreams that I want to pursue.
…There is no moral failure. There’s no scandal. No one has forced me to step down, so sorry bloggers, there’s no dirt to dig up. This is just a beautiful healthy handoff, smooth momentum building.
He further explained:
People have asked what’s next for me specifically. I don’t know. I’m going to take a little bit of time… there will probably be some organization that comes along at some point and say, ‘hey, we’d love for you to lead a church or business or nonprofit or something.’ And that’s something that we may consider.
But in the meantime, I’ve got a friend that does consulting with churches and executive leaders and some development work and I’m going to join him in that. We’re not going to go anywhere. We’ve got businesses in Chicago. I’m going to lean into those a little bit.
We last wrote about Willow Creek in early 2024 after Dummit announced they were permanently shuttering their Chicago campus location, citing an “unsustainable financial scenario.”
Their losses ,began in 2018, the same year they purchased and moved into their Chicago location, after allegations of decades of sexual misconduct came forth against Hybels. These allegations included inviting women to his hotel room, making suggestive comments to female employees, extended hugs, kissing a woman against her will, and engaging in oral sex with an employee, leading Hybels to resign, along with the co-pastors who succeeded him, and then eventually the entire elder board.
They held massive staff layoffs in 2019 and 2020. When Covid-19 hit, Willow Creek completely shut down in-person gatherings for almost a year. When they did reopen, they did so at 25% capacity and mandatory masks for 2-year-olds and above.
In 2021, they made our radar after one of their woke pastors said that he Refuses to Teach to Mostly White Churches, describing it as ‘Casting Pearls Before Swine.’
In 2022, The church announced that they were cutting their staff budget by 6.5 million dollars and axing 30% of the employees, the result of losing over 10,000 congregants in the last three years.
Following the closure of their Chicago location, things have stabilized, however, with Dummitt revealing:
“We ended the year last year with all those metrics up and to the right. The attendance was up; the baptisms were up; we saw that 40% of all the new people that are coming to our church weren’t a part of a church before they came to Willow. So we’re reaching lost people and not just transferring people from other churches.
Discipleship, the things we use to measure that, groups, teams, giving, all of those things were up and that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.”
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