This year, Willow Creek Community Church founder Bill Hybels announced that church volunteers would be ensuring that every single inmate in Illinois would be receiving a special Christmas gift bag this year. It’s part of Hybels’ newfound burden for incarcerated people.
“I follow God’s son, Jesus Christ, who was blindingly clear about how I should engage with prisoners,” he told the church. “If I had passed away at 55 despite all that clear training and additionally because I’m a pastor, I would’ve had to explain to God that I didn’t pray for prisoners, that I had never visited one, I had never lifted a finger to help prisoners in any way.”