Leadership Quote by Bill Hybels

There is a velvet glove over a hard punch here: Hybels frames critique as compassion, and authority as concern. “I look at tens of thousands” scales his gaze up to a movement-wide diagnosis, not a local gripe. It’s a leader’s line that quietly asserts standing: he’s not one pastor among many, he’s someone positioned to survey the whole field and pronounce what it lacks. The number does rhetorical work too. It implies pattern, not exception, and it recruits urgency without naming names.

“Still” is the tell. It smuggles in impatience, even disappointment, while remaining pastorally polite. If they “still” need awakening, then they’ve had time, resources, conferences, books, maybe even warnings - and they haven’t changed. The phrase “a bit of an awakening” softens the indictment, but it also infantilizes. Awakening isn’t skill-building; it’s conversion language. It suggests the problem isn’t strategy but spiritual consciousness, a failure of perception or courage.

The context is late-20th/early-21st century evangelical leadership culture, where “awakening” evokes revival, relevance, and institutional renewal. It’s a call aimed at clergy who may be managing decline, defending tradition, or simply keeping the machine running. The subtext: the church can’t afford complacency; leadership must rediscover mission, risk, and responsiveness to cultural change. Yet there’s tension in the posture: the man urging wakefulness is also part of the same establishment he’s prodding, using reform language that can energize a base while reinforcing the hierarchy that gets to define what “awake” means.