Photo: (l to r) Steve Carter and Hal Shrader. Photos provided. 

Steve Carter can’t talk about his former mentor, Hal Shrader, without choking back tears. Carter was recently announced as one of two successors to Bill Hybels, the longtime lead pastor and founder of Willow Creek Community Church, a seven-location church that draws over 25,000 worshipers each week in the greater Chicago area. Shrader was serving as the lead pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church in Glendale, Arizona, when he was killed in a motorcycle accident in October 2015.

“There are just a few people that were as good to me as Hal,” said Carter in an Oct. 24 phone interview.

Carter first met Shrader during elementary school, when Shrader served as a substitute teacher at his Christian grade school in Camarillo, California. Carter says Shrader immediately made an impression, in part because he stood six feet five inches tall and had tattoos and in part because he exhibited an awareness of popular culture and the world that Carter says was unique at his Christian school.

Later, Shrader served as Carter’s youth pastor and became a continuing mentor for him. Carter says even into adulthood, he and Shrader talked weekly via phone.

Carter also credits Shrader with shaping his understanding of the Gospels and Jesus.

“He was the first one to teach me about the kingdom of God and to teach me about the way of Jesus,” said Carter. “It wasn’t just a personal faith to get into heaven, which I think I had kind of learned from Christian school and heard at camps. He was talking about a whole life heart-mind-body embodiment of the way of Jesus.”

One story that stands out to Carter came from a mission trip Shrader led to Chile. Later, Shrader and his wife, Chrisie, and two daughters, Molly and Madison, returned to Santiago, Chile, to serve for three years.

Carter remembers that during the service trip, Shrader wanted to be sure the youth group was not only serving and talking about Jesus but also spending time learning about the Chilean history and context and building relationships with local individuals.

Carter remembered Shrader waking the group up early in the morning and driving them to a bridge where thousands of Chileans who opposed a coup in the 1970s were killed.

“He told us that Jesus and God needed more than our prayers. He said, ‘They need friends. They need people who are going to stand up and be peacemakers.’ It literally blew my mind. Every time I was around Hal, another layer was being pulled off and another invitation into a different relationship with Christ was being spoken. You just wanted to incarnate the way of Jesus. And not the Jesus I had thought of as an American but a Middle Eastern Jesus, the Jesus you see in the Sermon on the Mount. For us at Willow, those third way narratives and the kingdom of God teaching about who Jesus really is and what that means today is really important. That’s what I saw in Hal.”

Later, Carter was instrumental in helping connect Shrader with Mennonites and Trinity. Carter recruited Shane Hipps, Trinity’s former lead pastor, to serve at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the same time, he learned that the Shrader family was looking to the United States after serving in Chile, and he encouraged Shrader to explore connections with the church. Shrader was first drawn to Anabaptist theology and understandings of Jesus in college but had not pastored in a Mennonite church prior to Trinity.

“I told Hal, I’ve got the church for you. It’s called Trinity Mennonite. You’ve always had Anabaptist leanings,” said Carter. “He truly was one of a kind and he loved Mennonite and Anabaptist theology.”

Carter still feels Shrader’s loss deeply and continues to look to Shrader for inspiration as he moves into the next phase of ministry.

“Every kind of person was there at Hal’s funeral because that’s who Hal welcomed at his table,” said Carter. “He lived an invitational life inviting people into a bigger story about who Christ was that I to this day am trying to emulate as best I can.”

In October 2018, Carter will transition into a role as lead teaching pastor alongside lead pastor Heather Larson. According to Christianity Today, this transition will make Willow Creek one of the largest churches in the United States with a woman in the lead pastor position and the “only evangelical megachurch with male-female lead pastors who aren’t married.”