President Clinton, speaking Thursday (August 10) at length and frankly about his spiritual life before and after his well-publicized sex scandal, had a tough audience for his soulful revelations. Some of the evangelical leaders gathered at Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago had criticized the decision to include the president on the agenda at a leadership summit designed to encourage them in their work. Yet Clinton turned the group into a collective confessor of sorts. "I'm now in the second year of a process of trying to totally rebuild my life from a terrible mistake I made," he said in response to questions from his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Bill Hybels, at Hybels' megachurch in South Barrington, Ill. "I realized once you've actually had to stand up and ask for forgiveness before the whole wide world, it makes it a little harder to be as hard as I think I once was on other people." The audience gave him a standing ovation at the close of the onstage interview. But his comments at the gathering sponsored by the Willow Creek Association, an organization that provides training and resources to churches, drew mixed reaction. Despite the applause, some who weren't there say the president has not done enough to atone for his sins. "The Hybels-Willow Creek appearance could not be called a repentance session," said the Rev. Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University and pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. "If your sin is public, your confession should be public. If you violated Gennifer Flowers or Monica Lewinsky or Kathleen Willey in any way, do as public an apology as they were publicly offended. That has never happened and I don't think it ever will." Falwell said he was skeptical of the timing of the remarks, just days before Vice President Gore would be named the Democratic nominee for president. He said he recently predicted that "Mr. Clinton will out-repent Jimmy Swaggart" before the Democratic National Convention heard Gore's acceptance speech. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, agreed that Clinton still has not said enough. "As far as I'm concerned, he has not sufficiently apologized to the American people for both his actions and his lying about it," Land said. Hybels, on the other hand, said Clinton was so candid that skeptics who did not hear the president themselves should try to get their hands on a recording of the event. "After hearing the president today, it is crystal clear he has asked for forgiveness for his mistakes and is on a journey of spiritual restoration and growth," Hybels said in a statement issued Friday. The Rev. Gordon MacDonald, a New Hampshire-based writer and speaker who continues to meet regularly with Clinton along with two other spiritual advisers, said the president's comments were similar to those he has had in his private discussions. "The president's remarks [Thursday] were thoroughly consistent with everything we have known about him during the past two years," MacDonald said in a written response to questions from Religion News Service. "There were no surprises in anything he said." Clinton said his meetings with Hybels and the sessions he's had for the last two years with MacDonald; the Rev. Philip Wogaman, a United Methodist pastor in Washington; and the Rev. Tony Campolo, an evangelical leader based in St. Davids, Pa., "really kind of keeps me anchored." Leaders of the Willow Creek Association felt the need to explain before the event why they let the president speak at the evangelical summit. "This interview segment with President Clinton is in no way a sign of support for any political party, position, or politician," said Jim Mellado, president of the Willow Creek Association in a carefully worded statement. "Instead, we view this as one more opportunity for leaders working on behalf of Christ and his kingdom to benefit from lessons about leadership learned through both successes and failures." Hybels told Clinton during the interview that some critics, upon learning of the planned session, said the president "had never really apologized." Clinton responded: "I think I gave a clear, unambiguous, brutally frank, and, frankly, personally painful statement to me because I had to do it," he said. "I mean, I finally realized that ... it would never be all right unless I stood up there and said what I did and said it was wrong and apologized for it." Land, who had not heard Clinton's latest comments when he was interviewed Friday by Religion News Service, said Sen. Joseph Lieberman had been more forthright about the president's actions. The senator, chosen Tuesday as Gore's running mate for the Democratic presidential ticket, was the first prominent member of the president's political party to publicly condemn Clinton's affair with a White House intern. "It's not a mistake," said Land. "It's not even a terrible mistake. It was a tragic lapse of morality for which he and he alone is responsible." Land added that it was less embarrassing for Clinton to reveal his personal thoughts before a gathering of evangelicals that hardly know him than his Democratic pals who are about to gather for the Democratic National Convention. "It gets the job done but on a less nationally prominent stage and in front of far fewer friends," he said. "What did he have to lose with this group?" The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, said some people think Clinton used the event for political purposes, but Clinton was probably at home with a group of "forgiving" Christians. "You combine that audience of moral integrity along with our commitment--excuse me, requirement--of forgiveness, and you can understand why the president went there," he said. The Clinton-Hybels session--which at times looked like a window into far more private times of counsel between the two men--drew 4,500 people to the sanctuary of the megachurch and more than 6,300 others who watched in 15 North American locations via satellite. "People do have their opinions and convictions on the man and the issues that relate to him," said the Rev. Jerry Butler, the association's vice president of membership and communication. "There were some quite negative reactions, feeling it was inappropriate to have him." Butler said those sentiments remained among some participants after the event, but he considered it an "unprecedented" opportunity to hear the president reflect on his personal life. "It was probably the most genuine forum that Clinton has been in with evangelical pastors and church leaders," Butler said. Clinton's remarks included far more about his spiritual life than introspection about his moral failings. He spoke of becoming a Christian at the age of 9 in 1955 after being touched by the words of a Hot Springs, Ark., minister. "He convinced me that I needed to acknowledge that I was a sinner and that I needed to accept Christ in my heart, and I did," Clinton recalled. He spoke of being inspired by the Rev. Billy Graham's commitment to integration and enjoying his membership in a Southern Baptist church choir while serving as Arkansas governor. He called his attendance at Wogaman's Foundry United Methodist Church "one of the best hours of the week for me." And, finally, in addition to asking that people not condemn Gore for mistakes his boss made, Clinton asked for similar treatment of Hybels.

"He didn't fail in his ministry because I did," he said of the megachurch pastor. "And for those of you who have whatever political or personal differences you have, I hope you will still believe that he did the right thing. Because he did."