From his Lake Forest mega-church, Rick Warren offers seminars,
stats and items on the Internet to help pastors boost attendance.
By William Lobdell
Times Staff Writer
September 19, 2003
Pastor Kelly Walter has a simple explanation for using a week of
precious vacation to make a 1,700-mile annual pilgrimage to a Southern
California church: "The place just oozes grace."
His unlikely-looking mecca is Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, housed
on a 120-acre campus of earth-tone, Mediterranean-style buildings,
manicured lawns and endless parking lots near the base of the Santa Ana
Mountains.
Walter, of Rock Brook Church in Belton, Mo., has trekked here each year
for the past decade, joining more than 250,000 pastors worldwide who
have attended seminars designed by Rick Warren, Saddleback's senior
pastor, to revive their churches and increase attendance.
"This is like being alive in the day of Martin Luther — and being able
to meet him," Walter said. "This is the new Reformation."
Warren, despite a self-deprecating style, speaks in similar terms of
his movement: "The first Reformation clarified what the church believes
— our message and doctrine. The current reformation will clarify what
the church does — our purpose and activities on Earth."
Some religious scholars and ministers recoil at Warren's pragmatic
approach to church expansion, where strategies for attracting "seekers"
of godly guidance can seem divined more from the corporate than
spiritual world.
His "purpose-driven" formula for helping Christians and their churches
— it's a trademarked term — is the basis of a multimillion-dollar
nonprofit enterprise. Warren applies a business sensibility to ethereal
challenges, offering low-cost or free products on the Internet, hosting
seminars that give the program a kind of marketing multiplier effect in
churches worldwide, and using statistics to measure results.
Dennis Costella, pastor of the small Fundamental Bible Church in Los
Osos, near San Luis Obispo, said many struggling pastors falsely see
the purpose-driven strategy as a life preserver. "If more pastors from
small churches would just be faithful and rely on God, he will bless
that faithfulness," Costella said. "He's not going to say, 'Let me see
your stats sheet.' "
What can't be denied is that Christian churches around the world — and
increasingly individual worshipers as well — see Warren, an
ordinary-looking 49-year-old from the suburbs, as a spiritual superman.
His latest book, titled "The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I
Here For?" has sold 7 million copies in 12 languages since it was
published last fall. The book has earned Warren a fan letter from
President Bush, as well as a lofty ranking on secular best-seller
lists, and is being used as a form of Bible study for prisoners, NASCAR
drivers and U.S. postal workers. Grieving parents in Memphis recently
gave out close to 2,000 copies of the book at the funeral of their
21-year-old son. "The Purpose-Driven Life" lays out a step-by-step,
40-day plan to discover God's purpose for one's life. Its first
sentence — "It's not about you." — sets the tone, putting it at odds
with self-help groups and some preachers who focus on achieving
personal happiness and financial success.
Warren instead touts a Bible-driven approach to finding God's
revelations. And unlike television ministries, which try to reach
national audiences, he urges local churches to use his message to
reenergize themselves and capture millions of disaffected Christians
and the non-religious. The book has a related campaign — "40 Days of
Purpose" — that has had thousands of congregations going through it
together in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.
A conference at Saddleback Church in May that highlighted the book's
campaign attracted 3,100 pastors from 94 denominations, 47 states and
37 countries. One seminary in Kentucky sent 400 students.
In July at the Christian Booksellers Assn. convention in Orlando, Fla.,
where "The Purpose-Driven Life" was named Book of the Year, Warren was
often introduced as "America's pastor."
Warren's own Saddleback church, a member of the Southern Baptist
Convention, began in his condo in 1980 with only his real estate
agent's family attending. It is now one of the nation's largest, with
17,000 members, an annual budget of $19 million and payroll of 330
people. Small-church pastors can find all that intimidating — until
they meet him. Then they discover Warren looks and sounds a lot like
them — the kind of person one might imagine goes bowling every Tuesday
night.
His language is simple and straightforward. He wears khaki pants and
untucked Hawaiian shirts, even for Sunday services. He prefers bear
hugs to handshakes. He reflects the laid-back nature of his rural
upbringing in Northern California, seemingly having time to chat with
anyone who crosses his path.
"Rick is just a normal guy," Walter said. "There's a feeling that if he
can do it, so can we."
But there's another side to Warren: a driven nature that propels all
his ventures. He talks about the dying days of his father, a Baptist
pastor who spent 50 years in ministry. Bedridden with cancer, Jimmy
Warren, hallucinating, started to chant over and over again, "Save one
more for Jesus." That has become Rick Warren's mantra.
"[God] wants His lost children found," Warren said. "I decided a long
time ago I'm not going to waste my life. Life is too short and eternity
is too long."
Warren likes to use hard numbers to show spiritual progress. He says
that the health of a church can usually be found in its increasing
attendance, membership, giving, volunteers and mission trips.
Warren's books, conferences, Web site (www.pastors.com) and church all
use as a spiritual compass five principles, or purposes: worship God,
be part of a church family, study God's word, serve others and
evangelize.
"The Intel chip of the 21st century church is the five purposes," said
Warren, who distilled the principles from the New Testament and argues
that the biblically based program can be the internal engine to make
every church thrive, whether it's urban or rural, denominational or
independent, American or African, rich or poor.
He has a mountain of anecdotal evidence to back up his claims. His
philosophy has been officially embraced by an estimated 30,000 churches
in America that now describe themselves as "purpose-driven."
'My Parents' Model'
Warren grew up in a community of 500 called Redwood Valley in
Northern California's rural Mendocino County. His father worked mostly
in small churches and, using his carpentry skills, helped construct
more than 150 church buildings on mission trips around the world.
Warren said strangers in need often appeared at the family breakfast
table, fed partly by his father's one-acre vegetable garden, grown
specifically so they could give away food. His family also traveled to
sites of natural disaster, pastoring and cooking meals for the
displaced victims.
"My life has been profoundly affected by my parents' model of
generosity and service," Warren said.
In 1970, as a high school junior, Warren believed God began encouraging
him to be a pastor. A skinny, long-haired guitar player with John
Lennon glasses, Warren began evangelizing at school. He started a
Christian club on campus, sponsored rock concerts after school, gave
out New Testaments, produced a Christian musical and published an
underground Christian newspaper.
As word got out about his success as a teenage evangelist, he was
invited to speak to other Christian groups across California. By age
20, Warren says, he had spoken to about 150 churches, camps and rallies
on the West Coast.
He attended California Baptist University in Riverside and married Kay,
a woman he met a few years earlier at a training session for evangelism.
He attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth,
where his desire to start his own church and distaste for classical
rhetorical sermons marked him as different. "I didn't fit the system."
During his final year in seminary, he researched the most unchurched
states in the country, which included California, and then discovered
that Saddleback Valley was the fast-growing area in one of the
fast-growing counties in the United States. Though he had never been to
the community, he decided to start a church there.
Warren wanted his church built around unbelievers. He wanted casual
dress, popular music and friendly ushers to appeal to those who'd been
repelled by traditional Christian rituals and who didn't have a church
home.
He and other volunteers — ones he befriended or who were sent
by his seminary and other churches — sent out 15,000 direct-mail
pieces. Saddleback's first Sunday service, at Laguna Hills High School,
attracted more than 200 people on Easter 1980. Over the next 15 years,
the Saddleback congregation would meet in 79 buildings, including
schools, recreation centers, restaurants and theaters.
The itinerant nature of Saddleback was driven by two factors: the
church's rapid growth and Warren's stubborn belief that Saddleback
should wait to build or buy its own building until membership reached
10,000.
"I wanted to prove to the world that you don't have to have a building
to grow a church," he said.
Saddleback has matured into 120 acres of office buildings, worship
centers, education buildings and parking lots. The church's latest
addition is a 100,000-square-foot children's ministry center, with two
biblically themed playgrounds, a kind of jungle gym built to look like
ancient ruins, and a stream that parts like the Red Sea. It's not
coincidence that the center, which draws about 3,000 children each
weekend, has a Magic Kingdom feel; Disney engineers helped with the
project.
Tyra Rikimaru, during his 12 years of marriage, was a good sport and
went to church as a favor to his wife, Gina. When the family moved to
south Orange County three years ago, Gina took her husband and three
young girls to Saddleback, where she noticed a transformation in her
husband: He liked church.
The family joined the church, and went through the "40 Days" program
last fall.
"It revealed to me that we're not here by accident, that I'm not just a
number," Tyra Rikimaru said. "I realized that God has a plan for each
of us and even for me."
Warren contends that pastors everywhere can attract families like the
Rikimarus with some simple strategies. Reserve your best parking spots
for first-time visitors. Avoid mystical religious symbols and technical
terms in church bulletins. Keep restrooms sparkling clean. Provide
plenty of entry-level ministries to ease people into volunteerism.
Warren makes available practical material, tested at Saddleback, at a
low cost. Pastors can download sermons by Warren on purpose-driven
topics, complete with PowerPoint presentations, for $4. He says he
doesn't do anything that can't be replicated by a small church.
"I am at heart a small-church pastor," says Warren, who has attention
deficit disorder, a condition that allows him to welcome new ideas but
creates a disdain for the routine, such as meetings. "I resonate with
these guys and love them."
Warren has declined numerous opportunities to have a regular television
program and has been generally media-shy, preferring to work through
pastors and churches. A rare physical disorder — he passes out if his
system gets too much adrenaline — has led to fainting spells on stage,
most recently at international engagements in the Philippines and
Mexico City. At his home church, he recovers afterward on a bed in a
small office backstage that is cooled to 62 degrees.
He drives a 3-year-old Ford truck and announced to his congregation
Sunday that he had paid back 23 years of salary (he made $110,000 in
2002) to Saddleback Church with the royalties from his book. He also
outlined how the rest of the royalties will be spent, promising to keep
a modest lifestyle and funnel profits from the book into a nonprofit
foundation.
"Now that our church knows I've done this, I'm eager for the
non-believing public to know it too, because it counteracts the popular
perception by skeptics that all ministers are all in it just for the
money, especially large-church pastors," Warren said.
When he took off the first five months of last year to write "The
Purpose-Driven Life," Warren said, attendance continued to climb at
Saddleback, showing that his "purpose-driven" principles work no matter
the pastor.
With all his success, he worries about the two traps — sexual and
financial misconduct — that have caused the downfall of other
high-profile pastors. He doesn't handle any of Saddleback's finances.
And in more than three decades of ministry, Warren says, he's never
been alone in a room with a woman. He won't even ride in an elevator
alone with someone of the opposite sex.
A Baseball Analogy
Warren's latest effort, the "40 Days of Purpose" campaign, is
designed to get congregations to read the book together, a short
chapter daily.
The goal is to get participants all the way around a figurative
baseball diamond, with each base representing a deeper commitment to
the Christian life. You reach first base when you join the church.
Second base when you become part of a small Bible study group. Third
base when you volunteer to serve others. And home plate when you
venture out on a mission trip.
So far, more than 2,600 churches in 19 countries have participated,
with Saddleback providing a kickoff simulcast message from Warren,
seven weeks of sermons, and guides for Bible studies, prayer and
memorization of Scripture.
Saddleback has about 4,000 churches signed up to participate next month.
Church officials say 180 churches from 15 denominations that completed
the 40-day program showed a 21% rise in attendance, a 16% jump in
donations and a 79% increase in the number of small Bible study groups,
according to a mail-in survey.
Ministers attending Warren's seminars say his principles translate
across denominational, language, cultural and generational barriers
that have hamstrung other faith-boosting programs.
Seventy-five-year-old Lake Gregory Community Church in Crestline, a
town of 8,000 in the San Bernardino mountains, took part in a pilot "40
Days" program last fall, a turning point in the congregation's life,
says Pastor Dave Holden.
"We're just rockin'," he said. The church's Bible study groups jumped
from seven to 72.
At the end of the 40 days, Holden made a quick pitch to his congregants
for an extra donation if the experience had changed them. The church
received $112,000, enough to wipe out all its debt and begin spending
$5,000 a month on the poor in Africa and Asia.
Jimmy Davidson, a pastor at Virginia Highlands Christian Fellowship in
Abingdon, Va., said that after his 40-day campaign, attendance rose
from 1,700 to 2,500 people, participation in small groups soared from
30 to 160 people, and giving jumped 34%.
"We're still trying to recover and put structure in place," Davidson
said.
Scott L. Thumma, who studies the mega-church movement at the Hartford
Institute for Religious Research in Connecticut, said many programs
promoted by consultants give churches initial bursts of growth that
last six months to a year. But over the long term, attendance often
declines.
"Everybody gets excited and says, 'This is wonderful!' " said Thumma,
noting that when attendance starts dwindling again, the church members
feel like "we've failed. It leaves the church worse off than before."
Thumma said he would be surprised if that happened with Warren's
campaign, since it's built around core Christian principles: "He's just
packaging it in a different way."
Not that people have always had success enacting Warren's game plan.
Rock Brook Church's Kelly Walter failed with purpose-driven principles
in three churches before finding success. In two of the churches, he
said, he was too impatient to enact changes in established but stagnant
congregations. Those ranged from updating the music to increasing the
emphasis on small Bible groups.
Scholars agree that Warren has a knack for tapping into needy psyches,
giving people a sense of purpose when life can seem materialistic and
meaningless. But critics wonder if intimacy with God gets steamrolled
by "driven" pastors and Christians who look at routines and statistics
to define their spiritual lives.
"At its best, I suspect the purpose-driven church could be the hub for
genuine discipleship and Christian formation," said Philip D. Kenneson,
an associate professor of theology and philosophy at Milligan College
in Tennessee and co-author of "Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of
Church Marketing."
"At its worst, I fear that it may simply offer the latest venue for
American consumers to forge an identity, only here it comes through
purchasing certain religious goods and services."