The Man With The Purpose

By Sonja Steptoe/Lake Forest

When Mel Gibson began looking for influential ministers to endorse his controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, high on his list was the Rev. Rick Warren, founding pastor of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. (Warren loved the movie, reserved blocks of seats at local cinemas for his parishioners and on two weekends last month delivered sermons on the Passion and plans another one for Easter.) When the White House wanted advice on how to observe the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, aides called Warren to meet with the President, the First Lady and West Wing staff members, many of whom have dog-eared copies of his best-selling book The Purpose-Driven Life.

Movie stars and political leaders aren't the only ones turning to Warren for spiritual guidance. Over the past 17 months, 15 million copies of The Purpose-Driven Life have been sold. And since it was published in 1995, an additional 1 million copies of The Purpose-Driven Church have been snapped up as well. Meanwhile, nearly 300,000 ministers from 50 states and 120 nations have participated in Warren's pastor-training seminars and Internet classes, and more than 10,000 churches of various denominations have offered his 40 Days of Purpose group-study course. Beyond the chapel, millions of people--from the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour members to Coca-Cola executives to high school students to prison inmates--meet regularly to discuss Warren's belief that the only way to discover who you are and what you're living for is to divine God's purpose for you.

The first line of the first chapter of The Purpose-Driven Life puts it bluntly: "It's not about you." Explains Warren: "Looking within yourself for answers doesn't work. If it did, we'd know it by now. As with any complex invention, to figure out your purpose, you need to talk to the inventor and read the owner's manual--in this case, God and the Bible."

The widespread appeal of this philosophy suggests that Warren just might be, as Christianity Today has declared, America's most influential pastor. The reverend himself takes a slightly less exalted view of his role. Says Warren: "I'm translating the truth into 21st century language, and evidently a lot of people are listening." He's convinced that the nation is on the verge of a spiritual awakening, as people seek fulfillment they don't get in fast-track jobs and can't buy with gold cards. "The culture is asking, 'How do I fill this hole in my heart?'" he says. "I think religion has the answer."

Warren found his own purpose at the end of 1980, when he was the young minister of a 150-member congregation that had no church home and held services in whatever high school gym he could rent. Disillusioned and burned out from trying to keep his flock together, Warren collapsed in the middle of his sermon one Sunday and fell into a depression. He spent the next year soul-searching for a way to meet all his obligations without getting overwhelmed again. "I needed to figure out what mattered and how to do it and not worry about the rest," says Warren, 50. "I wanted to be guided by purpose and not pressure." Through prayer and Bible study, he rediscovered the Christian doctrines that formed his blueprint for "living a life of purpose and meaning."

The Purpose-Driven philosophy offers instruction for individuals and churches. Warren writes in his book that God has five purposes for people's lives: to bring enjoyment to him, to be a part of his family, to behave like him, to serve him and to act as his missionary. The payoff for abiding by these precepts, Warren promises, is reduced stress, sharper focus, simplified decision making, greater meaning to life and better preparation for eternity. For Purpose-Driven church leaders, he has developed an "evangelism strategy" that includes a casual dress code, convenient parking, bright lights, live bands, short prayers and simple sermons that accentuate the positive. The result, he says, will lead not only to filled pews but, ultimately, to more saved souls. For Warren, that's the best barometer of church health.

His critics say Warren's plan may not be the best prescription for every person's long-term spiritual growth. And some argue that he's using the Lord's name for commercial gain. "The Purpose-Driven ministry is a marketing strategy," says Dennis Costella, pastor of the Fundamental Bible Church in Los Osos, Calif. "We believe the Bible tells us to present the word of God without packaging it for a contemporary cultural context." What his detractors call commercialism and marketing, Warren calls evangelism. "I believe I have the key to meaning and purpose in life with God, and I'm trying to share it with as many people as possible," he says. "That's what evangelism is--sharing good news."

Remarkably, Warren has managed to spread his approach to the gospel without extensive national media coverage or a TV ministry. He turned down an invitation from Oprah to be on her show, though he says he'd like to meet her someday. "Too many ministers start out as servants and end up as celebrities," he says. "I want to use my influence to do some good, and I can get more done out of the limelight."

Saddleback has become a bustling megachurch, with an annual operating budget of more than $19 million, and now sits on an immaculate 120-acre campus, designed by some of the folks who planned Disney's theme parks, in the placid Orange County community of Lake Forest, 65 miles south of Los Angeles. On weekends the 15,000 members and about 5,000 visitors choose from services at six different times and 10 different venues around the campus--some with live preachers, some on closed-circuit TV--offering a variety of worship and music styles ranging from quiet hymns in an intimate setting to a tent gathering with roof-raising gospel singing. The hub is the cavernous worship center. Take away the 3,200 seats, the six-piece band, the suspended wooden cross and the giant video screens, and it could be a 747 airplane hangar. In booths outside, ministry leaders promote church workshops on marriage enhancement, parenting, budget planning and addiction recovery. At the children's center, Sunday school meets Fantasyland with a biblical-themed playground. Teens hang out at the student zone's beach cafe. It's all managed at a two-story building resembling a corporate office, where 400 paid staff members and 5,000 volunteers handle the church's far-flung missions, ministries and programs.

Wade Clark Roof, author of Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion, says Saddleback's megachurch ministry appeals to the notion that size equals success. "We're told that [his philosophy] not only does something for you in the sense of giving your life meaning but it also makes you happy materially, religiously and spiritually," Roof says. "What Rick is marketing is a kind of American religious ideology that conflates growth with salvation."

Much of Warren's outside proselytizing is done at churches across the country in weekly gatherings at which small groups are schooled in Purpose-Driven living. At one of those churches, Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church in Gulf Breeze, Fla., there have been as many as 110 such groups. Before the Purpose-Driven philosophy came along, says the Rev. Chris Nelson of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minn., "the idea was for ministers to proclaim the gospel and let people figure out what to do with it in their daily lives. Now we are far more application oriented." When Bethlehem Lutheran member Jean Westberg lost her job as a marketing executive three years ago, she found inspiration in Warren's teaching that people who want to be servants of God should "think more about others than about themselves," and she accepted a job as interim executive director for the Episcopal ministry at the University of Minnesota, where she supervised the construction of a new worship center. "What's more important now is service to others rather than service to myself," says Westberg.

Such experiences are enlivening congregations and enriching coffers. At Bethlehem Lutheran, attendance was languishing at around 650 a decade ago but is now more than 1,200; similarly, the church budget has more than doubled, from $800,000 to well over $2 million. Warren says Sunday attendance at Purpose-Driven churches grows about 20%, on average: "The Purpose-Driven principles are like Intel chips, and they can be inserted into any congregation, whether it's a megachurch or a tiny one, Lutheran, AME, Pentecostal or Baptist."

In person, Warren, an affable, bespectacled bear of a man, is as unadorned and low-key as the plainspoken prose of his books. He receives visitors to his office in the same casual attire he wears at the pulpit--khaki pants, floral cotton shirt and rubber-soled shoes. That suits his members just fine. "From the beginning, I was impressed by his humility," says Patricia Miller, who has attended Saddleback since 1998. "When I joined, he asked all the new members to form a circle and lay our hands on one another's shoulders. Then he stood in the middle and, while choked with emotion, he prayed that he would be capable of the task of leading us." Says fellow parishioner William Nared: "At most churches they just preach and preach about how I ought to be a good Christian man. But what's so powerful about the Purpose-Driven ministry is it also teaches me how to do it." All Saddleback members must abide by strict covenants to tithe regularly, do mission work locally or abroad and live by Christian doctrines. "You can't just be a consumer here," Warren says. "You have to participate and contribute."

The son of a Baptist minister and a high school librarian, Warren was drawn to political activism and, growing up in Northern California, thought about one day running for public office. But he ultimately decided it would be more effective to follow in his father's footsteps "and change one heart at a time." After graduating from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Warren moved back to California with his wife Kay and started Saddleback in their rented apartment in 1980.

Mindful of the checkered history of high-profile evangelists, Warren and his wife seem determined to be the anti--Jim and Tammy Faye. "I want to live above reproach," says the man whose role model is Billy Graham, explaining why he avoids being alone with women other than his wife. The Warrens, who have three grown children, live comfortably but relatively modestly in a $360,000 tract home they bought two years ago, and the reverend drives a Ford SUV. In 2003, with royalties from the Purpose-Driven product line pouring in, Warren stopped taking his $110,000 annual salary from Saddleback and refunded all the money the church had paid him over the years. He says he keeps only 10% of the book royalties and gives the rest away to Saddleback and the charitable foundation he and Kay established to supplement the church's mission projects, which include fighting poverty, illiteracy, and disease--especially AIDS--here and abroad.

Progress on his international initiatives has been slowed, first by his wife's struggle with breast cancer late last year and then by his own surgery in January to remove a benign abdominal cyst. Warren had not preached since his wife began treatment last November, turning his duties over to his staff of ministers. When her chemo-therapy was completed, he returned to the pulpit late last month and moved forward on his global mission with renewed purpose. He wants each of Saddleback's 2,000 small groups to adopt a village in a developing country, make mission trips there and send educational and medical supplies, along with spiritual and financial support, to its residents. Eventually, Warren hopes to expand the program to the more than 10,000 other Purpose-Driven churches around the nation. "I think God gets the most glory when you tackle the biggest problems," says Warren, "so I've decided to use my influence to help the poor and oppressed, and I'll spend the rest of my life doing that." He is a man who, having discovered a purpose to his life, has made a success out of giving one to thousands of others. --With reporting by Alice Jackson Baughn/Gulf Breeze, Fla., Amy Bonesteel/Atlanta and Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis

With reporting by Alice Jackson Baughn/Gulf Breeze, Fla., Amy Bonesteel/Atlanta and Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis