December 21 - Purpose Driven Church

Introduction. Rick Warren discourages his readers from trying to imitate him, but calls them to learn his principles of new church development. He divides the book by these principles: seeing the big picture, becoming a purpose-driven church, reaching out to the Community, bringing in a crowd, and building up the church. However, Warren’s over-arching concern is to provide the necessary information to build healthy churches, emphasizing that, “[h]ealthy churches don’t need gimmicks to grow – they grow naturally” (Purpose 17).

Big Picture. First, Warren takes us on a journey through the initial phases of Saddleback. In many ways, this part of the book is a mixture of apologia and autobiography. It helped me reflect practically on the early challenges that a new church plant encounters. While I agree with Warren that imitating Saddleback is impossible, it was helpful to hear him discuss how he collected his initial core group, the process for planning, advertising and moving forward with the first worship service. Knowing that the only program ministries they first had were worship and children’s ministry toned down some of my expectations for planting a new church.

Purpose Driven. For me, what helped my leadership most in this section was that Warren gave a helpful, Biblical base for church development. His first principle is to be purpose-driven. In his view this means to follow five purposes of a Christian church: love the Lord with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself, go and make disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey. Warren claims, “Strong churches are not built on programs, personalities, or gimmicks” but by focusing on these Biblical principles from the Great Commandment and the Great Commission (83). He also gives leaders a further Biblical basis for church development ministry using Acts 2:42-47 to develop the primary purposes of the church even further: outreach, worship, fellowship, discipleship, and service. (119)

Reaching the Community. Warren’s message for leaders in this section is simple: to reach a community, one must understand and know the community. Warren then took this understanding, based on door-to-door work from previous chapters and his growing understanding of his area of California and developed a target called “Saddleback Sam” (170). Without a target, many churches are effectively shooting at nothing, or shooting at a generic human stereotype that may not exist or will only attract a narrow segment of the population. One idea that this gave me was, as the church grows, to develop several kinds of general targets. Many populations are multi-modal and represent various kinds of ministry needs. A large church would eventually either work to encompass as many as possible or birth daughter churches.

Bringing In a Crowd. Leaders would do well to heed as Warren reaffirms that churches should exist to reach the “unchurched” (208) just as Jesus did, in an atmosphere of love and acceptance sans approval. Warren urges that Bible teaching should be applicable, understandable and interesting to non-Christians. His key word is relevance, “[s]imply thinking through the needs of the audience will help determine God's will for the message” (227). Like Hunter and others, Warren advocates “seeker sensitive” worship using their language, expecting church members to defer in order to accommodate unbelievers (251). While this is common now, it is good to refresh my thinking on this matter with a long-time ministry practitioner.

Building Up the Church. Warren finishes with how to take a gathered crowd towards discipleship. His image is a baseball diamond. The advice that Warren gives is practical on how to help Christians mature and attain growth. His section on the expectations for membership will help me communicate the vision that God gives me for the new church. His myths on spiritual growth should be taught to every Christian. In the end, this book helped me develop as a leader as it gave me a story to which I could relate and look up to, a Biblical foundation for new church development, helping me focus my leadership task to reach the community, make disciples and build them up. It will prove to help develop my leadership for the next 25 years of ministry.