Rick Warren is probably the best-known living Christian leader in America, owing to his 2002 book, The Purpose Driven Life, which is a publishing phenomenon at more than 50 million copies sold. Last weekend, the 68-year-old founding pastor delivered his final sermon as senior pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., which is among the country’s biggest and most influential evangelical churches. Warren preached the same sermon he gave in 1980 at the church’s first service. Warren’s vision was audacious for a small congregation without a permanent home. “It is the dream of welcoming twenty thousand members into the fellowship of our church family … it is the dream of at least fifty acres of land, on which will be built a regional church for south Orange County,” Warren said on March 30, 1980.
How did he do it? Like all evangelical entrepreneurs, Warren didn’t simply leave everything up to God — he had a business plan. Before deciding where to start his church, Warren conducted demographic research and found out that Saddleback Valley was the fastest-growing area in the country’s fastest-growing county (Orange County) in the 1970s. So he moved West and founded Saddleback Valley Community Church, pointedly avoiding the “Baptist” in the name because his target was the “unchurched” population.
Warren, like his megachurch contemporary Bill Hybels in suburban Chicago, was a student of Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management theory. Drucker taught that it is the customer who decides what a business is. Warren spent months going door to door to find out what people wanted in the church and gave it to them — quality child care, a welcoming environment, upbeat music and practical preaching. Drucker also taught that businesses decline when they try to “preserve yesterday.” Warren perceived that churches also fell into that trap and was determined to abandon failing programs and keep innovating and growing.
Many non-evangelical people I’ve talked to have many misunderstandings about megachurches. They see thousands of people in a large theater or arena, high-energy bands playing contemporary praise songs, and casually dressed preachers giving what seem to be TED talks. Often these churches lack Christian symbols: No crosses, statues, pews, stained-glass windows. A few I visited seemed more like convention centers or corporate office parks than places of worship. But they are designed that way on purpose. The largest market is the unchurched, and Christian iconography and liturgical complexity were alienate those people.
The real work gets done not in the large-scale Sunday service but in small groups that everyone gets steered into once they decide to become members. Typically, each group is about 10 people who meet weekly at a home for fellowship and Bible study. This is the glue that holds these churches together. Warren knew that people are unlikely to form relationships if left to their own devices. If they don’t feel connected and have a sense of purpose, they will likely abandon the church. Everyone at Saddleback is expected to play a role: Working as a parking attendant, volunteering at the welcome desk, helping with youth ministry. I talked to dozens of people during my church visits and asked why they go to there and what they like most about it. Almost everyone said they felt a sense of community. That’s a hard thing to find in today’s world of screens, toxic “social media,” and remote work.
I attended a Saturday afternoon service at Saddleback’s main campus in Lake Forest in August 2021. The main “Worship Center” was being renovated, so we met under a large tent. To my surprise, Rick Warren himself walked up on the platform to preach in the summer heat. He referenced the pandemic several times, not in an anti-mask or anti-vaccine way, but instead acknowledging the general weariness people felt from 18 months of rapid and unwanted change. He said part of his job as pastor was to get people through hard times.
Some of his comments verged on self-help: “Happiness is a choice,” “You’re going to come out of COVID bitter or you’re going to come out better, and ‘i’ is the only difference between the words.” He make an analogy that individual ingredients in a cake don’t taste good, but mix them together and put in under heat and it results in something delicious. COVID is part of God’s plan, part of the mix. “I’m a purpose-driven eater,” the portly Warren joked.
All visitors were given a packet containing a small sheet with holes punched down the side. (Attendees collect these week to week and keep them in a three-ring binder.) The front side listed five things to remember about how to trust God when you don’t like the changes in your life. Warren went through each point and connected it to a Bible verse while we followed along and filled in the blanks. The back side listed five things to do when you feel stressed by changes. Again, Warren connected each point to a Bible reading. The sermon encapsulated Warren’s approach: Acknowledging that life is hard and giving people practical tools to deal with it.