A Rick Warren blog

Self-appointed judges

By Mark Kelly

Is it a mystery to anyone why societies don’t allow judges to appoint themselves?

Someone who thinks his superiority qualifies him to be a judge usually is the last person who should sit in judgment. A jurist like that – someone who actually knows the verdict in advance of the trial – will make decisions based only on the evidence that supports his preconceived opinion.

You can see this in virtually every criticism of Rick Warren that appears on the Internet.

For example, one criticizer pounced on what he perceived as a contradiction in Pastor Rick’s comments during the recent ABC/Nightline interview. Asked by the interviewer if there is a danger in “merging Christianity with psychology,” Rick was quoted as saying that, yes, there absolutely is a danger because psychology can feed self-centeredness, whereas the life-changing truth of the Bible is “It’s not about you.”

The criticizer writes: “Now, that's funny – if merging Christianity with psychology is dangerous because it feeds ‘self-centeredness,’ and Rick Warren claims ‘it's not about you,’ why did he ask the readers of his column in the March 2005 issue of the Ladies Home Journal, about their ‘wobbly self-esteem’ and then carefully teach both Christians and non-Christians alike that ‘the five truths that form the basis of a healthy self-image’ were: ‘Accept yourself, Love yourself, Be true to yourself, Forgive yourself, and Believe in yourself?’”

The judge is so eager to deliver his verdict that he misses the difference between “merging Christianity with psychology” and using psychological insight in light of God’s truth.

Equipping servant leaders

By Mark Kelly

In the last installment on the P.E.A.C.E. vision, Pastor Rick explained how to attack the giant of spiritual emptiness by planting churches.

This time, he examines how to defeat the second "global Goliath" – self-serving leadership. The answer lies in equipping servant leaders. So what does a servant leader look like?

Read more! Rick Warren: Five marks of a servant leader

‘Marketing’ the Gospel

By Mark Kelly

One of the most ironic criticisms made of Rick Warren is that he has used “secular marketing ploys” to create a large congregation and sell a mountain of books.

The irony is that the critics use the same marketing strategies to communicate their criticism. Our friend Chris Forbes, on his Ministry Marketing Coach blog site, points out that some of the most effective Christian marketers are the people who criticize the use of marketing in ministry!

Critics use the word ‘marketing’ like it is evil, unspiritual, and manipulative. But if marketing is so evil, why do they do it themselves?

They do it because otherwise the message would never get out.

When you are unjustly accused

By Mark Kelly

Have you ever been accused of saying one thing, when in fact you said the opposite? Accused of believing one thing, when in fact you believe the opposite? Accused of doing one thing, when in fact you did the opposite?

I’ve got to admit I was pleased to read the news item this past week about a jury awarding Procter & Gamble $19.25 million for a false rumor that has circulated for decades, to the effect that the company's logo – a man-in-the-moon image facing 13 stars – concealed a satanic secret. A more recent version had the company’s CEO telling a TV audience that P&G gives money to the Church of Satan.

Rumors like that thrive on people who have a trusting nature, especially Christians who are rightly concerned about pernicious influences in society. Turns out the P&G rumor was helped along by some people who had a financial interest in another company that, like P&G, sells household cleaning products.

(There’s a bit of insight there about why some people would deliberately circulate falsehoods, if you care to dig it out.)

In the two years I have worked for Purpose Driven and Saddleback Church, I have been impressed with the way Rick Warren conducts himself in regard to the constant yammering of critics.

A missionary rocket ship to Mars

By Mark Kelly

I recently drove a 16-foot rental truck from Tennessee to California. It was pretty normal stuff until I got to the other side of Fort Worth and saw a sign that said “El Paso 545.”

Talk about discouraging! I’d already driven 750 miles in a sluggish, clumsy box truck. Now I was being told that even after another nine or 10 hours of driving I would still be in Texas!

I had decided to call my wife when it struck me: I was about to grumble about having to drive 10 hours on a smooth, wide interstate highway – and I was going to get on my cell phone to fuss about it! What was it like for the hardy travelers who settled in El Paso 400 years ago – not to mention the ones who pushed on another 700 miles to the Pacific Ocean!

There isn’t any way to measure how much better off I was in my bouncy old rental truck than they were in their ox-drawn wagons. I’m sure I’m clueless about all the many ways things have changed radically from then ‘til now.

The change we’re experiencing just in our lifetimes is enough to leave your head spinning. Launching this blog has been a dizzying experience. About the time I get the hang of one new bit of technology, somebody introduces another cool widget or sweet bit of Web 2.0 technology. Three years ago, nobody had ever heard of MySpace – now 72 million people interact there!

Have you stopped to think about what God is up to with all the massive changes sweeping the world?

It doesn’t take a giant

By Mark Kelly

Most of us have a hard time imagining God doing anything amazing through us. We are, after all, so ... ordinary.

It’s much easier for us to understand why God would use our “heroes of the faith” in amazing ways – people like Hudson Taylor, George Mueller, Lottie Moon, or Billy Graham. Because we think of them as spiritual giants, it’s not hard for us to imagine them doing “gigantic” things beyond our ability as “ordinary” Christians.

Or perhaps we think of celebrities – someone like U-2’s Bono – who leverage their name recognition, wealth, and fan base to attack an evil like extreme poverty or a global pandemic like HIV/AIDS.

But we’ve got to be careful that we don’t make the mistake of seeing things merely from a human point of view, and not from God's. (Matthew 16:23) Our society may define 'amazing' in "bigger is better" terms, but we need to try to think more like God thinks – and recognize that what is truly amazing is when God uses ordinary people to touch other ordinary people in an extraordinary manner.

Denise is a Saddleback member, a court reporter who participated in a P.E.A.C.E. Plan project in Kenya. Her team worked in schools, orphanages, clinics, and churches – doing the kinds of things Jesus himself would do: washing street kids, feeding the poor, helping the sick, and sharing the good news of God’s love with the people they met.

Listen to her testimony:

Defeating spiritual emptiness

By Mark Kelly

One of the most exciting elements of the Purpose Driven movement is the vision of the global P.E.A.C.E. Plan, which calls for every believer to follow the pattern Jesus himself gave us and become "peacemakers for Christ," living out in our everyday lives the ministry of reconciliation he has given us. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

Jesus faced down the same giants that confront us today: spiritual emptiness, self-serving leaders, extreme poverty, pandemic disease, and lack of education. The P.E.A.C.E. Plan response? Planting churches, Equipping servant leaders, Assisting the poor, Caring for the sick, and Educating the next generation.

We're going to look at each of those elements over the course of the next few months, starting with a look at what Pastor Rick has to say about defeating spiritual emptiness by planting churches.

Click here! Rick Warren: The greatest thing you can do

A 'cutting edge' opportunity to serve Christ

During the Global Summit on AIDS and the Church, Eugene Rivers, pastor of Azusa Christian Community in Boston, delivered a passionate call for the Church to follow God's call to share the Gospel’s redemptive truth while offering care and comfort for the multitudes who live with HIV/AIDS.

"God has given us … the AIDS crisis as an opportunity to declare the unknown God to a world that is blind in their sin and has no proper understanding of … truth," Rivers said. "In the crucible of unbelievable human suffering, God offers various generations the privilege to be a light during seasons of great moral tragedy."

You can listen as Pastor Rivers shares three distinct, practical ways the Church can get involved by clicking here.

Learn more about our HIV/AIDS initiative here.

On not taking rumors at face value

By Mark Kelly

If you would indulge me, I would like to share a brief – and mostly hypothetical – story.

It seems a corporation experienced a reversal of fortune and found itself struggling financially. The CEO persuaded a majority of the board to implement a new business model, one which had successfully turned around thousands of companies in similar straits. Unfortunately, three years later, the corporation’s financial situation had not improved, and a group of directors made plans to oust the CEO.

A business reporter who heard about the corporate coup attempt began working on a story. She learned that the CEO knew almost nothing about the nuts and bolts of the business model he had recommended – in fact, he misunderstood it at the most basic level. He had no experience with the model, had never attended any training related to it. He actually had read only part of one book about the model – and a few unrelated columns in a women’s magazine written by the progenitor of the model.

Question: Would the reporter’s story criticize the business model for creating division among the corporation’s directors? Or would it focus on the CEO’s attempt to implement a model about which he knew practically nothing? If, on further investigation, the reporter discovered that a significant segment of the corporate directors had opposed the CEO’s hiring from the beginning and were waiting for an opportunity to fire him, would that bit of background affect the way she viewed the root cause of the situation?

What really causes division in a church?

By Mark Kelly

The handful of people who get so bent out of shape about Rick Warren must have been positively salivating at the prospect of the March 7 edition of ABC’s Nightline: Rick Warren and Purpose Driven Strife. The word ‘exposé’ was being bandied about.

Alas, those tricky TV people – always cooking up headlines that make you think the story is going to be more controversial than it actually is.

People with the fortitude to stay up for shows in that time slot didn’t see an exposé. Instead, they got to hear Pastor Rick himself respond to the accusations that the Purpose Driven model is causing division in some churches.

No one disputes that some people have left churches because of changes attributed to implementing the Purpose Driven paradigm. Division and disagreement in a church are always regrettable.

The question is what really causes the division?