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Rick Warren's Scary Movement: A Rant The Pop, The Fizz and the Purpose-Driven Biz by Michael Spencer
Do you think all successful, healthy churches should basically be alike? Do you think God has revealed to pastors of mega-churches how things ought to be going in your church, and every other church as well? Do you believe book sales best indicate what is God's word for the church today? Do you believe that
it is highly likely Rick Warren is the greatest thing to happen to
evangelicalism since AWANA? Do you think there is
room for a couple of more books in scripture? Like, The Purpose Driven Life
maybe? Well, if you don't,
you must feel left out these days, because I've just described some of
the cardinal tenets of the mega-fad otherwise known as Rick Warren's
Purpose-Driven Christianity. (How the words
"Purpose Driven" make something so darned relevant you have to
immediately buy the books, take the course and see the video is a
secret that has not yet been revealed. The total power of these words
is unknown. I think we may be looking at something like The Ark of the
Covenant in that Indiana Jones movie, so if things go crazy and my face
melts, you know what happened.) At last count, there were about eight of us who hadn't read either one of Warren's two books, The Purpose Driven Church and The Purpose Driven Life. I know it is unlikely that we can all hold out much longer, so don't be ashamed if, even now, you have a copy of PDL in your stack of bathroom reading. I know the pressure is serious. Just do the best you can, and go down with your dignity. Warren himself seems
to be a regular guy. He's not much to look at and he's avoided TV--that
is, unless you count all those video feeds. His Saddleback Valley
Church is a church growth phenomenon. (Applause) He's Southern Baptist,
believes in starting new churches, and Jerry Falwell likes him. That's
good. Spiffy dresser, too. On the other hand,
Warren has come to represent everything nauseating about the current
fevered state of the church growth movement. A purveyor of endless
lists, principles and "must-do's to be normal," Warren is the pope of
evangelical church growth expertise. And the more books he sells, the
more authoritarian his tone. Warren will soon be telling us how God
instructed him in painting the bathrooms at Saddleback Valley an airy
blue rather than a school-room green. "Purpose Driven" is now a tattoo
offered at Lifeway Stores everywhere. Looks great across the chest. Convinced that every
church ought to be a mega-church and every pastor ought to be a
best-selling mega-church pastor, American evangelicals have become a
parody of modernism's love affair with "how-to-succeed-no-joke"
schemes. Even postmodern churches are now built from the blueprints of
the mega-churches. The business of churches in America is now to
imitate the successful and be imitated themselves. Like the Borg,
Warren and company want you to know resistance is futile. According to Warren,
the Christian life is a baseball game where you get saved, join a
church, get involved in a ministry and go on a mission trip.
Whooo-hooo. So many pastors and authors have said this sort of thing
before that you would need an encyclopedia to list them all. (But, of
course, they didn't have "Purpose Driven" in the title. Hmmmm...)
Southern Baptists have been talking like this for most of a century,
but not with the muffin-esque mug of Rick Warren on the box. The trick
now is to act like you've never heard the ABCs of the Christian life
before Rick came up with them. Advance reports are that Rick's next
book, The Purpose Driven
Pastor, will recommend brushing your teeth after every meal. In "Forty Days of Purpose," we all buy the same book, and go through the ABCs together. Aside from being a rather sad testimony to the ineptness of the average pastor to convey anything of importance and the worsening ADD condition of the average church member, this is all fine, and I'm sure is helpful to many people. The time spent going over Warren's principles is better than watching reruns of "Everybody Loves Raymond," but it's hardly the arrival of the Great Awakening. (Evangelicals now believe the Cane Ridge revival was 20,000 frenzied people reading the same book on church growth and Luther was nailing a list of worship choruses for the Saturday service on the church door.) In fact, this is the
first time in a while I've heard book sales so openly touted as a way
of measuring the work of the Holy Spirit. With a straight face, we are
supposed to believe that the sudden, unprecedented interest in Warren's
books is a major move of the Holy Spirit, directing all of us to get
purpose-driven and Saddlebacked. And if you believe that, I've got some
fine acreage in Mongolia you need to purchase today. The church-growth
wackos are determined to eradicate any paltry congregations that
attempt to ignore the pantheon of mega-pastors. From his perch at
Pastors.com, Warren frequently intones the death knell for those who
refuse to get jiggy with the seeker sensitive beat. Whatever. Warren's first book was a popularization of the Seeker Sensitive principles that now live, like a virus, in the mind of thousands of formerly sane pastors. The book's success was attributable to a mild word-of-mouth and Warren's success in making the various premises of Willow-Creekism more palatable to established, traditional churches. With his missions and "soul-winning" backgrounds, Warren's PDC was a book you could give to the chairman of deacons to explain why it was really important to offend the senior adults, retire the organist and let the local rock-band play those Skynard licks in morning worship. Whatever I might
think about it, I'll admit the book earned its way to success. Purpose-Driven
Life, on the other hand, was a success story before it ever arrived
on the shelves. Christian publishers outdid themselves in promoting the
new book, and PDL quickly became a phenomenon. I think every Iraqi
child has a copy. Along the way, no one really stopped to say the book
was entirely mediocre (and that is being generous) or hardly original.
With the "Forty Days of Purpose" campaign, PDL became essential reading
for hundreds of thousand of evangelicals. To NOT read Warren was to
ignore "what the Spirit is saying to the churches." Right in line
behind Experiencing God
and Left Behind, PDL
proved the the Holy Spirit had led Rick Warren to say and do all kinds
of things we all needed to hear in order to stop being bad and start
being good. Since they worship at
the Golden Calf of consumerism and believe the Holy Spirit speaks
through book sales, evangelicals have readily accepted Rick Warren as
the presiding archbishop of church growth and Christian experience.
There is an uncontrollable urge to get everyone on the same boat.
Apparently, when enough people read PDL there will be some kind of
harmonic convergence, all our churches will turn into
mega-churches, and we will all float up to the mothership. Am I ranting because
I can't stand Warren's success? Am I just bound and determined to say
that whatever is popular can't be good? Well, I'm close to that point,
but not quite. I'm simply tired of
the church growth "movement" (the name "cult" is getting more appealing
all the time) being such an obnoxious, juvenile presence in
Christianity. With all the subtlety of a mob of rampaging Herbalife
dealers, the church growth movement has arrived and forced us to think
about nothing but their issues and agenda for the past ten plus years.
I'm tired of it. When are they going to shut up? When are they going
stop telling all of us to be like them? Of course, as long as
evangelical pastors keep lapping up whatever comes down the pipeline
promising to make them the next big church and the next big thing, we
will never hear the end of it. Warren will overtake Barth with his
multi-volume "Purpose Driven Dogmatics." Soon, any church without
Powerpoint, a band and a Cappuccino bar will be closed by order of the
government. Meanwhile, waiting in
the wings, Beth Moore works on her study Bible, and Henry Blackaby
tries on those papal garments. The Purpose Driven Mothership awaits. |
