The Purpose Drivel Church I
A lot has been said about Mr. Rick Warren’s philosophy as expressed in his book, The Purpose Driven Church. It is a book that I have read in details and even attempted to implement as far back as 2005. Everyone at crown was given a copy to study and we used it extensively in our discipleship classes. Then we began packaging the message and stage-crafting the service, purpose-driven style.
This article is the first in a series examining Mr. Warren’s new ideas about church growth and the problems he has introduced by propagating these philosophies. So note that I am writing this series as someone who has not only studied the book, but put it into practice.
The Purpose Driven Church looks and sounds good, but the more I read that book, the more I saw that it is a package of generally good substance that contains much poisonous ideas and substance.
The Foundation
The premise on which the entire book rests is presented on pages 13-22 in a section titled “Surfing Spiritual Waves“. I will examine some key issues from here first. Warren wrote (page 14):
Our job as church leaders, like experienced surfers, is to recognize a wave of God’s Spirit and ride it. It is not our responsibility to make waves but to recognize how God is working in the world and join him in the endeavour.
Watching surfers from the shore makes catching waves look pretty easy. Actually, it is quite difficult and requires great skill and balance. Catching a spiritual wave of growth isn’t easy, either. It takes more than desire or even dedication; it takes insight, patience, faith, skill, and most of all, balance. Pastoring a growing church, like surfing, may look easy to the uninitiated, but it isn’t. It requires a mastery of certain skills.
Waves of God’s Spirit?
Note that Mr. Warren did not provide any Biblical basis for this concept of “waves of God’s Spirit”. What does it mean? Is there Biblical basis for this? None. But Warren has sold the reader that idea from the word go. So people go on and swallow Warren’s philosophies about church growth all through the rest of the book, unsuspecting that from the word go, the foundation the book is built on is unfounded in Scriptures.
How God works…
Rick Waren wrote, “It is not our responsibility to make waves but to recognize how God is working in the world and join him in the endeavour“. But the Bible already tells us how God works in the world: the preaching of the Cross of Christ. That’s how God has been working since the Church was born. That’s how Paul, Peter and others co-operated with God, and that’s how they instructed us to do it too.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” Romans 1:16-17
Pastoring and Skills
In Mr. Warren’s words, “Pastoring a growing church, like surfing, may look easy to the uninitiated, but it isn’t. It requires a mastery of certain skills“. Again, he simply pulled this rabbit out of his magic hat; not from Scriptures.
What skills are Mr. Warren referring to? We know that Jesus and His apostles instructed ministers being skilful in rightly dividing the word of truth. We know that they spoke of love, faithfulness, and dedication to Christ. But we shall examine this in greater detail later.
Mr. Warren wrote further:
Today, God is creating wave after wave of people receptive to the Gospel. Due to the plethora of problems in our world, more people seem to be open to the Good News of Christ than at any other time this century. Unfortunately, because our churches haven’t been taught the needed skills, we are missing the spiritual waves that could bring revival, health, and explosive growth to our churches.
Note that Mr. Warren is still yet to explain what these “waves” are, but he pushes the idea further and further. We must also ask that by what statistics did he arrive at the conclusion that more people seem to be open to the Gospel now than at any other time this century?
New Testament prophecy consistently speaks of the world drawing further and further away from God as the days go by, and that is exacty what we are seeing. There has been no generation as godless as what we see on ground today: gay parades, multiple wars, genocides on grand scales, sexual immorality and perversion on a scale never before seen. Was Warren referring to this generation or another when he wrote this book?
The Bible speaks of a general rebellion to God in the last days, and that is precisely what is going on around us. Warren is wrong on this, and on almost everything he proceeds to present from this point on.
Mr. Warren creates a problem for us to solve, then offers us more philosophy not founded on Scripture: “…because our churches haven’t been taught the needed skills, we are missing the spiritual waves…”
Again, we are back to this “skills” thing and the “waves” thing. Still no Scripture.
When Jesus called His disciples (who later became His apostles), we do not see him prescribe that “certain skills” were needed. He used educated and uneducated, refined and unrefined, rich and poor.
The apostles, in leaving instructions to the Church of God, did not prescribe any special skills for ministry. They prescribed godly qualities: men filled with the Holy Spirit, men full of wisdom, men of character, men who understood the Gospel in its purity and preached nothing else, and men who were apt teachers of God’s word.
On page 15, Mr. Warren offers us some insight he must have gotten from a fuzzy, inner impression: “The more skilled we become in riding waves of growth, the more God sends!” Still no Scripture here either. He is conditioning our minds for the “nuggets” that he has for us. But note that almost nothing he penned in this entire section has a Biblical basis. They are all man’s ideas.
I’ll present and examine a few more things presented by Warren in this section.
The Largest Churches in the History of Christianity
Still on the same page, Mr. Warren wrote:
I believe God is sending waves of church growth wherever his people are prepared to ride them. The largest churches in the history of Christianity are in existence at this very moment. Most of them are in the United States.
What Rick Warren has failed to state is that almost everyone of the largest churches he wants us to see as examples are churches that are mostly Biblically and spiritually corrupt. Minus one or two exceptions, almost every mega-church in the United States is word of faith or liberal. In the U.S., we have the mega-church pastored by Joel Osteen, a man who does not seem to know much about anything concerning the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then we have Crenshaw Christian Centre, World Changers Church, and other word of faith centres.
Here in Nigeria, the largest churches are known more for their blasphemies, heresies, and unBiblical teaching and practices than for anything that really portrays Christ. On this list include: The Redeemed Christian Church of God, Christ Embassy, Winners Chapel, Mountain of Fire and Miracles, and others after their manner. All of these teach and practice a badly twisted mockery of Christ.
In Asia, we have Yonggi Cho’s mega-church that also spews out the same sort of drivel. In Europe, Kingsway International Christian Centre, among others, is an example of another mega-church that preaches very little of Christ.
Where are these “largest churches in the history of Christianity” that Mr. Warren refers to as examples of what he would have us consider Biblical church growth? The examples we mostly see don’t even come close to what Biblical Christianity is. They are churches that appeal to the basic selfish and self-centred instinct that rules unregenerated men and women than preach the Cross of Christ.
Chasing the Wind…
Mr. Warren further says church leaders should stop praying, “Lord, bless what I’m doing” and start praying, “Lord, help me do what you’re blessing.” Sounds good. The first part is good, and most people would just easilly swallow the second part.
However, the poison is in the second part. “Lord, help me do what you’re blessing”? But the Lord already told us what He blesses through the Bible. You didn’t know that? The Lord blesses obedience and faithfulness to His word. This fact is so littered all through Scriptures that I do not have to provide a reference for it.
No-one needs a degree in theology to know this. As such, the real prayer church leaders should be praying is, “Lord, help me obey your word and be faithful“. Guess what – all godly ministers we know are already praying that.
What Rick Warren has successfully done with millions around the world is send them on a wild goose chase for something that was never missing in the first place. Pastors everywhere are now busy looking for what God is blessing, instead of simply obeying Scriptures and being faithful in that which has been revealed.
It is partly because of Mr. Warren’s philosophies that we now have church management consultants and businesses, carrying out all sorts of re-strategising and branding. But the Church never needed these to start with.
Conclusion
Rick Warren has pulled a fast one in this introduction. He has cooked up a problem outside of what Scriptures says, and has written a book that sold millions to sell what are mostly his own ideas as solutions to what was never the problem in the first place.
If the foundation of a book or a set of philosophies is already this badly flawed from the word go, we cannot expect that the specific theme of the book will turn out to be otherwise. But we shall see as we examine more of The Purpose Driven Church in subsequent articles in this series.
