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Spirit-Led or Purpose-Driven? Part 1 (shorter series)by Berit Kjos, November 2003 Part 2: "Widening the gate to the Kingdom" |
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"There are some really good things that Rick Warren brings out," wrote Dave, who visited our website while his church was immersed in the 40-day course based on the Purpose Driven Life. "But they always seems to be mixed with so many confusing and theologically weak points that you go crazy trying to keep it all straight. You will read a great point and then he'll throw in a quote from Mother Theresa or Aldous Huxley and your mind reels. There's a push to paint God as a smiley face in the sky - but you have to ignore His justice and anger! Plus, when you are the only 'naysayers' in a group it gets old - especially when no one else seems to have anything but praise for the book."
Dave speaks for a multitude of troubled people. While Pastor Warren's manual on Christian living has captivated churches around the world, a rising number of discerning readers question its subtle distortions, its half-truths, its conflicting messages and its pragmatic permissiveness: if it works (i.e. brings people into the church), it's okay!
"God loves variety!"[2]
Like Dave, many find it hard to resist the popular consensus, especially when Pastor Warren's "rules for growth" tells us to "never criticize what God is blessing."
[3] Implying that church growth and changed lives prove God's delight in our human strategies, it cancels His call to "be on guard" and discern deception. While only God can judge the heart of a person, He tells us to help each other follow His guidelines, not be driven by today's new management systems. [see Driven or Led?]
Rick Warren, the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California, has been leading the way and breaking new ground in today's Church Growth Movement. With over 50,000 names on his church roll, he models the success of the church management process he outlined in his earlier book, The Purpose-Driven Church.
He also founded the website, www.pastors.com, "a global Internet community that serves and mentors those in ministry worldwide." It tells us that "over 60,000 pastors subscribe to Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox, a free weekly email newsletter."[4] Then it summarizes his ministry:
"Rick Warren is well known as the pioneer of The Purpose-Driven Church paradigm for church health. More than 250,000 pastors and church leaders from over 125 countries have attended Purpose-Driven Church seminars in 18 languages. Peter Drucker calls him 'the inventor of perpetual revival.' Rick's previous book, The Purpose-Driven Church, has sold over a million copies in 20 languages. Winner of the Gold Medallion Ministry Book of the Year, it is used as a textbook in most seminaries, and was selected as one of the 100 Christian Books That Changed the 20th Century."[4]
Notice the reference to Peter Drucker. What this legendary management guru began teaching large corporations decades ago has now been applied to God's churches as well as to communities and governments around the world. Since the new methods seemed to "work" equally well for churches as for corporations -- and since the measured results offer statistical "proof" of "success" -- pastors from countless nations have embraced and implemented Drucker's marketing approach to "doing church."
In a 2002 article in Business Week titled "Peter Drucker's Search for Community," Ken Witty describes the world view that drives Drucker's plans and purpose:
communitarian philosophy to his consulting.... He said that what he's all about is this search for community, the search for where people and organizations find community for noneconomic satisfaction...."He brings a
"A lot of his ideas have become so accepted that it's hard for anyone to understand how original they were at the time he introduced them. It's sort of like Freud and psychoanalysis. Peter was the first, for example, to help managers understand that they had to define their businesses from a customer's perspective."
[5]