The more than 100,000 names on the roll of Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, Calif., could allow famed pastor, conference speaker and author Rick Warren to start and lead his own denomination. He could even be a mayor, he says jokingly.
While he’s not interested in doing either, he is interested in sharing some of his latest ideas with Southern Baptists, Warren said during a rare appearance at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting and related meetings June 13–15 in Phoenix. He is also interested in completing the fourth decade of major goals for Saddleback before he retires as pastor in 2020.
The new ideas and current goals focus on church planting and reaching the world as Jesus did, helping church members live healthier lifestyles and improving biblical literacy among believers.
“I think our convention is in a huge transition right now. And I don’t think anyone knows where it is going,” Warren said during a June 14 news conference at the Phoenix Convention Center. “If the SBC is to have a turnaround, we are going to have to change the way we keep score,” he said. “Whatever gets rewarded gets repeated. What has been rewarded is size of church.”
Pastors of large churches are given the positions and the accolades, while pastors of small churches are “assumed falsely” to not be as good of a preacher or pastor, Warren said. But the No. 1 characteristic for growing a church is location, not the pastor, he noted. “Some guys just get lucky … like me.
“There is no correlation between the size and strength of a church,” Warren said. “Bigger isn’t better. Smaller isn’t better. Better is better.
“It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.”
While large cities need a megachurch because “you need a big rock in a big pond,” not every church should be a megachurch, he explained. In fact, “the vast majority of churches are never going to be megachurches.”
Along with changing the mindset that a church’s size matters, Warren said a church-planting emphasis is vital to continue growing the denomination. And no church is too small, he said, noting Saddleback began planting churches its first year of existence with less than 100 members.
“Every church typically grows 15 years, then plateaus and starts on a decline, either slow or rapid … and the only way to stop the decline is to start a new bell curve at the top of the curve,” Warren said. And the only way to start a new bell curve in church life is to reach a new generation, he noted.
And if anyone knows about creating a new bell curve and reaching a new generation, then it’s Warren.
When he moved from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, to Lake Forest in 1980 to plant Saddleback, Warren made a 40-year commitment to the church during the first service. He also began leading the church to plant more churches on day one.
Warren has kept the church from declining by initiating a major shift of ministry focus each decade.
In the 1980s, the church focused on the local area. In the 1990s, it focused on North America. In the 2000s, Warren’s five-point P.E.A.C.E. Plan to reach people at all points of life went global and Saddleback missions teams made it to all 195 of the world’s recognized nations.
During this decade, Warren wants to reach all 3,800 unengaged people groups in the world. “Unengaged” is a missiological term meaning the people group has no established church. Unreached means that less than 2 percent of a people group is Christian. There are 6,000 unreached people groups.
“We’ve known about [these people groups] since 1974, but they are still there this many years later. This is nonsense,” Warren said. “If we start (reaching them), then maybe we can change the way people keep score. It’s OK to celebrate fruit on other people’s trees.
“The P.E.A.C.E. Plan is not an organization; it’s just an idea,” he said. “It’s not enough to just share the gospel; we must do the five things Jesus did:
• Plant churches
• Equip servant leaders
• Assist the poor
• Care for the sick
• Educate the next generation
“We are not in competition with the International Mission Board (IMB) or the North American (Mission) Board (NAMB),” Warren said, noting IMB’s challenge to “embrace” all 3,800 unengaged people groups over the next year and NAMB’s shift to a major church-planting focus. “We are 100 percent behind what they are doing.”
But Warren said he would “love to share” with IMB and NAMB officials “if they are interested” because “we’ve learned a thousand ways that don’t work but also 50 or 60 things that do work.”
Noting he has baptized 22,000 believers at Saddleback, Warren said he makes sure they are given the opportunity to mature as Christians once they join the church. His strategy is to move them as Jesus did “from come and see to come and die” through a series of classes such as what he did with Purpose Driven Life, which later became the best-selling book (besides the Bible) of all time.
From there, they are sent out to reach others, Warren said, noting 14,896 members have gone overseas on some type of missions experience since 1980. And when they go, they go quietly, allowing the local church to get the credit for what is done.
“The Great Commission is a training mission — teach them to do; don’t do it for them,” Warren added.
As far as promoting healthier lifestyles for his members, Warren said the idea started out with his own conviction to lose 90 pounds when he realized he was not being a good model for his congregation.
“One billion people are dying of malnutrition, but there are also 1 billion people dying of obesity,” Warren said. “We are dying because of lifestyle issues. We are killing ourselves.”
So Warren created The Daniel Plan (www.saddleback.com/thedanielplan); recruited three well-known doctors in the area of brain, heart and metabolism; and invited church members to join him.
“We had 12,000 people sign up,” he said. “It became an evangelistic outreach.”
Since January, Warren has lost 37 pounds and the church collectively has lost more than 200,000 pounds.
Coming in January 2012 is a small-group curriculum focused on biblical literacy — 40 Days in the Word.“We do a spiritual growth study every year. We just don’t always release it,” Warren said. “We do 40 days because it takes six weeks to create a habit.”
He’s releasing this study, however, because “I’m concerned about the lack of Bible literacy and so many people don’t know how to study.”
Then, later in 2012, Saddleback will hold a pastors conference to introduce pastors to a new Church Planting Academy Retreat Center coming to the church. Its purpose will be to train and equip church planters, worship leaders and ministry executives in starting healthy and reproductive churches.
NAMB President Kevin Ezell said this new center will be another resource available to Southern Baptists as NAMB develops its new focus on church planting.
“When we do the Send (North America) strategy, we want to use every resource we can to plant Southern Baptist churches,” he said. “We don’t see this as a competition. We’re about helping churches plant churches … and someone like Rick will help mobilize other pastors.”
And while Saddleback has found a renewed role in Southern Baptist life, Warren is less than 10 years away from retiring as pastor.
“In 2020, I’m turning the reins of Saddleback over to someone else,” he said. “It’s not because I don’t have the energy but because the church needs a younger leader.”
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