Prophet of Purpose : The Inside Story of Rick Warren and His Rise to Global Prominence

by Sheler, Jeffery L.

• ISBN13: 9780385523950
• ISBN10: 0385523955
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-11-03
• Publisher: Doubleday Religion

Summary

Rick Warren is arguably the most influential man in American religion today. Megachurch pastor, friend of world leaders, and trend-setting spiritual entrepreneur, he is widely recognized as the new public face of evangelical Christianity in America. No other modern churchman has matched his success as a leader and motivator of Christians. His book,The Purpose-Driven Life,is the bestselling nonfiction hardcover of all time, with more than 25 million copies sold. At a time when the evangelicalism stands at a political and cultural crossroads, his stature continues to rise. But who is Rick Warren? What can be learned from the story of the man behind the message? And what does his life say about the state of Christianity today? Prophet of Purpose: The Life of Rick Warrentraces the road Warren has traveled, the influences in his life, his trials and temptations, and the opposition he has encountered along the way. Honest, thorough, and insightful, it explores his spiritual coming of age during the turbulent 1960s, his principled determination to sit out the divisive battles between fundamentalists and moderates in the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s, and his audacious endeavor in the 1980s to build a "church for people who hate church" in the suburbs of Los Angeles. From a handful of worshippers meeting in a tiny apartment, he grew a vibrant congregation of over 22,000 and a global network of pastors who follow his strategies for building churches and transforming lives. In this unofficial biography, Jeffery L. Sheler, who had unfettered access to Warren and those closest to him, presents an intimate portrait of Warren as a man of faith and vision but also of flesh and blood and human foiblesa pastor, communicator, philanthropist, and family man who is driven by a sense of divine purpose to complete the course his God has set before him. Prophet of Purposebrings Warren and his mission to life and provides a provocative glimpse into the potential future of Christianity in America. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

JEFFERY L. SHELER reported for U.S. News & World Report for 24 years, including 15 years as the religion editor, and is a contributing editor for the magazine. He is the author of Is the Bible True? and Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America. He lives in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Table of Contents

America's Pastor	p. 1
"A Peculiar People"	p. 11
Roots of Faith	p. 29
"Huck Finn"	p. 44
Boy Preacher	p. 56
Kay	p. 71
The Texas Years	p. 86
Saddleback	p. 100
Out of the Desert	p. 121
Promised Land	p. 134
Purpose Driven	p. 156
"It's Not About You33	p. 173
The Road to Peace	p. 192
Riding Waves	p. 209
"Global Glory "	p. 225
Made for Significance	p. 242
Weathering the Storm	p. 255
Higher Ground	p. 275
Acknowledgments	p. 287
Notes	p. 289
Index	p. 317
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Chapter One
  
America's Pastor     

            They began arriving at Angel Stadium in Anaheim early in the morning in a steady stream of shiny SUVs and sport sedans that lined up in neat rows and quickly disgorged their passengers--a decidedly upscale mix of young families, middle-aged couples, andsingles of all ages, most of them appropriately attired for a balmy spring day in colorful shorts and T-shirts or tan-revealing sundresses, flip-flops, baseball caps, and sunglasses. Some hurried inside to stake out the better seats next to the dugouts andbehind home plate. Others lingered in the parking lot and clustered around barbeque grills and coolers or tossed Frisbees or lounged in beach chairs and sipped sodas in the warm Southern California sun.   
            It was a picture perfect day for the ballpark, and the Orange County suburbanites were out in force. But it was not to see their hometown Angels, who happened to be playing in Oakland that afternoon. On this particular Sunday--April 17, 2005--baseball was giving way to worship and to the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of probably the largest, easily the fastest-growing, and arguably the most influential evangelical congregation in the country, Saddleback Church in nearby Lake Forest.   
            Renting Angel Stadium had been the idea of Saddleback's fifty-one-year-old founder and senior pastor, Rick Warren, a man well-known for thinking big. It was Warren, after all, who in 1980, fresh out of a Southern Baptist seminary, audaciously announced to a handful of worshipers that the church they were starting from scratch in his tiny apartment would one day number 20,000 and would occupy a 50-acre campus. In 2004 they surpassed that goal. What began with two families as "a church for people who hate church" had grown to a congregation of more than 22,000 regular attenders on a 120-acre campus with an annual operating budget of more than $30 million.   
            It was Warren, too, who, thinking that other pastors might benefit from the lessons he had learned about church growth, began conducting training seminars in the late 1980s to promote a biblical model of ministry based on what he saw as "God's purposes." In 1995, he explained that model in a book for pastors entitled The Purpose-Driven Church. It sold over a million copies and helped launch the Purpose-Driven Network, a global alliance of now more than 10,000 congregations in 162 countries. Seven years laterhe wrote a spin-off, a book intended for laypeople called The Purpose-Driven Life. It became the best-selling nonfiction hardcover of all time--more than 25 million copies sold in the first three years alone.   
            The resulting fame and fortune catapulted Warren onto the national and international stage. Suddenly he found himself deluged with media interview requests and with calls from leaders in government, business, academia, the sports world, and the entertainment industry--even from foreign heads of state--seeking personal spiritual guidance or offering speaking invitations. At a time when many evangelical leaders were enlisting in the culture wars and aligning themselves with narrow partisan causes, Warren used his new public platform to call attention to the plight of the poor and the powerless, especially to AIDS victims in Africa.   
            At the same time, Warren and his wife, Kay, were determined that their sudden wealth would not alter their lifestyle. They became "reverse tithers," giving away

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Excerpted from Prophet of Purpose: The Life of Rick Warren by Jeffrey L. Sheler
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.