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Rick Warren's Scary Movement: A Rant
The Pop, The Fizz and the Purpose-Driven Biz
by Michael Spencer

[OK. OK. Calm down. I know some of you people arrived here by Google and you are already upset. This is not a serious look at Rick Warren or Purpose Driven Christianity. It's a semi-humorous piece of venting, meant to acknowledge that not everyone is caught up in the excitement. Hope you can extend a bit of humor our way. Thank you. Now please procede and be offended.]

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....

...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...

...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....

...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 Cappacino bar will be closed by order of the government....