Your Purpose Driven Life - Interview #2
Your Purpose Driven Life - Interview #2
Here's a wonderful interview with Pastor Rick from www.Pastors.com.
=========================================
pastors.com / Rick Warren Interview
Pastors.com: You're known for saying that pastors need to be more "lost" centered, that is, looking at their church from the perspective of someone who doesn't go to church. Could you elaborate on that?
Warren: The most overlooked principle for church growth is we have to love people the way Jesus did. That's it! The motive behind everything we've done at Saddleback is that we love and care about lost people.
The reason Jesus attracted such large crowds is because He loved people.
On the other hand, I've heard churches justify their lack of growth by saying, "We're small because we haven't watered down the gospel.”
But maybe the real reason they don't have a crowd is because they don't want a crowd! They love their own comfort more than they love lost people. To reach unbelievers you have to move outside your own comfort zone and do things that often feel awkward and uncomfortable to you. It takes unselfish people to grow a church.
Lost people have a lot of problems and their lives are messy.
It's not by accident that Jesus compared evangelism to fishing. Fishing is often messy and smelly. So many churches want the fish they catch to be prescaled, gutted, cleaned and cooked. That's why they never reach anyone. If your church is serious about reaching the unchurched, you must be willing to put up with people who have a lot of problems.
The secret of reaching unbelievers is learning to think like an unbeliever.
But the problem is - the longer you're a Christian, the less you think like an unbeliever. And if you're a seminary-trained pastor, you're even more removed from unbelievers. You think like a pastor, not a pagan. So you have to intentionally learn to think like an unbeliever again. Paul says, "I become all things to all men so I may, in some way, win some.”
What he meant was he let his target determine his approach. When with Jews, he communicated like a Jew. When he was with Gentiles, he communicated like a Gentile. I'm sure if Paul game to Southern California, he'd learn to communicate in Southern Californian terms.
Some people think that communicating differently in different cultures is just being a chameleon, but actually it's just being strategic.
You don't compromise the message.
That message is, "the faith once delivered for the saints,” and we don't have an option to change the message. But the methods of sharing it have to change with every new generation and location.
The programs and tools we used when I was a youth pastor in inner city LA were different from those used as a short termed missionary in Japan, and those methods were different from what we're doing now at Saddleback.
There is no ONE WAY to grow a church! It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. If you're getting the job done - lives are being changed - then I like the way you're doing it, whether or not it's my style of ministry.
Pastors.com: In other words, you're not interested in Saddleback clones.
Warren: Absolutely not! Not one of the 26 mission churches we've planted is doing it exactly like us. We believe every church must have it's own unique thumbprint.
That's what The Purpose Driven Church is all about.
If a principle is biblical, I believe it is transcultural. In other words, it will work anywhere. But you must filter those principles through the culture of the community, the makeup of the congregation, and the personality of the pastor.
Purpose Driven Churches are all committed to the same five New Testament purposes of the church but these congregations come in all sizes, shapes, and cultures. God's purposes for the church never change, but the programs and methods do.
Look around and it's obvious that God loves variety. He loves to do things in more than one way!
Pastors.com: What about prayer and dedication? Is the growth of a church based upon the pastor's commitment?
Warren: It's a myth that all you need is prayer and dedication to grow a healthy church. Some of the most dedicated prayer warriors I know are pastors of dying churches. It really bothers me that some pastor's conferences promote that myth -- leaving pastors feeling discouraged and guilty instead of encouraged.
We've all heard speakers claim, "If you'll just pray more, preach the word, and be dedicated, then your church will grow.” Well, that's just not true.
I can show you thousands of churches where pastors are doctrinally sound; they love the Lord; they're committed and spirit-filled and yet their churches are dying on the vine. For instance, in my own denomination about 70% of the churches are either plateaued or declining. Is that because 70% of our pastors are not dedicated? Of course not. It's a complete myth.
If dedication is all that is needed to grow a church, 99% of our churches should be growing today, because most pastors are genuinely dedicated. But growing a healthy church is not that easy or simple. It involves many different factors and requires certain leadership skills.
Anytime you hear a person say, "This it the one way to growth,” you can be sure they're wrong because there are many keys to growth.
That's why I'm convinced that the key issue for our congregations in the 21st century is church health not church growth. Focusing on church growth is the wrong focus. If we'll focus on developing healthy churches, they will grow automatically. All living things grow - if they are healthy!
I don't have to tell my kids to grow. They do it automatically.
Now, what makes a healthy church? The answer is "balance," just like in the human body. Your body has a number of different systems: a circulatory system, a skeletal system, respiratory system, central nervous system, digestive system and others.
When these systems are in balance we call that "health."
When they are out of balance, we call it, "dis-ease," disease. Likewise the Body of Christ, the church, is made up of different systems, each fulfilling a different purpose: for worship, fellowship, evangelism, discipleship, and ministry. When you have a healthy system or process for each of these purposes, and these systems are balanced, the church naturally grows!
But here's the catch: unless you set up an intentional strategy and structure to insure balance between the five purposes of the church, then your church will tend to over emphasize the purpose the pastor feels most passionate about. If he has a heart for evangelism, the church may reach lots of people, but nobody grows up in the faith. If he has a gift of teaching, the church will develop mature believers, but will tend to neglect winning the lost.
If he has pastoral gifts, the church will have great fellowship and care but the church's ministry to the community will suffer or there will be little evangelism. You must set up a purpose driven structure that allows the church to become more than just an extension of its pastor.
Every church is driven by something: tradition, programs, finances, events, seekers, and even buildings. But to be healthy, it must become purpose driven. They need a strategy that will help them grow warmer through fellowship, deeper through discipleship, stronger through worship, broader through ministry and larger through evangelism. Sadly, many churches are personality driven. This puts the congregation in a very precarious position if the leader dies, moves, or has a moral failure.
At Saddleback we've built the church on purpose, not personality.
If I were to die right now, we'd lose maybe 10% of the "fringe" people who come to hear me, but that would still leave 90% of the other people to attend each week. No church is perfect but you can be healthy without being perfect.
Pastors.com: Saddleback happens to be a Southern Baptist church, yet you have no committees. I'm wondering - can you be Southern Baptist without committees?
Warren: That's funny. It's true that we have no committees, but we do have lots of different lay ministries. What's the difference?
Committees discuss but ministries do.
Committees argue while ministries act.
Committees maintain while ministries minister.
Committees talk and consider while ministries serve and care.
Committees make decisions that they expect other people to implement.
At Saddleback, the implementers are the decision-makers. The people who do the ministry get to make their own decisions about that ministry. We do not separate authority from responsibility.
We trust people with both.
Here's a radical question: What do these words and phrases have in common: majority rule, parliamentary procedures, ballots, boards, board meetings, business meetings, elections, voting, and committees.
None of them are found in the Bible.
Yet how many churches do you know that are formed on committees, boards, voting, and majority rule. What we have done is taken an American form of government and pressed it upon the church. The result is often the church is as ineffective and bureaucratic as the government is.
We must remember that the church is a body not a business.
It is an organism not an organization, and so God intends for it to operate on the basis of spiritual gifts, not elected offices. There is not a single example of voting to elect a pastor or any other church leader person in the New Testament. Voting was so foreign to the New Testament mind that when they chose Judas' replacement, they cast lots.
They were more likely to draw straws than vote.
Pastors.com: It took you a long time to get a building erected at Saddleback and it's an unusual one at that. Tell us about your building philosophy.
Warren: First, buildings are to be instruments, not monuments.
We would never build a building we couldn't tear down - if we needed to in order to reach more people - because people are the priority not buildings. Winston Churchhill once said, "We shape our buildings and then they shape us." Most churches build too soon and too small.
Then a permanently small building shapes a permanently small future.
That's why we postponed our building as long as we could. That meant, in order to keep growing, we used 79 different buildings in 13 years. We often joked, "We're the church that, if you can figure out where we are this week, you get to come.”
Pastors.com: You also have a strong opinion that churches should not try to mix traditional with contemporary worship styles.
Warren: Absolutely. If you try to please everybody you will end up reaching nobody.
You have to figure out who your evangelistic target is and focus on it.
I do not recommend that established churches try to radically change the style of their existing worship services. Instead, I suggest that they start a second, alternative service or, better yet, start a new mission designed to reach people not being reached by the traditional style.
If they try to change the existing service too much they'll lose some people who are already there. You don't necessarily have to stop what you're already doing. It's like when you're fishing. Instead of just using one line, throw another hook into the water. You might have four or five different worship styles, if that's what's needed to reach different generations that live in your community.
I'm not against any traditional method that is still reaching people for Christ - I'm just a proponent of adding new ways and services to reach those who will never be reached by the way we've traditionally done it.
Pastors.com: Most evangelical churches would say they're trying to reach everyone. Why do you think that won't work?
Warren: The church that claims to reach everyone is only fooling themselves.
No style of church can possibly reach everyone.
Take a close look and you'll find that every church has a "culture." This culture is determined by the predominant kind of people who make up the congregation. Whoever your church has right now is who you're likely to attract more of - whether you like that fact or not.
What is the likelihood of a church full of retirees reaching teenagers?
What is the likelihood of a church full of urban professionals reaching farmers?
What is the likelihood of a church full of military personnel reaching peace activists?
Highly unlikely. That's why we must start all kinds of services and churches.
Jesus modeled evangelistic targeting in the Bible. He said, "I came for the house of Israe,” and when He sent out the twelve and the seventy, He gave them a specific target. Was this to be exclusive?
No, to be effective. Likewise, Paul says, "I am the apostle to the gentiles and Peter is the apostle to the Jews.”
Why do you think we have four gospels? Because they were written to communicate the good news to different targets. Matthew wrote for Jews and Mark wrote for Gentiles.
Pastors.com: Some critics say that to be "seeker sensitive" requires the gospel to be watered down.
Warren: "Seeker sensitive" doesn't mean you compromise the message. It means you take into consideration people's culture in order to communicate that message.
Making a service "comfortable" for the unchurched doesn't mean changing your theology; it means changing the environment of the service - such as changing the way you greet visitors, the style of music that you use, the translation you preach from, and the kind of announcements you make in the service.
The message is not always comfortable.
In fact, sometimes God's truth is very uncomfortable. Still we must teach, "the whole council of God." Being seeker sensitive does not limit what you say but it will affect how you say it.
Imagine a missionary saying to a tribe, "I have the best news in the world, but to hear it, you must first learn my language, start wearing my kind of clothes, sing my songs, and come to my building at a time convenient for me.”
We'd call that a strategy for failure. But we do it in America all the time.
We say, "You have to hear the good news in our language and through our tunes.”
Pastors.com: You started with a clean slate at Saddleback, but what if a pastor in a traditional church wants to make changes. Where would you suggest he start?
Warren: What you should do is change the easiest thing first and the things that make the greatest difference. Don't worry initially about the issues that cause the greatest disagreement.
The easiest thing to change is the preaching.
Any pastor in any church could update his preaching style for the 1990s and see a dramatic improvement. In many churches, we're still using an oratory style what was pre-television.
Another simple improvement is to change the way your church welcomes visitors.
We don't realize that the traditional way of welcoming newcomers actually makes them more uncomfortable. Studies show that the three greatest fears that people have are, one, the fear of speaking in front of others, two, the fear of being singled out, three, the fear of being different.
Yet we welcome visitors by saying, "Stand up, tell us who you are, and put on a sticker that says you're different. Welcome to your three greatest fears.”
There are a lot of simple, practical changes that any traditional church can make in order to be more sensitive to the needs and the fears of their unchurched visitors.
Pastors.com: John Maxwell has said something like, "In the New Testament, Jesus was so human that people had trouble believing that He was divine. Yet, there are a lot of pastors who are so formal people have trouble believing that they're human." You also champion informality. Tell us about that.
Warren: I think one of the biggest barriers to effective ministry is that we take ourselves too seriously and don't take God seriously enough. The most important confession in the New Testament is Peter's confession when he says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” but the second and most important confession is Paul's confession when he says in Acts 17, "We are but men.”
You have to decide in life whether you want to influence people or impress them.
You can impress people from a distance but you can only influence them up close. We desperately need authentic leaders today, who are real and vulnerable. Our greatest life messages actually come out of our weaknesses, not our strengths.
I don't think it's by accident that the words, "humor" and "humility" come from the same root word. Self-deprecating humor is the quickest way to turn a hostile audience into a friendly one. It endears people to you. Anyway, if you learn to laugh at yourself, you'll always have plenty of material.
People like being around someone who isn't trying to put on airs or act pompous.
I've got three doctorates, but I never let anybody call me "doctor."
In fact, my people just call me "Rick."
And I sign all letters to visitors with just "Rick," not even "Pastor Rick." Why?
Because I want them to feel they can relate to me on a first name basis. None of my degrees are hanging on the wall. Instead, I've got pictures of my kids up. That's what people relate to - "Oh, you're normal.”
Pastors.com: Does that contribute to an openness with the congregation where people are willing to share their struggles?
Warren: One unique part of our service every Sunday is a testimony of someone working through a real life problem with Jesus' help.
Some churches are now using drama to illustrate the message but I thought, "Why write a fake story, a drama, when I've got a real live story sitting out there in the congregation?”
So, every week, in the middle of my message, I have a person or couple share a five-minute testimony.
These are never "Thank God I've never sinned” stories, but gut level stories about over coming adultery, mental illness, alcoholism, promiscuity, abortion, abuse and relatives dying of AIDS. We've covered every issue you could think of.
These testimonies have brought about two wonderful results. First, they have created a climate of authenticity and openness in our fellowship. People realize it's ok to have problems now. You don't have to talk about them only in past tense.
Second, it has mobilized hundreds of people for lay ministry. As it says in 2 Corinthians "God allows us to go through these problems and then comforts us so that we can have a ministry of helping others.”
Pastors.com: You're known as a visionary. What do you see as the number one challenge facing churches over the next five years?
Warren: The greatest challenge churches will face over the next five years is developing and adapting our ministry methods to the massive needs of the 21st century. We can't just keep on "doing it the way we've always done it."
The world has changed - permanently - and we are never going back to the 1950s.
We must start thousands of new churches and services. It will take new churches to reach a new generation. But more than that, we must develop a clear practical strategy that helps all our existing churches through what I call the four types of renewal: personal renewal, corporate renewal, mission renewal, and structural renewal.
If we don't, thousands of churches are going to be closing and boarding up for good. That's sad, because it doesn't have to happen. All it takes is leadership with the vision and courage to make tough decisions.
I have never seen pastors more open to learning and growing.
We've had over 26,000 pastors and church leaders attend the Purpose Driven Church seminars. I'm a big fan of pastors, especially bi-vocational ones who support themselves while serving a church. I think pastors are the most underrated change agents in America.
Anything we can do as a denomination to strengthen their families, encourage them personally, and equip them with new skills necessary for ministry in the next century will be the wisest use of our resources we can possibly make.
=========================================
Great interview, wasn't it?
God Bless you -
Chip Tarver
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Here's a wonderful interview with Pastor Rick from www.Pastors.com.
=========================================
pastors.com / Rick Warren Interview
Pastors.com: You're known for saying that pastors need to be more "lost" centered, that is, looking at their church from the perspective of someone who doesn't go to church. Could you elaborate on that?
Warren: The most overlooked principle for church growth is we have to love people the way Jesus did. That's it! The motive behind everything we've done at Saddleback is that we love and care about lost people.
The reason Jesus attracted such large crowds is because He loved people.
On the other hand, I've heard churches justify their lack of growth by saying, "We're small because we haven't watered down the gospel.”
But maybe the real reason they don't have a crowd is because they don't want a crowd! They love their own comfort more than they love lost people. To reach unbelievers you have to move outside your own comfort zone and do things that often feel awkward and uncomfortable to you. It takes unselfish people to grow a church.
Lost people have a lot of problems and their lives are messy.
It's not by accident that Jesus compared evangelism to fishing. Fishing is often messy and smelly. So many churches want the fish they catch to be prescaled, gutted, cleaned and cooked. That's why they never reach anyone. If your church is serious about reaching the unchurched, you must be willing to put up with people who have a lot of problems.
The secret of reaching unbelievers is learning to think like an unbeliever.
But the problem is - the longer you're a Christian, the less you think like an unbeliever. And if you're a seminary-trained pastor, you're even more removed from unbelievers. You think like a pastor, not a pagan. So you have to intentionally learn to think like an unbeliever again. Paul says, "I become all things to all men so I may, in some way, win some.”
What he meant was he let his target determine his approach. When with Jews, he communicated like a Jew. When he was with Gentiles, he communicated like a Gentile. I'm sure if Paul game to Southern California, he'd learn to communicate in Southern Californian terms.
Some people think that communicating differently in different cultures is just being a chameleon, but actually it's just being strategic.
You don't compromise the message.
That message is, "the faith once delivered for the saints,” and we don't have an option to change the message. But the methods of sharing it have to change with every new generation and location.
The programs and tools we used when I was a youth pastor in inner city LA were different from those used as a short termed missionary in Japan, and those methods were different from what we're doing now at Saddleback.
There is no ONE WAY to grow a church! It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. If you're getting the job done - lives are being changed - then I like the way you're doing it, whether or not it's my style of ministry.
Pastors.com: In other words, you're not interested in Saddleback clones.
Warren: Absolutely not! Not one of the 26 mission churches we've planted is doing it exactly like us. We believe every church must have it's own unique thumbprint.
That's what The Purpose Driven Church is all about.
If a principle is biblical, I believe it is transcultural. In other words, it will work anywhere. But you must filter those principles through the culture of the community, the makeup of the congregation, and the personality of the pastor.
Purpose Driven Churches are all committed to the same five New Testament purposes of the church but these congregations come in all sizes, shapes, and cultures. God's purposes for the church never change, but the programs and methods do.
Look around and it's obvious that God loves variety. He loves to do things in more than one way!
Pastors.com: What about prayer and dedication? Is the growth of a church based upon the pastor's commitment?
Warren: It's a myth that all you need is prayer and dedication to grow a healthy church. Some of the most dedicated prayer warriors I know are pastors of dying churches. It really bothers me that some pastor's conferences promote that myth -- leaving pastors feeling discouraged and guilty instead of encouraged.
We've all heard speakers claim, "If you'll just pray more, preach the word, and be dedicated, then your church will grow.” Well, that's just not true.
I can show you thousands of churches where pastors are doctrinally sound; they love the Lord; they're committed and spirit-filled and yet their churches are dying on the vine. For instance, in my own denomination about 70% of the churches are either plateaued or declining. Is that because 70% of our pastors are not dedicated? Of course not. It's a complete myth.
If dedication is all that is needed to grow a church, 99% of our churches should be growing today, because most pastors are genuinely dedicated. But growing a healthy church is not that easy or simple. It involves many different factors and requires certain leadership skills.
Anytime you hear a person say, "This it the one way to growth,” you can be sure they're wrong because there are many keys to growth.
That's why I'm convinced that the key issue for our congregations in the 21st century is church health not church growth. Focusing on church growth is the wrong focus. If we'll focus on developing healthy churches, they will grow automatically. All living things grow - if they are healthy!
I don't have to tell my kids to grow. They do it automatically.
Now, what makes a healthy church? The answer is "balance," just like in the human body. Your body has a number of different systems: a circulatory system, a skeletal system, respiratory system, central nervous system, digestive system and others.
When these systems are in balance we call that "health."
When they are out of balance, we call it, "dis-ease," disease. Likewise the Body of Christ, the church, is made up of different systems, each fulfilling a different purpose: for worship, fellowship, evangelism, discipleship, and ministry. When you have a healthy system or process for each of these purposes, and these systems are balanced, the church naturally grows!
But here's the catch: unless you set up an intentional strategy and structure to insure balance between the five purposes of the church, then your church will tend to over emphasize the purpose the pastor feels most passionate about. If he has a heart for evangelism, the church may reach lots of people, but nobody grows up in the faith. If he has a gift of teaching, the church will develop mature believers, but will tend to neglect winning the lost.
If he has pastoral gifts, the church will have great fellowship and care but the church's ministry to the community will suffer or there will be little evangelism. You must set up a purpose driven structure that allows the church to become more than just an extension of its pastor.
Every church is driven by something: tradition, programs, finances, events, seekers, and even buildings. But to be healthy, it must become purpose driven. They need a strategy that will help them grow warmer through fellowship, deeper through discipleship, stronger through worship, broader through ministry and larger through evangelism. Sadly, many churches are personality driven. This puts the congregation in a very precarious position if the leader dies, moves, or has a moral failure.
At Saddleback we've built the church on purpose, not personality.
If I were to die right now, we'd lose maybe 10% of the "fringe" people who come to hear me, but that would still leave 90% of the other people to attend each week. No church is perfect but you can be healthy without being perfect.
Pastors.com: Saddleback happens to be a Southern Baptist church, yet you have no committees. I'm wondering - can you be Southern Baptist without committees?
Warren: That's funny. It's true that we have no committees, but we do have lots of different lay ministries. What's the difference?
Committees discuss but ministries do.
Committees argue while ministries act.
Committees maintain while ministries minister.
Committees talk and consider while ministries serve and care.
Committees make decisions that they expect other people to implement.
At Saddleback, the implementers are the decision-makers. The people who do the ministry get to make their own decisions about that ministry. We do not separate authority from responsibility.
We trust people with both.
Here's a radical question: What do these words and phrases have in common: majority rule, parliamentary procedures, ballots, boards, board meetings, business meetings, elections, voting, and committees.
None of them are found in the Bible.
Yet how many churches do you know that are formed on committees, boards, voting, and majority rule. What we have done is taken an American form of government and pressed it upon the church. The result is often the church is as ineffective and bureaucratic as the government is.
We must remember that the church is a body not a business.
It is an organism not an organization, and so God intends for it to operate on the basis of spiritual gifts, not elected offices. There is not a single example of voting to elect a pastor or any other church leader person in the New Testament. Voting was so foreign to the New Testament mind that when they chose Judas' replacement, they cast lots.
They were more likely to draw straws than vote.
Pastors.com: It took you a long time to get a building erected at Saddleback and it's an unusual one at that. Tell us about your building philosophy.
Warren: First, buildings are to be instruments, not monuments.
We would never build a building we couldn't tear down - if we needed to in order to reach more people - because people are the priority not buildings. Winston Churchhill once said, "We shape our buildings and then they shape us." Most churches build too soon and too small.
Then a permanently small building shapes a permanently small future.
That's why we postponed our building as long as we could. That meant, in order to keep growing, we used 79 different buildings in 13 years. We often joked, "We're the church that, if you can figure out where we are this week, you get to come.”
Pastors.com: You also have a strong opinion that churches should not try to mix traditional with contemporary worship styles.
Warren: Absolutely. If you try to please everybody you will end up reaching nobody.
You have to figure out who your evangelistic target is and focus on it.
I do not recommend that established churches try to radically change the style of their existing worship services. Instead, I suggest that they start a second, alternative service or, better yet, start a new mission designed to reach people not being reached by the traditional style.
If they try to change the existing service too much they'll lose some people who are already there. You don't necessarily have to stop what you're already doing. It's like when you're fishing. Instead of just using one line, throw another hook into the water. You might have four or five different worship styles, if that's what's needed to reach different generations that live in your community.
I'm not against any traditional method that is still reaching people for Christ - I'm just a proponent of adding new ways and services to reach those who will never be reached by the way we've traditionally done it.
Pastors.com: Most evangelical churches would say they're trying to reach everyone. Why do you think that won't work?
Warren: The church that claims to reach everyone is only fooling themselves.
No style of church can possibly reach everyone.
Take a close look and you'll find that every church has a "culture." This culture is determined by the predominant kind of people who make up the congregation. Whoever your church has right now is who you're likely to attract more of - whether you like that fact or not.
What is the likelihood of a church full of retirees reaching teenagers?
What is the likelihood of a church full of urban professionals reaching farmers?
What is the likelihood of a church full of military personnel reaching peace activists?
Highly unlikely. That's why we must start all kinds of services and churches.
Jesus modeled evangelistic targeting in the Bible. He said, "I came for the house of Israe,” and when He sent out the twelve and the seventy, He gave them a specific target. Was this to be exclusive?
No, to be effective. Likewise, Paul says, "I am the apostle to the gentiles and Peter is the apostle to the Jews.”
Why do you think we have four gospels? Because they were written to communicate the good news to different targets. Matthew wrote for Jews and Mark wrote for Gentiles.
Pastors.com: Some critics say that to be "seeker sensitive" requires the gospel to be watered down.
Warren: "Seeker sensitive" doesn't mean you compromise the message. It means you take into consideration people's culture in order to communicate that message.
Making a service "comfortable" for the unchurched doesn't mean changing your theology; it means changing the environment of the service - such as changing the way you greet visitors, the style of music that you use, the translation you preach from, and the kind of announcements you make in the service.
The message is not always comfortable.
In fact, sometimes God's truth is very uncomfortable. Still we must teach, "the whole council of God." Being seeker sensitive does not limit what you say but it will affect how you say it.
Imagine a missionary saying to a tribe, "I have the best news in the world, but to hear it, you must first learn my language, start wearing my kind of clothes, sing my songs, and come to my building at a time convenient for me.”
We'd call that a strategy for failure. But we do it in America all the time.
We say, "You have to hear the good news in our language and through our tunes.”
Pastors.com: You started with a clean slate at Saddleback, but what if a pastor in a traditional church wants to make changes. Where would you suggest he start?
Warren: What you should do is change the easiest thing first and the things that make the greatest difference. Don't worry initially about the issues that cause the greatest disagreement.
The easiest thing to change is the preaching.
Any pastor in any church could update his preaching style for the 1990s and see a dramatic improvement. In many churches, we're still using an oratory style what was pre-television.
Another simple improvement is to change the way your church welcomes visitors.
We don't realize that the traditional way of welcoming newcomers actually makes them more uncomfortable. Studies show that the three greatest fears that people have are, one, the fear of speaking in front of others, two, the fear of being singled out, three, the fear of being different.
Yet we welcome visitors by saying, "Stand up, tell us who you are, and put on a sticker that says you're different. Welcome to your three greatest fears.”
There are a lot of simple, practical changes that any traditional church can make in order to be more sensitive to the needs and the fears of their unchurched visitors.
Pastors.com: John Maxwell has said something like, "In the New Testament, Jesus was so human that people had trouble believing that He was divine. Yet, there are a lot of pastors who are so formal people have trouble believing that they're human." You also champion informality. Tell us about that.
Warren: I think one of the biggest barriers to effective ministry is that we take ourselves too seriously and don't take God seriously enough. The most important confession in the New Testament is Peter's confession when he says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” but the second and most important confession is Paul's confession when he says in Acts 17, "We are but men.”
You have to decide in life whether you want to influence people or impress them.
You can impress people from a distance but you can only influence them up close. We desperately need authentic leaders today, who are real and vulnerable. Our greatest life messages actually come out of our weaknesses, not our strengths.
I don't think it's by accident that the words, "humor" and "humility" come from the same root word. Self-deprecating humor is the quickest way to turn a hostile audience into a friendly one. It endears people to you. Anyway, if you learn to laugh at yourself, you'll always have plenty of material.
People like being around someone who isn't trying to put on airs or act pompous.
I've got three doctorates, but I never let anybody call me "doctor."
In fact, my people just call me "Rick."
And I sign all letters to visitors with just "Rick," not even "Pastor Rick." Why?
Because I want them to feel they can relate to me on a first name basis. None of my degrees are hanging on the wall. Instead, I've got pictures of my kids up. That's what people relate to - "Oh, you're normal.”
Pastors.com: Does that contribute to an openness with the congregation where people are willing to share their struggles?
Warren: One unique part of our service every Sunday is a testimony of someone working through a real life problem with Jesus' help.
Some churches are now using drama to illustrate the message but I thought, "Why write a fake story, a drama, when I've got a real live story sitting out there in the congregation?”
So, every week, in the middle of my message, I have a person or couple share a five-minute testimony.
These are never "Thank God I've never sinned” stories, but gut level stories about over coming adultery, mental illness, alcoholism, promiscuity, abortion, abuse and relatives dying of AIDS. We've covered every issue you could think of.
These testimonies have brought about two wonderful results. First, they have created a climate of authenticity and openness in our fellowship. People realize it's ok to have problems now. You don't have to talk about them only in past tense.
Second, it has mobilized hundreds of people for lay ministry. As it says in 2 Corinthians "God allows us to go through these problems and then comforts us so that we can have a ministry of helping others.”
Pastors.com: You're known as a visionary. What do you see as the number one challenge facing churches over the next five years?
Warren: The greatest challenge churches will face over the next five years is developing and adapting our ministry methods to the massive needs of the 21st century. We can't just keep on "doing it the way we've always done it."
The world has changed - permanently - and we are never going back to the 1950s.
We must start thousands of new churches and services. It will take new churches to reach a new generation. But more than that, we must develop a clear practical strategy that helps all our existing churches through what I call the four types of renewal: personal renewal, corporate renewal, mission renewal, and structural renewal.
If we don't, thousands of churches are going to be closing and boarding up for good. That's sad, because it doesn't have to happen. All it takes is leadership with the vision and courage to make tough decisions.
I have never seen pastors more open to learning and growing.
We've had over 26,000 pastors and church leaders attend the Purpose Driven Church seminars. I'm a big fan of pastors, especially bi-vocational ones who support themselves while serving a church. I think pastors are the most underrated change agents in America.
Anything we can do as a denomination to strengthen their families, encourage them personally, and equip them with new skills necessary for ministry in the next century will be the wisest use of our resources we can possibly make.
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Great interview, wasn't it?
God Bless you -
Chip Tarver
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