Rick Warren American Baptist evangelical Christian pastor and author Date of Birth: 28.01.1954 Country: USA

Content:

1. Rick Warren's Life and Ministry
2. Ministry
3. Purpose Driven
4. P.E.A.C.E. Plan
5. Recognition
6. Personal Life
7. Political and Social Views

Rick Warren's Life and Ministry

Early Life and Education

Rick Warren (born January 28, 1954) is an American Baptist evangelical Christian pastor and author. He is the founder of Saddleback Church, an evangelical Baptist megachurch in Lake Forest, California. Born in San Jose, California, to Jimmy and Dot Warren, his father was a Baptist minister and his mother a school librarian. He grew up in Yucaipa, California, and graduated from Yucaipa High School in 1972, where he established the school's first Christian club. He attended California Baptist University in Riverside, California, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, and later studied at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, receiving a Master of Divinity degree in 1979. He also studied at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and received a Doctor of Ministry degree.

Ministry

Warren says he was called into full-time ministry as a 19-year-old student at California Baptist University. In November 1973, he and a friend skipped class and drove 350 miles to hear W. A. Criswell preach at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco. Afterward, Warren waited to shake Criswell's hand, who zeroed in on Warren, stating: "I feel led to lay hands on you and pray for you!" While studying at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Warren worked at Texas Christ Ranch, the ministry of Billy Hanks, Jr., where he began writing books. With Hanks and Wayne Watts, he co-authored two books: "Winning Scripture Memory Series" and "Twelve Dynamic Ways to Study the Bible for Laymen."

In January 1980, Warren organized a Bible study group, consisting of seven people and his wife, in their apartment in Saddleback Valley in Orange County, California. In April 1980, Warren held the first public service of Saddleback Church on Easter Sunday at the Laguna Hills High School Theater, attended by 200 people. Warren's church growth methods led to rapid expansion: Over its 35-year history, the church has used nearly 80 different facilities. The church has an average weekly attendance of approximately 20,000. In 2005, during the Baptist World Alliance's Centennial Congress, he affirmed that the Southern Baptist Convention's withdrawal from the Alliance was a mistake, as theological differences should not preclude fellowship with other churches.

Warren has been invited to speak at national and international forums, including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the African Union, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Harvard Kennedy School, TED, and the Time Global Health Summit. He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) since 2005. In August 2008, Warren gained wider national attention by hosting a Civil Forum on the Presidency featuring Senators John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback Church. The forum marked the first joint appearance by McCain and Obama as the presumptive Republican and Democratic presidential nominees and was broadcast live on national television.

In December 2008, President-elect Obama selected Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. The decision angered pro-choice and LGBT advocates and led to criticism of both Obama and Warren. Obama defended his choice of Warren, saying that while he did not agree with the minister's positions on abortion and same-sex marriage, there should be room for dialogue on such difficult social issues. Further controversy arose when it was announced that Warren would be the keynote speaker at the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Remembrance on January 19, 2009, the day before the inauguration. The following day, he delivered an invocation at Obama's inauguration, which was generally praised for its positive message. In January 2009, Warren and the Reader's Digest Association launched Purpose Driven Connection, a quarterly publication sold as part of a multimedia package of products. In November 2009, the partners announced that the magazine had failed to attract enough paid subscribers and would cease publication after its fourth issue was published later that month.

In 2010, Warren was chosen to give the invocation at the inauguration ceremony of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. He has since served on the latter's Presidential Advisory Council. In June 2021, Warren announced that he was stepping down as senior pastor at Saddleback but would remain until a successor was named. In 2022, Warren retired as the lead pastor, while continuing in the role of founding pastor. In May 2023, Warren was appointed as the first chancellor of Spurgeon College. The following month, he spoke out in favor of the ordination of women after Saddleback Church was disfellowshipped from the Southern Baptist Convention for hiring a female pastor.

Purpose Driven

Warren taught the material that would eventually become the philosophy of purpose-driven ministry to individual pastors who would call or write him in the early days of Saddleback. Warren gained experience teaching this material through his involvement with the Institute for Evangelism and Church Growth, associated with Fuller Theological Seminary. In 1995, Zondervan published Warren's bestseller, "The Purpose Driven Church," which outlined many of the lessons he had learned in starting Saddleback Church and had refined over years of mentoring other pastors. After presenting the "Saddleback Story," the book argues for building the church around five purposes (worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and evangelism) through what Warren called the "crowd to core" method of church growth. He urged churches to reach out to their communities, gather a crowd, assimilate visitors into members, develop those members to maturity, mobilize them to serve, and send them out on mission. By 2004, over 10,000 churches of various denominations had attended a seminar or conference led by Warren.

P.E.A.C.E. Plan

In 2003, Saddleback Church, Kay and Rick Warren founded P.E.A.C.E. Plan, a church-based humanitarian development program. The acronym stands for Promoting Education, Agriculture, Community Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Evangelism. The program operates in over 20 countries.

Recognition

In 2004, Time magazine named Warren one of the "Leaders who Mattered Most in 2004." In April 2005, Time named Warren one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." In October 2005, U.S. News & World Report named Warren one of the "25 Best Leaders in America." In 2006, Newsweek named Warren one of the "15 People Who Make America Great." As of 2006, Warren's book "The Purpose Driven Life" had sold over 30 million copies, making him a New York Times best-selling author.

Personal Life

Warren has been married to Kay Warren since June 21, 1975. They have three adult children and four grandchildren. He considers Billy Graham, Peter Drucker, and his father to be his mentors. In 2006, following the success of his book "The Purpose Driven Life," he said he had decided to "tithe in reverse," giving away 90% of his income to three foundations and no longer taking a salary from the church. The Warrens' youngest son, Matthew, died by suicide on April 6, 2013, after a 10-year battle with mental illness that began in childhood. He says that following this event, he was contacted by over 10,000 people writing about their own struggles within the church. In March 2014, Warren launched Saddleback's Hope for Mental Health ministry to address the church's role in helping people struggling with mental illness by convening a gathering on mental health and the church.

Political and Social Views

Warren's combination of toned-down rhetoric on political issues central to American evangelicals and his concern with social issues has led to Warren being characterized as one of a "new breed" of evangelical leaders by some media accounts, a shift from traditional evangelical positions. In a conversation with atheist writer Sam Harris in Newsweek, Warren argued against evolution and in favor of creationism. Asked whether religion benefits society, he also stated that all the brutal dictators, such as Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot, were atheists. In an interview with Larry King Live in 2005, during the controversy over Terri Schiavo, Warren stated that withdrawing feeding from Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state, "is not an issue of right to die." He elaborated on his concerns about the decision to remove her feeding tube: "I'm afraid the day is coming that we will begin to say, well, you don't have a right to live if you're mentally retarded or if you're physically or emotionally handicapped...we're just not going to feed you anymore. That to me is an atrocity worthy of Nazism." On Hardball with Chris Matthews, after repeated questions about why Michael Schiavo would want to remove his wife's feeding tube, Warren responded: "I have no idea. Well, I don't know. There are a thousand reasons you could speculate. What if she came out of...out of this thing and he had to say something that he didn't want to say?" Two weeks before the 2008 U.S. general election, Warren issued a statement to his congregation in which he endorsed California Proposition 8, which would amend the California Constitution to eliminate the right of

Religious figure

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