- RICK WARREN - He is the founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch in Lake Forest, California, that is the eighth-largest church in the United States. Because of the success of his book sales, in 2005 Warren returned his 25 years of salary to the church and discontinued taking a salary. He says he and his wife became "reverse tithers," giving away 90% of their income and living off 10%.

Rick Warren

Richard Duane "Rick" Warren (born January 28, 1954) is an American evangelical Christian pastor and author.

He is the founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch in Lake Forest, California, that is the eighth-largest church in the United States (including multi-site churches).

He is also a bestselling author of many Christian books, including his guide to church ministry and evangelism, The Purpose Driven Church, which has spawned a series of conferences on Christian ministry and evangelism.

He is perhaps best known for the subsequent book The Purpose Driven Life which has sold more than 30 million copies, making Warren a New York Times bestselling author.

Early Life and education

Warren was born in San Jose, California, the son of Jimmy and Dot Warren.

His father was a Baptist minister, his mother a high-school librarian. He was raised in Ukiah, California, and graduated from Ukiah High School in 1972, where he founded the first Christian club on the school's campus, The Fishers of Men Club.

His sister, Chaundel, is married to Saddleback pastor Tom Holladay. His brother, Jim C. Warren, died in 2007.

Warren received a Bachelor of Arts degree from California Baptist University in Riverside, California; a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (1979) in Fort Worth, Texas; and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

Personal

Warren has been married to Kay Warren since June 21, 1975. They have three adult children (Amy, Josh, and Matthew) and four grandchildren.

He considers Billy Graham, Peter Drucker, and his own father to be among his mentors.

Because of the success of his book sales, in 2005 Warren returned his 25 years of salary to the church and discontinued taking a salary.

He says he and his wife became "reverse tithers," giving away 90% of their income and living off 10%.

Warren’s youngest son, Matthew, took his own life April 6, 2013, after years of struggling with mental illness.

Almost a year after his son’s suicide, Warren launched a ministry to educate the Church on its role to help people struggling with mental illness with a Mental Illness and the Church Gathering in March 2014.

In the year following the suicide, Warren says that more than 10,000 people wrote to him about their struggles with mental illness within the Church.

Career

Warren says he was called to full-time ministry when he was a 19-year-old student at California Baptist University.

In November 1973, he and a friend skipped classes and drove 350 miles to hear W.A. Criswell preach at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco.

Warren waited afterwards to shake hands with Criswell, who focused on Warren, stating, "I feel led to lay hands on you and pray for you!”

During his time at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Warren worked at the Texas Ranch for Christ, a ministry facility of Billie Hanks, Jr., where he began writing books.

He co-wrote two books, The Victory Scripture Memory Series and Twelve Dynamic Bible Study Methods for Laity with Billie Hanks, Jr., and Wayne Watts.

In April 1980 Warren held Saddleback Church's first public service on Easter Sunday at the Laguna Hills High School Theater with 200 people in attendance.

Warren's church growth methods led to rapid expansion, with the church using nearly 80 different facilities in its 35-year history.

Saddleback did not build its first permanent building until it had 10,000 weekly attenders.

When the current Lake Forest campus was purchased in the early 1990s, a 2,300-seat plastic tent was used for worship services for several years, with four services each weekend.

In 1995, the current Worship Center was completed, with a seating capacity of 3,500. A multimillion-dollar children's ministry building and a staff office building were completed over the next few years.

In June 2008, a $20 million student ministry facility called the "Refinery" was completed, housing the "JHM" (previously known as "Wildside") middle school and "HSM" high school ministries, consisting of 1,500 students.

Saddleback Church averages nearly 20,000 people in attendance each week.

He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) since 2005.

Warren was named one of "America's Top 25 Leaders" in the October 31, 2005, issue of U.S. News and World Report.

Warren was named by Time magazine as one of "15 World Leaders Who Mattered Most in 2004" and one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" (2005).

In 2006 Newsweek called him one of "15 People Who Make America Great".

During the two-hour event, each candidate took the stage separately for about an hour to respond to Warren’s questions about faith and moral issues including abortion and human rights.

In January 2009, Warren and the Reader's Digest Association partnered in the launch of the Purpose Driven Connection, a quarterly publication sold as part of a bundle of multimedia products.

In November 2009, the partners announced that the magazine had not drawn enough paying members and would cease after publication of the fourth issue that month.

Innovations in ministry

Throughout his 35 years as the pastor of Saddleback Church, the congregation has been on the forefront of a number of ministry innovations.

Much of these stem from Warren’s commitment to become a “teaching church,” in which Warren and his staff create and develop ministries that become models for other churches worldwide.

In his book The Purpose Driven Church, Warren suggested that the church’s youth and lack of previous traditions have allowed it to experiment more than most.

Many of these innovations have centered upon Warren’s long-standing belief that the local church should be the vehicle for personal and community transformation.

These innovations (or improvements upon the innovations of others) have included Saddleback’s Celebrate Recovery ministry, the P.E.A.C.E. Plan, its SHAPE process for identifying and deploying lay volunteers, orphan care, and the C.L.A.S.S. structure of church assimilation.

Purpose Driven

Purpose Driven comes from the teaching of Warren, and came into use as a paradigm taught to pastors and other Christian leaders worldwide to help them be more effective in leading their churches.

Warren taught the material that would one day become the Purpose Driven philosophy of ministry to individual pastors who called or wrote him in Saddleback’s early days.

Warren gained experience teaching the material through his participation in the Institute for Evangelism and Church Growth, affiliated with Fuller Theological Seminary. 

The Christian and Missionary Alliance, influenced by Warren’s teaching at the institute, launched an ambitious plan to start 100 churches by Easter of their centennial year of 1987.

When they surpassed their goal with 101 new churches (94 of them were still flourishing a year later), Warren began to realize that the lessons he had learned starting Saddleback Church were truly transferrable in a variety of contexts.

The next year the church hosted its first pastors training conference. (Prophet of Purpose, page 158)

In 1995 Zondervan published Warren’s best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Church, which distilled many of the lessons he had learned while starting Saddleback Church and honed during years of training other pastors.

After sharing the “Saddleback Story”, the book makes a case for building a church around five purposes (worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and evangelism) through what Warren called a “crowd to core” method of church growth.

He encouraged churches to reach their community, bring in a crowd, turn attendees into members, develop those members to maturity, turn them into ministers, and send them out on a mission. (The Purpose Driven Church, table of contents)

More than 400,000 pastors and church leaders from around the world have attended a seminar or conference led by Warren and other pastors who seek to be more effective in fulfilling the biblical Great Commission and Great Commandment. (The Purpose Driven Church, page 103)

“Purpose driven” refers to these pastors' attempts to balance the five purposes in their churches. Warren says his organizations have trained 400,000 pastors worldwide.

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