Book Review: The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren

The name of the game for Rick Warren is pragmatism, and his book is saturated with this philosophy. An alternate title equally appropriate would be, “The Result Driven Church.” In fact, results are so important that he cannot imagine a church accomplishing its “purposes” if it is not growing. “If a church is not growing, it is dying” (p. 16).

The presupposition operative here is that everything God wants the church to do is measurable in some simply way. For example, growth can be seen when new members can be counted. When members graduate from one class to the next, that is seen as spiritual growth. What ought to be asked is whether all growth can be empirically measured or not.

Applying this philosophy can have disastrous effects. When Warren’s church measured the number of visitors coming, they realized that they needed to create the best possible environment to encourage them to continue coming. While this is in general a worthy motive, taken to the extreme it means removing the gospel – since, of course, the gospel is not palatable to unbelievers. He can do this, and still give the book the subtitle, “growth without compromising your message & mission,” since he creates a service specifically for believers on Wednesday evenings.

Thus, if results is to be the king, the content inevitably must be neglected. While Warren may not want this to happen, such a movement is intrinsic to his philosophy. In the end, he turns the church into nothing more than a business, where the bottom line is numbers. Is not the Lord able to test his church by bringing times of drought? Must a church be dying if it is not growing in numbers? What of small country churches in rural areas?

Warren does not allow for the Lord to be sovereign in this respect. He makes it seem as if all you need to do is pick the right city and time (find a “wave”), employ these techniques, and God is duty bound to bless them. In fact, Warren believes this is why Jesus was effective – he targeted the right crowd, the Jews (p. 158). For him, simply having more advanced music technology will guarantee a greater crowd (p. 290).

Sadly, he encourages making a caricature of the church’s target audience: Saddleback Sam (p. 169). This was started by querying the unbeliever’s “felt needs” and trying to meet them. But the greatest problem all unbelievers have is their sin – and most often, unbelievers are asleep to this truth! Instead of awakening them to their greatest problem, Warren concentrates on other “needs.”

This philosophy also leads further to a superficial reading of Scripture. His “Nehemiah principle” is a case in point (p. 111). We might ask, then, if this also leads to a pragmatic method of picking Scripture to preach from. In other words, if a given sermon series would not have a measurable effect on the congregation, can it be justified?

“The idea of two classes of Christians, clergy and laity, is the creation of Roman Catholic tradition” (p. 391). This is Warren’s proof that all members of the church are ministers. The only distinction he allows is whether or not the position is paid. Obviously, merely attributing the distinction to the Roman church does little to prove his point. Still, it was refreshing to see that he believes church discipline to be an important function of the church (p. 54).

Having noted these issues, this does not mean there is nothing we can learn from this book. Obviously, we do not want to make our services needlessly confusing to visitors, nor do we want our members’ attitudes towards unbelievers to be harsh and negative. The free offer of the gospel is to be upheld and not hindered.

Nevertheless, the distinctives of the church ought not to be lost. Every society has its own customs and traditions – including the church – and we should not allow the church to be turned into an entertainment stage. The church’s distinctives should be easily learned and understood by those sincerely desiring a knowledge of them.

Ultimately, a great problem with the book is that the purposes of the church cannot merely be reduced to five measurable propositions. The church is far greater and more splendid than that. Truly, the church is more than a process, it is the bride of the Lamb.