Rick Warren Interview
by Paul Grant
The pastor of Saddleback Church in California and author of several books,
Rick Warren is increasingly known as an advocate for Christian engagement on
AIDS. He recently spoke with urbana.org about sacrifice, opportunity, and the
importance of local ministry in a global age.
The PEACE plan revolves around mobilizing a billion Christians in missions—essentially the entire Christian Church. What kind of lifestyle sacrifices are needed here in North America for this to work, especially for students and young adults?
To be a part of God’s purposes, we’re going to have to make a fundamental shift in the way we think about life—four or five major mental shifts.
We’re going to have to shift from self-centeredness to God-centeredness. The very first line of Purpose-Driven Life is, “It’s not about you.” That’s a pretty counter-cultural statement, when everything in society says “It’s all about you.” We need to ask ourselves, “What could God do through me if I were dead to my own desires, and alive and totally committed to his purposes for my life and for the world?” That’s the first shift: from self-centeredness to God-centeredness.
Another shift would be from local orientation to global orientation. That is, God has a place for your life that is bigger than simply your own community. We have to think bigger than we ever have before. God says, “Ask of me and I’ll give you the nations.” In Acts 1:8 he says, Jerusalem, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world—you’ll go to all of these, not just one. You’ll go to Jerusalem and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world. This is the first generation that has the option of literally being world-class Christians. Because of technology and the internet and transportation, you can go anywhere in the world within 24 hours. No other generation could do that. If you don’t believe that, just ask any travel agent. Say, “I want to be on the top of a mountain in Nepal,” and in 24 hours they’ll have you there. So we shift from local to global.
Another shift would be from temporal values—temporary values—to eternal ones. What I mean by that is, to not be distracted by things. The greatest things in life aren’t things. The Bible says, the thing you should want most is God’s Kingdom: “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” and don’t worry about what you’re missing. You’re going to find all you need if you make him your primary concern. When you start talking about the eternal destiny of millions of people, all of a sudden a lot of things that have seemed important don’t seem all that important anymore. We have to help people realize that their net worth is not their self worth. They’re two different issues. Their values are different from their valuables. Things like that. So moving away from the idea that life is about the acquisition of things—which it’s not: Jesus said “a man’s life consists not of the abundance of things that he possesses. That’s a shift—from temporary values to eternal values.
Another one might be shifting our thinking from security to service. Jesus said over and over again, that only those who give away their lives for my sake, and for the sake of the good news, will ever know what it means to really live. Whatever it is that stands in the way of you fulfilling your mission in life—you need to get rid of it. Your security has to be in something that can’t be taken away from you. Everything can be taken away, except your relationship with God. You can lose your family, you can lose your job, you can lose your health, you can lose your wealth, your money and all of that. That’s a shift from security to service, and along with that, let me give you one more.
The shift from comfort to sacrifice. Being willing to do for the truth what cults are willing to do for a lie. We need to shift our thinking, saying life is not about comfort. It’s not. We’re going to have trillions of years in heaven to enjoy comfort. Life here is about character. It’s about service—serving God by serving others. That’s why the Bible tells us, give every part of yourself to be tools in the hands of God. Romans 12:1-2 says, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.”
Those would be the things I would say to college students.
As AIDS devastates communities around the world, what opportunities do you see for the church and for missionaries to make a real impact—one that will last for centuries down the road?
HIV/AIDS is the greatest humanitarian crisis in the history of humanity. Nothing even comes close. Forty million people have died from it; forty million have it. By the year 2010 probably 100 million people will have been infected by HIV/AIDS. The black plague—nothing comes close to what AIDS has done. And it’s incurable.
That makes it the church’s greatest opportunity, ever, in history, to show love, to care for the sick, to silence skeptics, to be Jesus in the world, and to do what Jesus did. The Bible tells us that one third of Jesus’ ministry was healthcare. It says, “He went into every village, preaching, teaching, and healing.” One third of his ministry was healing. In other words, he cared about the body as much as he did about the soul. When Jesus was here on earth he hung out with lepers. These are the people with the dreaded incurable disease that everybody else was afraid to get, and wanted to scorn and ostracize.
The lepers of the 21st century are people with HIV/AIDS. If Jesus were here, alive, walking around in his body, there is no doubt in my mind he’d be with people who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. So I think it’s our greatest opportunity for the church to show, and share the love of God in the 21st century.
We’re having a conference at the end of November – November 30th and December 1st, for World AIDS Day. Every year Saddleback hosts the Global Summit on AIDS in the Church. It’s a big deal. We’ve got President Bush, Bill Gates, and Bono speaking, Barack Obama, probably the ten top doctors in the nation on it. We’ve got the president of World Vision, the president of Compassion, the president of World Relief, the president of Samaritan’s Purse, the head of UNAIDS, the head of USAID—it’ll be a huge thing where pastors and church leaders come from around the world for two days. Last year it was covered by ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. It’s a big deal. In fact, I was publicly tested for AIDS last year, to remove the stigma. That was on the nightly news on all the networks.
I’ve always been impressed with the way Saddleback maintains its identity as a local church, even as you’ve gained a global audience. How has southern Orange County changed since your founding, and how have you met the new challenges?
It’s changed a lot! The neat thing about it is, it’s much more diverse. We now have one million Hispanics in our county, who weren’t here when I started the church. The city I live in, where Saddleback Forest is in is fifty percent Hispanic. Our church is very multicultural. We’ve probably got fifty different languages spoken in our church. We’re maybe 20 percent Asian—we have Filipinos, we have Middle Easterners, we have Chinese, Vietnamese; we have Hispanics, we have South Americans, we have Africans—it’s quite diverse.
The other thing is: I’ve made a direct attempt to focus on the next generation. We have over 300 staff in our church. Half of them are under 35. This is not your father’s Saddleback. A lot of people think we’re the Saddleback of the 1980s. But the reason Saddleback keeps growing, is because we keep growing in ministry.
We’re much more diverse. The largest Gen X church in America is Saddleback. People don’t know that. They think about some of the Emerging churches, and stuff like that. But actually, we’ve got, I think, 22,000 people under the age of 30 in our church. Now we’re also the largest Baby Boomer church, but the bottom line is because we have focused on this. I have 150 staff members under 35.
I believe we’re on the verge of a second Reformation in the church. 500 years ago we had the first Reformation. It was about beliefs. This one is going to be about behavior. It’s not about what the church knows, it’s about what the church does.
We need to reattach the hands and the feet to the body of Christ. About 50 years ago the hands and the feet got cut off, and all that’s left is a mouth. Evangelicals in particular are known more for what we talk about than what we do. A lot of times we’re known more for what we’re against than what we’re for. I intend to change that. So this second Reformation will be about being the church in the world. Reformations don’t happen overnight. They take fifty years. I can give twenty years to it. But that’s probably all I’ve got left in my life, is another twenty years. The next generation will be the Reformation generation. My goal is to train them, to prepare them to finish the task.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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