This is an interesting transcript to read through. I think it gives a good picture of Rick's history in ministry and the things he believes and is involved in. Rick is here once more "pastor of the largest church in America," and as such he took the opportunity to address various misconceptions about mega-churches in America "today". He tells a lot about who he is and what he believes in this conversation, making this a very informative read.
"There is a verse in the Bible that says the intelligent man is always open to new ideas; in fact, he looks for them. And so when Mike invited me to come to this and I saw your names, I really jumped at the chance. I enjoy these smaller, intimate meetings. You know, when you speak to 23,000, 24,000 people every weekend, crowds don't impress you anymore."
~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"Last night, I was in Miami speaking to this huge international convention of all of the Spanish-language publishers and they gave me the city key to Miami, but really I would have more fun with you here today."
~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"As you can imagine, I get a lot of invitations to speak - I get about four or five a day - and so I have been choosing pretty carefully which ones to accept. And I came here because I only speak to influencers, and God has given you a degree of influence. "
~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"The Purpose Driven life is not just the best-selling book in American history; it's the best-selling book in about a dozen languages."~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"Saddleback is the largest church in America. We had our 25th anniversary on Easter this year. I did 12 services. We had 45,000 in attendance and I preached 12 services in a row. Two weeks later, we celebrated our anniversary and we had never had the church in one location, so we rented Angel Stadium and had 30,000 at Angel Stadium. I have 82,000 names on the church roll."~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
" I know about volunteers. We have 9,200 lay ministers who lead 200-plus different ministries all over southern California. I know these numbers are a little overwhelming, but just to give you an idea, we have 2,600 small groups that meet from Santa Monica to Escondido in 83 cities. And so the church gathers on Sunday for a big service and then meets during the week in homes. That allows us to do all kinds of enormous things. For instance, in November, during our 40 Days of Community, we decided to feed every homeless person in Orange County three meals a day for 40 days. We went out and we found out that was 42,000 people. How do you feed 42,000 people three meals a day for 40 days? Well, it takes a lot of volunteers. And we did - we collected over 2 million pounds of food and those 9,200 lay ministers pulled it off and we fed 40,000 people three meals a day."
~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"While I wasn't known like a Jerry Falwell or a Robert Schuller or some of these media personalities, every pastor in America knew who I was because I put all of my sermons on an Internet site and it gets 400,000 hits a day from pastors. And so, instead of me teaching it on the radio or TV, we put it on the Internet and we allow other pastors to take this material and use it."
~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"Well, I'm actually speaking at the University of Judaism this next month, where I've been asked to come in and teach the rabbis my preaching seminar. "~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
" All my life I planned to simply pastor this church for life and train pastors. That's all I wanted to do. And so I've spent the last 20 years training about 400,000 pastors in 162 countries. I didn't want to do anything else. And all of a sudden after the book came out, two things happened. First, it brought in a ton of money. I mean, a ton of money. Second, it brought in a lot of notoriety, which I didn't really want. And I began to say, what am I supposed to do with this affluence and what am I supposed to do with this influence? And I call it the stewardship of affluence and the stewardship of influence."~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"So when I got that information from the pastor, we immediately did two things. First, we released churches all over India, Southeast Asia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, in our network - immediately going to the coast to start cleaning up, for instance, Buddhist temples that we knew were going to be destroyed and stuff like that. And the second thing was, I had announced in our church about people giving to the tsunami, and on the basis of a one-minute announcement, our church gave a million-and-a-half dollars to the tsunami, just like that....So then we put out an email. I have an email newsletter called Rick's Toolbox that goes out every Monday to almost 147,000 pastors. And I write a little note every Monday. I sit in my pajamas, hit the button, it goes to 147,000 pastors. "You guys want to help out on the tsunami?" Boom, tons of money is coming in, and it's just all going back out.
"~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
""My book happened to be published by Zondervan, which is owned by Harper-Collins, which is owned by Newscorp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. So when the book hit 15 million, I called up Rupert Murdoch and I said, "What are you going to do to celebrate my book?" And he goes, "Well, what do you want to do?" I go, "I want you to throw a party and I want you to invite all your secular elite friends from Manhattan and let me talk to them." And he goes, "Okay." (Chuckles.) So he sends out a list, he invited 350 people, who's who in Manhattan to the top of the Rainbow Room, and I went up there and you know, I just started talking to them - again, standing ovation. "~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"By the way, my wife and I had dinner at a gay couple's home two weeks ago. So I'm not homophobic guy, okay? We had dinner with a gay couple because we are heavily involved in helping people infected and afflicted by AIDS and we've given millions to it. So I'm no homophobic guy. I just don't believe it's God's will."~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"There have been movements that have come along that have broken the denominational barriers in Christianity, things like the conferences we do, and even stuff like Promise Keepers that kind of went up and then went down; you know, all of a sudden you've got a million guys on the National Mall, and they're everything - they're Catholic and Pentecostal and Baptist. And the other thing that's interesting, last Saturday I spoke at a thing called the Global Day of Prayer. You've probably never even heard about it or covered it. There were only 150 million people involved in that, but it got almost no coverage, okay?"
"~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
"When Time magazine comes out and calls me, quote, "America's pastor," I can't tell you what that does in my life because it's something that I really didn't want. ..... But if that is a role that I'm going to play for one segment of our society, then I want to represent them and the things they value - humility, integrity and generosity - with intelligence and integrity. Those are the three important values to me." ~Rick Warren
Pew Forum, Myths of the Modern Mega Church, 2005, Transcript
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