Posted on 07/25/2010 11:49:46 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
"Everybody sing ee-oo," declaims the clean-cut thirtysomething at the front of the vast auditorium. Ten thousand Californian voices respond. Over a backing of soaring power chords, the soloist launches into an ecstatic, 1980s-style anthem: "If you're alive and you've been redeemed,/Rise and sing, rise and sing."
Pastor Rick Warren, America's most important religious leader since Billy Graham, emerges from the wings, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, a trimmed CEO beard and a little more weight than his doctor might recommend. When he speaks, his words are as warm as the Orange County sunshine: the homily is a practical one, advising fathers to pay their children more attention. On gigantic television screens, Jesus on the cross tells John to look after His mother when he dies.
This talent for presenting simple biblical lessons for a suburban age is behind The Purpose-Driven Life, Warren's book detailing his 40-day plan for "Christian living in the 21st century", which is on the shelf of almost every evangelical household in the US. It has become one of the bestselling non-fiction hardbacks in American history, turning the pastor into a sort of spiritual Oprah, with trademarked books and podcasts and appearances at Wal-Mart. Warren's face has been on the cover of Time; and he was chosen to offer the prayers at Barack Obama's inauguration.
Warren set up Saddleback Church in 1980, selecting the location - Lake Forest, a suburb of McMansions and shopping malls - for its transient but growing population. That first Easter Sunday, 200 attended; Saddleback has since grown into a sprawling, 120-acre campus with an average weekend attendance of 22,000. Once, the stereotype of evangelicals as Southern, rural and poor might have been true. Now, they are far more likely to be college-educated, upwardly mobile professionals.
Sixty miles south of Los Angeles, Saddleback is one of the mega-churches (those with at least 2,000 congregants) that make up the stretch between LA and San Diego known as the "southern Californian Bible Belt". In its grounds, information booths carry maps directing visitors to several white marquees that offer different styles of worship; there are burbling crystal fountains and a baptismal pool that looks like it belongs in an upmarket spa. The teenagers' area, meanwhile, is deliberately scuffed-looking. It contains a big wall display on Aids in Africa - the issue over which Warren has had his greatest impact on evangelicals.
Aids has largely either been ignored by American evangelical churches or treated as a punishment from God. Warren's views are closely aligned with those of the conventional religious right in many areas - in 2004, he said that stem-cell research was "non-negotiable" and compared abortion to a "holocaust".
Yet, a year earlier, he had attended a church conference in South Africa with his wife, Kay. She was recovering from cancer and was keen to adopt a big cause. "So we went out to this little village and found this tent church," he has said. "It had 50 adults and 25 kids orphaned by Aids." He has since joined the Bono/Bill Gates philanthropy club, despatching 7,500 volunteers from Saddleback to developing countries. "I'll work with anyone to stop Aids - Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist," he says. "That really makes the fundamentalists mad."
Fresh blood
When I visit his office at Saddleback, David Chrzan, Warren's chief of staff, says that the media are looking to appoint Warren as the fundamentalist-in-chief. "But Rick would say outright that he's not the leader of the religious right. He doesn't want to be," Chrzan says. "The bottom line is that everyone needs a saviour - Republican, Democrat or Tea Partier.
“Over the past two or three decades, the church became so associated with the Republicans. Now, people are saying: 'Hey, we are for the church - we are not just two-issue people interested in homosexuality and abortion.'" In a 2005 survey of evangelical pastors, 51 per cent said that their congregation was predominantly conservative. By 2008, depressed by Bush's unpopularity in his final years, that figure had fallen to 33 per cent.
There is little evidence that evangelicals are any less agitated about abortion, stem-cell research or gay marriage. But since the recession, moral issues have dropped down the priority list. At Saddleback, too much government, not too little, is blamed for California's disastrous financial state. "Government got greedy," a pastor in Ray-Bans and a leather jacket tells me, "and started taxing business too much."
Most members seem to whistle the old tunes of the right even as they display new-found concern for Africa's dispossessed. Like the Tea Partiers, they are as dismissive of many long-serving Republicans as they are of Democrats and echo the call for "fresh blood" in Washington. "If Palin becomes a viable candidate, they might see her as one of their own - an evangelical person who might get to the White House," warns Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
So progressives who predict the defanging of the Christian right should remember that we have been here before. Ten years ago, a former heavy drinker who had found Jesus ran for the presidency, promising a compassionate and consensual brand of evangelical politics.
We all know what happened next.
“The last church will look like the first church. It will meet in homes”
I have no idea what the “last church” will be like. If it happens to be a house church, I think that would be fine. Certainly that is the way the church started, meeting in homes. However, since it was the custom for Christ to teach in synagogues I don’t think that God frowns on congregations owning a building either.
We repeat that exact phrase all the time at our meetings!!
We meet in a school building.
Relationships are key; it sometimes seems difficult in our transitory society....
The danger of Home churches not sponsored by a larger church umbrella are what you just described. Wolves can creep in and without oversight from elder deacons and the pastor...boom the group is lost and people scatterred and disillusioned.
So do you answer to an elder board/pastor to keep you from going astray with your two groups? It can be easy to go astray and not know it! You mention the agendas of others, which trusted counscellors keeps a watch on your agenda? I’m not accusing or insinuating anything. The early house churches were self sufficient but were still answerable to the visiting apostles and recognized leaders of the day and some received, when necessary, rebukes and admonishments to discontinue practises which grieved the Lord.
I read an article about Cowboy Churches in “American Cowboy” recently. It was an excellent article - made me wish I was back in Texas, especially since it’s just as hot here in NC, now ;-). I think the concept makes very good sense. Jesus was from a hick town, as our deacon mentioned recently, and He was primarily addressing rural people.
We had a Cowboy Priest at my parish in San Antonio; he was from Nixon, iirc, over east a bit from SA. (When Yankees moved in, they’d be confused!)
Sarah Palin and Rick Warren are SO not the same. This journo is confused, big-time.
I attend one of the two largest churches in my county. One of the things that our pastoral staff from the head Pastor down have expounded upon is the need to grow smaller as we grow bigger. IOW, yes we have almost 500 people calling our church “home” but we also have a vibrant small group home Bible study program. These groups are on average about a dozen or so folks and most people I know are in one.
We also have a youth (13 to 24 y/o) group (www.generationchurch.org) that makes up about 1/5 of the overall church. Those kids know how to worship and they love it.
“IIRC, she’s Assembly of God, not an Evangelical.”
I’ve been in both churches over the years. I’ve never noticed a big difference.
However, the term “evangelical” has been twisted, including by some leftist-leaning churches that are by far more “social gospel” rather than Gospel of Salvation in Christ.
The term "evangelical" is elastic enough to be useless.
the title of his Book...”The Purpose Driven Life” strikes me cold. A better book for him to have written might have had as its title, “The Christ Yoked Life”
It is an amazing group of Believers that number about 250,000 globally but we have no Central base. All of the fellowships, and there are thousands, rely on the Bible and the Holy Spirit for our guidance and direction.
Nope. She attends a non-denominational Christian church. Interesting that when she was a little girl, her mom took her to mass at Catholic churches, but then her mom apparently converted to Pentecostal. Palin left the Pentecostal church years ago because she considered it too extreme for her beliefs.
- JP
I would like to see her statement of that about the extreme beliefs, in 2006 she was still communicating with her past Assembly of God Pastor, asking for religious advice.
“The Locusts have no king, yet they march out in orderly bands” Proverbs.
I suspect there are those within this movement you speak of that these groups revere, respect, and take spiritual guidance from...that’s the kind of check and balance I was talking about. I suspect also that the in terms of essential orthodoxy(which is to say “the faith that saves us”), the thumprints of this Messianic movement would match that with Baptists, or Assembly of God types, or even Lutheran Church Missouri Synod just to name a few evangelical organizations.
I do suspect that the time is coming for “large organizations” to grow larger by “growing smaller”, and that the Spirit has begun to quicken believers in the direction of increased obedience and repentance. One can almost hear Ezekiel prophesying over the dead bones again....
The enemies of Christ can attack large out in the open organizations but cannot root out entirely swarms of smaller church groups. Depending on ones view of end times eschatology, these groups may be operating right up until the revealing of “the son of perdition”.
Our fellowships consist of Messianic Israelites
AMEN. I hope she keeps her distance.
Yahshua kept the Sabbath and the Feasts, so we are trying to follow Him. May Yahweh bless all those who seek Him first with His Truths.
Meanwhile just finding a local church to worship in has been an ordeal for many, much more so in these past years. You mentioned ‘House Churches’ and these go along pretty much unknown. But I recall some have saying that as the that time approaches the true church will go underground. Perhaps these ‘House Churches’ are the beginning.
The challenge has always been to ‘arm the saints’ but there are so few today with that ability to instruct as such. A small church in a village in Pa. gave me in six months time the most teaching and instruction, via the Pastor/Teacher than I had received in ten years! For that I grew to love Christ more and far better to uphold the faith to those whose intentions were to tear it down.
Now this Pastor could have easily filled stadiums, He was that good, and I asked him why he chose such a small church rather than preach and teach to the masses. He said, “ I need to know the condition of the flock Christ has given me to oversee, I need to know their condition, their growth, and understand what they are learning or not...that is my calling...to arm the saints...you cannot not do that well without also knowing them”.
Over the doorway as you leave this small church is a sign which reads...”You are now entering the Mission Field”. To see this on the way out of the church was a great reminder of where we are really stepping out into every day.
Thanks in advance for allowing me to share this...some would appreciate more than others I think.
CW
Anyhow, most people try to dismiss these truths and shake their finger at me as a heretic
Since you brought it up, Nicene Creed, yea or nay?
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