This post was present on my site years ago.  I only recently — Nov. 2014 — discovered it was missing.  As the date on my backup file is 7/8/2006, I’m back-dating this to that point, but the article is, obviously, even older than that.

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I do not like The Purpose-Driven Church. There are a few good things scattered through it, and the last three chapters are good, but I have major issues with the bulk of the book. My intent here is to offer the specifics of what I have problems
with so that I’m not just spouting pure opinion. You can read these and decide for yourself whether I’m just nitpicky or whether I really have a point.

Underlying Concerns

There are, first of all, a few underlying issues. One, Rick Warren believes that we are to bring the lost into the church to get them saved. (The specifics later will get into how he “backs that up” with Scripture.) He quotes almost exclusively from paraphrases and the NIV, which is the least accurate translation. And he uses whichever of these paraphrases/translations best suit his point. I added up his Scripture references and determined that he quoted “Scripture” 194 times in the main text of the book.  Once was the Jerusalem Bible. 8 references were NASB, 3 were KJV, and 2 were NRSV. 60 were miscellaneous paraphrases – Good News, Living Bible, Message, Phillips, etc. 120 were unspecified, which is supposed to mean they’re NIV, but the one I looked up was not, so the number of paraphrases is likely higher and the number of NIV quotes is likely lower. An additional issue which is not directly related to the book but DOES reflect on its author is that Rick Warren sells his
sermons online (www.pastors.com) so other pastors can preach them.

The Specifics

pg. 17 – He says “Scripture” says, “So it [the church] grows in the way God wants it to grow.” He emphasizes “wants.” This verse (Col. 2:19) is quoted from the NCV and, if you read it in an actual translation, “wants” isn’t even in the verse. That doesn’t necessarily mean that God DOESN’T want the church to grow, but that isn’t what this verse says. The key in this verse
is, IMO, “holding fast the head.”

pg. 35 – He talks about continually “claiming the promise of Proverbs 20:18 (TEV), which says, ‘Get good advice and you will succeed.'” Again, if you read a translation, this doesn’t exist at all.

pg. 38 – He demonstrates that he knows the Living Bible (which he quotes elsewhere without qualification) is a paraphrase by saying, “I love the Living Bible paraphrase of …..”

pg. 39 – He says they’re following the ministry example of Jesus, who supposedly “defined his ministry target” by saying that it wasn’t the healthy who needed a doctor but the sick. Because of this the focus of their church is to bring the unchurched, irreligious to Christ. Now, in context, he’s talking about bringing them to church. IMO, it’s a poor use of Christ’s example to say that because he went to the streets to heal the sick, preach the word, etc., they should therefore bring those people into
what should be the fellowship of believers.

pg. 40 – He talks about Easter Sunday (the day they held their first service at Saddleback) as “the ideal day to start a service designed to attract the unchurched.” This is a huge red flag for me, as the fellowship of believers is not supposed to be designed to attract the unchurched.

pg. 47 – He refers to times that Jesus said, “You have heard it said….but I say to you…” as “myths.” I don’t believe these are myths, but rather ways that Jesus’ coming changed things. All of those “You have heard it said”‘s were part of God’s law and God’s law is not a myth.

pg. 52 – He uses an extreme example to counteract a fairly reasonable point.  In arguing against people who believe that quality can be better upheld in a smaller church than a megachurch, he says that reasoning is faulty because if that were true, the best churches would consist of only one person. Then he uses the example of parents having one child and then saying, “Let’s focus on making this one child a quality child,” rather than having any more. IMO, he’s using extremism here to counter a point, which removes some respect for him in my eyes. This is a hard one to explain without retyping half the chapter.

pg. 57. He quotes Ecclesiastes 10:10 as, “If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success.” He then focuses on “skill” for a page or more. If, however, you look this up in one of the more accurate translations, it doesn’t say “skill,” it says, “wisdom.” There is a huge difference between focusing on skill and focusing on wisdom. Over the next couple of pages, he also replaces “wise” with “expert” (1 Cor. 3:10).

pg. 58 – He says, “One time God told Joshua to stop praying about his failure and get up and correct the cause of it instead.” I believe this is a misrepresentation. (Josh. 7) It wasn’t “instead” of praying, it was now that he HAS prayed, this is the answer.

pg. 61 – He quotes Jude 1:3 from the Living Bible, italicizing “without change” – “…the truth which God gave, once for all, to his people to keep without change through the years.” Again, he focuses on that emphasized portion throughout the paragraph, but it doesn’t exist in a translation of the verse. (I have no argument with the validity of the message, just with the
validity of the method he used to communicate it.)

pg. 64 – He redefines “faithfulness” as “a willingness to take risks (that require faith) in order to be fruitful.” He talks about the need for faithfulness for several pages, using this definition.

pg. 66 – He uses a faulty paraphrase and takes it totally out of context.  The verse (Deut. 11:2) says, “And know this day that I am not speaking with your sons who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the LORD your God – His greatness, His mighty hand, and His outstretched arm.”  Rick Warren quotes it from TEV as “Remember today what you learned about the LORD through your experiences with him.” He then goes on to say that, “Every church should not have to reinvent the wheel,” and uses this verse to say that we should use the principles behind programs we see working in other churches and assimilate them into ours.

pg. 68 – Another bad paraphrase. Proverbs 18:15 (LB) says, “The intelligent man is always open to new ideas. In fact, he looks for them.” Of course, he goes on to talk about “new ideas.” But what the verse ACTUALLY says is, “The mind of the prudent acquires KNOWLEDGE.” Knowledge and new ideas are not synonymous in my mind.

pg. 69 – He says that Paul was not afraid of using models for the churches he started and quotes 1 Thess. 1:6-7, “You became imitators of us and the Lord….And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.” He encourages readers to follow Saddleback’s model and says that people who can’t learn from models have an ego problem. What he neglects to point out is that the Thessalonian church was a model IN IMITATING THE LORD, not in having new, innovative ideas.

pg. 79 – He says that the primary question asked should NOT be “What do the unchurched want?” This is good!   Unfortunately, it completely contradicts everything he’s said so far, particularly in chapter one. It also completely contradicts his entire example.

pg. 91 – Another faulty paraphrase, Proverbs 11:27 (TEV) says, “If your goals are good, you will be respected.” This is another instance of a promise that isn’t.

pg. 114 – He quotes Colossians 3:15 from the Living Bible, “This is your responsibility and privilege as members of his body.” He goes on to discuss privileges and responsibilities within the church, but neither term exists in the verse when it’s properly translated.

pg. 138 – He has a diagram he uses which is actually very good. It’s concentric circles labeled, from the outside in, community, crowd, congregation, committed, and core. This whole page, though, he specifically says that you should grow the church from the outside in. He says, “This is opposite the advice given by most books on church planting. The traditional
approach to beginning a new church is to build a committed core of believers first, and then start reaching out to the community.” The problem is that there’s a REASON the traditional approach is discipling the believers – the Bible. Rick Warren’s advice runs counter to Ephesians 4:11,12 which says that the pastor’s purpose is equipping the SAINTS for the work of service.

pp.156-157 – He talks about targeting your audience – choosing who your church will witness to – and appealing to their tastes.

pg. 158 – He uses Jesus and the disciples as examples of targeting for evangelism. He says that since Jesus preached to the Jews and sent the disciples to preach to the Jews, they were determining their target audience. I think this is a poor application of Scripture. Jesus preached to everyone to whom salvation had, as yet, been offered.

pg. 174 – He claims that a church will only reach those in a particular category – military personnel, retirees, teenagers, etc. I believe this is an extremely narrow expectation. The NT churches were geographically-based, so it’s logical to assume they included ALL believers in a given area, regardless of age or social status. And the gospel is one-size-fits-all.

pg. 176 – I believe he is confusing “evangelist” with “pastor.” He says he’s called to be a pastor and then talks about reaching out to various groups of (unsaved) people.

pg. 180 – Now, this may be an issue of personal preference more than anything else, but … here he recommends holding two separate worship services. I firmly believe that, if you have too many people for one service, you should be splitting off and planting another church, not holding a separate service. And if the purpose for the second service is simply a different style, you shouldn’t need it at all.

pg. 183 – I’m not sure how to explain what bothers me about this. He talks about having “programs” to target various community audiences. By programs, we’re talking about things like recovery programs (addictions, etc.), divorce support groups, classes or support groups for first-time parents, etc. I think that these can be a good thing, because we as the church SHOULD be helping those in the community around us. But we should be using them to form relationships so that we can share the gospel one-on-one, rather than using them to attract a bunch of unsaved people so they’ll come to our church services.

[Let me take a moment to clarify my position. I do not believe that if an unsaved person comes to the church service we should kick him out. I DO believe that it shouldn’t be our GOAL to get him to come and to make him especially comfortable.]

pg. 187 – Again he mentions targeting the audience and uses Jesus’ sending out of the disciples as an example.

pg. 188 – He quotes Colossians 4:5 (NCV), “Be wise in the way you act with people who are not believers, making the most of every opportunity.” Then he says, “We must learn to think like unbelievers in order to win them.” Now, this raises a couple of red flags. First, he’s equating wisdom with mode of thinking. Second, he’s using the verse opposite of the way it’s intended.
And third, he’s contradicting Romans 12, which tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

pg. 189 – This page is all about how to advertise your church to unbelievers. But isn’t FOR unbelievers! For example, he says that a church ad that states, “Preaching the inerrant Word of God!” is ineffective because it won’t appeal to unbelievers. So what?

pg. 192 – He says, “If you want to reach young couples, you must have an excellent program for their children.” Anything that suggests that the church has an OBLIGATION to separate my children from me bugs me. And to suggest that, rather than teaching people what the Word of God says about children and about parents’ responsibility to train them, we should be taking over what they’re abdicating, is cowardly and sells God short.

[Note: Whether or not the church is biblically ALLOWED to have children’s programs is not the point here. The point is that the Bible never even remotely suggests that the church has an OBLIGATION to reach/teach children; it teaches that their
parents do.]

pg. 192 – He says that Jesus told the disciples to be strategic because Matthew 10:16 says, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” This confuses careful or cautious or watchful with strategic.

pg. 193 – This is another one I won’t be able to explain well without copying the whole page. He’s talking about sending out a letter about the church that the unsaved appreciated but the Christians had issues with. He implies that he isn’t worried about impressing the Christians, he’s worried about impressing the non-Christians. What about “impressing” God?

pg. 196 – He says, “Churches that expect the unchurched to show up simply because they build a building and hang out a ‘We’re Open’ sign are deluding themselves.” Churches shouldn’t expect the unchurched to show up at all.  That isn’t what the church meeting is for and church isn’t where we’re supposed to reach them.

pg. 201 – He talks about having gone into debt to do what they claim that God called them to do and was blessing.

pg. 202 – He uses an illustration which I believe is a huge stretch. I will quote the whole paragraph. “Third, when you spend nickels and dimes on evangelism, you get nickel and dime results. In Matthew 17, Jesus told Peter to go find money in a fish’s mouth in order to pay the Roman taxes.  Verse 27 says that Jesus told Peter: ‘Go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin.’ I believe there is an important lesson in that story:
The coins are always in the mouths of the fish. If you’ll focus on fishing (evangelism), God will pay your bills.”

pg. 207 – Begins to discuss how Jesus attracted crowds. What he doesn’t understand, though, was that Jesus never tried to draw crowds of unbelievers to a church service; he preached out on the streets.

pg. 217 – He says, “The church is a hospital for sinners.” While it may be true that the church as its members is a hospital for sinners, the church fellowship is NOT a hospital for sinners. It’s a means for growth and encouragement of the believers themselves.

pg. 219 – This is a matter of doctrine which you may or may not agree with, so I won’t even comment. I’ll quote the sentence which bothered me and if you don’t have a problem with it, you can simply skip it. “It is my deep conviction that anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart.”

pg. 220 – “Church programs must compete with everything else in our entertainment-obsessed culture.” Church should be so different that there isn’t even a comparison. If we’re building church programs designed to compete with the world’s entertainment, we are going to have some extremely worldly programs.

pg. 225 – “Crowds always flock to hear good news. There is enough bad news in the world that the last thing people need is to hear more bad news when they come to church.” But you can’t have the good news without the bad news that you need the good news.

pg. 227 – He quotes Ephesians 4:29 out of context. He uses it’s “speak only what is helpful….” in the context of only speaking “positive” messages. (Or, we could say, “ear-tickling” messages.)

pg. 230 – He quotes Mark 12:27 (NCV), “The large crowd listened to Jesus with pleasure.” This is a poor translation, but he uses it to say that your listeners should delight in your messages.

pg. 233 – “Some pastors like to show off their knowledge by using Greek words and academic terms in their preaching. Every Sunday they speak in an unknown tongue without being charismatic! Pastors need to realize that no one cares as much about the Greek as they do. Chuck Swindoll once told me that he believes an overuse of Greek and Hebrew word studies in preaching discourages confidence in the English text. I agree.” First, how presumptuous of him to decide for me that I don’t want to hear about the Greek! Second, God gave us His holy Scripture at the time and place He did for a reason. I believe He did so because the languages in which they were given are so much more precise than what we have now. Greek and Hebrew word studies help us to understand what the Scripture is saying and, as such, should be ENCOURAGED, not discouraged.

pg. 234 – Here he tackles the issue of whether we should bring unbelievers into the church meeting and I don’t think he handles it well. “Some church leaders deny that attraction is a legitimate method of evangelism. I’ve heard preachers say, ‘The Bible does not tell the world to come to church.  It tells the church to go to the world.’ This is an inaccurate statement
because it is only half true.” Well, the preachers he quoted are absolutely right. How does Rick Warren back up his contradiction of what they say? By saying that Jesus told the lost to “Come.” Apparently he doesn’t grasp the difference between people “coming” to Christ and people “coming” to the church meeting.

pg. 236 – Again he tries to back up his own unsupportable position with extremism and inaccuracy. He refers to liberalism vs. legalism rather than liberalism vs. conservatism.

pg. 243 – He says that being seeker-sensitive in our worship is a biblical command because Paul gives instructions in 1 Corinthians for orderly worship and says, “If the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?” I believe he has stretched this example to the extreme. Certainly we should make sure that we set a proper example of order and godliness in our services, which would be an appropriate testimony to any unbeliever coming in. But that doesn’t mean we should tailor the music to unbelievers, leave the meat out of our sermons, etc. just to make them comfortable.

pg. 244 – He makes a correct point, “A worship service does not have to be shallow to be seeker sensitive. The message doesn’t have to be compromised, just understandable.” Unfortunately, this is contradictory to things he’s emphasized earlier, like preaching only positive messages.

pg. 245 – He talks about specializing services according to their purposes.  In other words, he says you should have one service for edifying believers and one for evangelizing the lost friends your members invite. But this still misses the point that we aren’t supposed to bring lost people to church to be saved; we’re supposed to go out and “get them” saved and THEN
bring them into the church as part of the body.

pg. 248 – “It takes unselfish, mature believers to offer a seeker-sensistive service. In 1 Corinthians 14:19-20, Paul says that when we think only of our own needs in worship we are being childish and immature.” This verse isout of context. These two sentences together strongly imply that claiming worship is for believers is selfish and immature when, in fact, it is simply
Scriptural.

Chapt. 14 – This entire chapter is about designing a seeker-sensitive service.

pg. 251 – “Growing up in a Christian home, I was often frustrated when I brought unbelieving friends to church. It seemed inevitable that whenever I’d get one of my friends to attend a service with me, that would be the Sunday my father would preach on tithing, some guest missionary would show slides, or we’d have a communion service -not what my unsaved friends needed to hear or experience.” This implies that we must water down the message or omit certain parts of Scripture in order to be “seeker-sensitive.” In other places, Rick Warren has said that it doesn’t have to mean a shallow service and that we can still preach the whole counsel of God, but this contradicts those claims.

pg. 252 – “Most members never bring any lost friends to church.” For good reason! We’re not supposed to. We’re supposed to share the good news so we can bring newly-SAVED friends to church.

pg. 253 – The solution to this “problem” (that most members never bring lost friends) is to “create a service that is intentionally designed for your members to bring their friends to. And make the service so attractive, appealing, and relevant to the unchurched that your members are eager to share it with the lost people they care about.” But apparently not to train your members in personal evangelism.

pg. 253-254 – “Once you know your target [which is unsaved, remember?], it will determine many of the components of your seeker service: music style, message topics, testimonies, creative arts, and much more.” So he’s saying that the unsaved will determine the message topics. The unsaved will determine the musical style. Something is wrong with this picture.

pg. 254 – “Offer children’s Sunday school simultaneously with the service.  Unchurched people don’t want to deal with squirming children, either theirs or someone else’s.” In other words, get rid of the children, because those who are living in rebellion to God don’t like them. (Whatever happened to, “Let the little children come…”?)

pg. 255 – “Almost all churches need to pick up the pace of their services.”  Why? Television has shortened our attention spans. We’re used to MTV, so make sure the church service keeps up.

pg. 256 – “Keep your pastoral prayers short in your seeker services.”

pg. 257 – This page is all about making visitors feel comfortable. As far as it concerns making ALL visitors feel comfortable, it’s great. We should want to avoid scaring visitors off! But we shouldn’t have to worry about making unsaved visitors especially comfortable.

pg. 262 – “Each week one of our pastors will say something like, ‘Welcome to Sunday at Saddleback! We’re glad you’re here. If you’re here for the first time, we want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the service we’ve planned for you.'” Something about this just doesn’t sit well with me. Worship is not entertainment; it’s not a spectator sport. Worship is not something you
watch; it’s something you actively participate in.

pg. 263 – “Offer a refreshment table at each service.” What? Is this worship or the local dinner theater?

pg. 269 – A bit of a stretch in Scriptural application – The goal of Saddleback in focusing on their lighting, background music, facility design, etc. “is the same as what Paul said in Titus 2:10: ‘…so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.'”

pg. 271 – “Worship is a delight, not a duty.” This is wrong. Worship is a delight AND a duty.

pg. 276 – Again he claims that 1 Corinthians 14 is about making church seeker-friendly.

pg. 279 – “In Psalm 40:3 (NCV) David says, ‘He put a new [new is italicized] song in my mouth….Many people will see this and worship him. Then they will trust the LORD’ (italics added). Notice the clear connection between music and evangelism: ‘Then they will trust the LORD.'” This verse isn’t really about music, though. It’s about the heart.

pg. 291 – “Use more performed music than congregational singing in your service for seekers.” Again, make them spectators; don’t expect or encourage participation.

pg. 300 – “My sermon titles aren’t intended to impress members of other churches. In fact, if you judged Saddleback on the basis of sermon titles only, you might conclude that we’re pretty shallow. But since CHRISTIANS AREN’T OUR TARGET, we’re not being shallow.”

pg. 304 – “It’s pretty unrealistic to expect a forty-year-old man to completely change the direction of his life on the basis of one thirty-minute message.” Is it? Or is it just faith in an omnipotent God? Saul did. Hundreds of people in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost did.  Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The Scripture doesn’t qualify that with, “…preached once a week every week for six months,” or anything else.