Our Purpose Driven Diversion

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It has been nearly two years since we left our ‘purpose driven’ church,
an experience that I would not want to repeat, nor do I regret having gone
through the experience. In His own way, the Lord used this time to bring us
to a more biblical understanding of ‘who’ He is, and how He wants us to
live.

Having spent my growing up years in a fundamentalist Baptist tradition, I
was probably an unlikely candidate for attending a Purpose Driven church.
There were two main reasons for this departure from my roots. The first and
possibly most important reason was that I simply failed to comprehend the
necessity of approaching my faith in Christ from a purely biblical
perspective. Since 1974, I have worked in a number of para-church ministries
as part of my career. Along the way, my general attitude toward ministry and
Christianity was framed in pragmatism. Within reason, I simply embraced the
belief that if something worked, it was being used of God to further His
purposes. I often would eagerly await the ‘new’ thing in ministry, whether
it was a new method, book, or the latest speaker or author to emerge on the
ministry scene.

In my acceptance of pragmatism in ministry, there emerged a desire to attend
churches that were “happening”, thus creating the second reason for our
attendance at a Purpose Driven church. Our ‘purpose driven’ diversion was
really the end result of a twenty year diversion that took us out of
churches that taught the word, to churches that emphasized topical,
ear-tickling messages. Of far more importance in discerning a suitable
church for our family was the pastor’s ability to speak, the friendliness of
the people, and quality of the music program. As a musician, the latter was
possibly the most important to me.

When we moved to a new community in 1998 to take over the direction of a
ministry, the small town atmosphere made our choice extremely limited and
obvious. There was only one church that seemed to have anything going. The
music was pretty good, the people friendly, and the pastor was very friendly
and enthusiastic toward our attendance.

Becoming a Purpose Driven Church

After several years of attending, the pastor took an interest in the Purpose
Driven methodology of Rick Warren’s Saddleback church. In worship practice
or passing conversation, he would often mention something about Warren or
Saddleback church. Within months, it was clear that he was sold on this new
thing, and wanted to move the church toward being a Purpose Driven
fellowship. At first I was somewhat disinterested in our new direction, but
I noticed his sermons became more impassioned. I took it upon myself to read
the Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren, and initially saw much value in
it. Probably my main admiration of it was the acceptance and promotion of a
more contemporary service. As a denominational church, our fellowship was
deeply divided between the old and the new, with most of this disagreement
centering on stylistic issues.

Within months, the church was promoting Warren’s five purposes in just about
everything, as well as 101, 201, etc. classes. Many people seemed to buzz
about all these new things in our church. Warren’s ‘discovering your
S.H.A.P.E.’ was emphasized to get people involved with the fellowship. The
protagonists of our new methodology seemed to greatly outnumber the
dissenters. Unfortunately, the dissenters were not so much interested in
returning to biblical teaching, (as that was never really a part of the
church), as they were in returning to the old style of things. Many longed
for the smaller, more intimate church they once knew. At first, I was a
defender of our new methodology. I can recall telling people that we needed
to be willing to put aside our own preferences for style so that we could
attract unbelievers into the fellowship.

Questions and Doubts


With everything seemingly going so well with the church, there was no reason
to doubt that it was all ‘ordained’ of God. But several troubling thoughts
started to occur in the minds of our family. We noticed that the sermons
took on a similar repetitive structure from week to week. Seemingly, the
thoughts, structure, and delivery of his messages seemed a bit of a
departure from the pastor we knew. Each sermon was built around a power
point presentation that included points and sub-points, graphics, and
scripture references from newer translations and paraphrases. Though not
Bible scholars by any stretch of the imagination, my wife and I had enough
solid expository teaching in our backgrounds that we quickly realized the
stretch and even misuse of many of these scriptural references. We soon
learned that much of our pastor’s material at that time was actually sermons
and notes prepared by Rick Warren himself, and made available to pastors.

While all of this was occurring, my wife on her own began to spend more time
reading and studying the Bible. She also began to listen to several Bible
teachers on the Calvary Chapel satellite network. These teachers were
expository in nature, unlike anything we had received for the past twenty
years. I watched as she grew spiritually, it began spreading to our entire
family. My sons also began to spend time in the word and listening to
expository teaching. Soon I too was listening in and reading my Bible more.
It was a great time of spiritual growth in our family. We are felt we were
getting to know the God of the Bible better.

However, the contrast to what was happening at home and what was happening
at church grew quite stark. We were immersed in deep study of the word
during the week, only to hear neatly packaged five-point sermons on Sunday
morning that contained very little of the word except in the context of
‘proof-texting’ to affirm the pastor’s (or Warren’s) points. Everyone was
handed a sermon outline that contained empty blanks to be filled in during
the sermon. The juvenile nature of this exercise became obnoxious to us.
Even my teenage sons thought it all silly and boring. We began to question
even the legitimacy of the five purposes, and other structural methods of
the Purpose Driven church…the classes, the S.H.A.P.E. gift ascertainment,
membership requirements, numerous diagrams of church structure (baseball
diamonds, core circles, etc.) and many other structural components. What was
billed as “simplicity” was really an arduous and ponderous structure of
church methodology that existed in stark contrast to the truly simple and
living church as exhibited in the Book of Acts.

As our discontentment with the church grew, we contemplated either finding
another church or seeing if someone would start a Bible study where we could
be taught the word verse by verse. We were very careful to not broadcast our
disagreement with our church. On the one hand, we were motivated by a sense
of doing what is right before the Lord. On the other hand, these people were
our friends and we didn’t want to see anyone hurt. Publically disagreeing
with a church, or ultimately leaving a fellowship always causes pain. The
dialogue in our minds became excessive as we sought the Lord for His will.
The answer would come very soon.

Purpose Driven Life Campaign

As an integral part of the worship ministry at our church, I was asked to
create worship sets for an upcoming campaign called “40 Days of Purpose”
based upon Warren’s latest book. I was given the promotional material from
Saddleback for this new campaign, which looked all too much like some church
‘dog and pony show’. Already I was so tired of the whole PD thing, and most
turned off by the lack of teaching the Bible. When I was handed this
assignment, it was all I could do to hide my indignation. Dutifully, I came
up with a worship set for each of the seven Sundays of the campaign. In the
process, I was given a copy of Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. It exceeded all
my expectations of Warren, craftily building 40 days of devotionals that
seemingly had little to do with the whole counsel of God as written in the
Bible, and much to do with Warren’s personal agenda for the church.

As the campaign began at our fellowship, I noticed everyone carrying around
the PDL book as one might have carried a Bible in the past. But there was no
need for a Bible in our fellowship, as any verses the pastor might reference
were conveniently displayed on the projection screen. Each Sunday, people’s
conversation was centered on various chapters in the book, and those things
that were the most meaningful to them. I did my level best to avoid talking
about the book or campaign, so as to not betray my non-participation in the
event. I was hoping to just get through the seven weeks without notice.
However, on the second Sunday of the event, one of the worship team members
turned to me and asked in front of everyone, including the pastor, what I
thought of Tuesday’s devotion. My charade was over. I simply said I hadn’t
read it. “What?” he exclaimed, “are you not reading the book?” “No, I’m not”
I said. Nothing more was mentioned in that moment, but the pastor took note
of my answer.

The next day, he came to our house to talk. It seems he had heard rumor that
we were trying to start a new church. Actually, we had inquired with a
church in a nearby town about starting a Bible study up in our region so we
could be taught the word. In reality, our intention was to continue going to
our church while attending this new Bible study. While there may have been
concern that we were trying to initiate a church split and siphon off the
disgruntled among the congregation, nothing could be further from the truth.
After what became a five hour meeting with the pastor, and many painful
events that unfolded in the days and weeks to follow, there was no way that
we could stay at the fellowship.

A Quick Departure


It is not my intention to detail all of these events. There were many people
outside of church leadership that embraced us. There were many who didn’t.
Though my wife attended one more Sunday, I was never again to return to the
church. We had a subsequent meeting with three of the elders of the church
two weeks later. Though it was fairly amiable, the meeting seemed to focus
more on the aspects of our leaving than the actual reason itself. It was
difficult, if not impossible for them to see any of our reasoning. During
that meeting, the elders seemed concerned that people were getting the wrong
idea about our leaving, and they wanted to do a little damage control to
make sure people knew we weren’t trying to cause a split. They suggested
some sort of communication with the congregation, such as a letter. We
agreed only as far as being able to see the draft of the letter before it
would be posted at church. When we finally got a copy via email, it went far
beyond anything we talked about. I immediately raised several objections to
the content, and then asked them not to proceed with it altogether.

A few weeks later, the letter was sent (not posted as we thought it might
be) to the entire congregation. Though it was laced with spirituality, the
letter misrepresented our family, our reason for leaving, and made a vague
reference to someone’s “sin”, presumably ours. The letter stands as the most
painful part of our leaving. While it was public humiliation of our family,
it was also meant as a vehicle to convince the fellowship that all is going
okay, and that the fellowship is heading in the right direction. The letter
was never signed; only the names of the elders were printed at the bottom.
It became apparent to us that this was probably not the work of the entire
elder board. There were some in the congregation who were quite upset at the
leadership for this action.*

In all of these events, our conscience is clear that we did not stir
controversy or contention in this fellowship, and that we had no intention
of creating division or split in the church. Had that been our intention, we
would not have been so secretive of our misgivings and disagreement with the
church in our last year of attendance there. In fact, some of our friends
were absolutely shocked to find out these things. We never tipped our hand
of what was in our hearts. Perhaps we should have. Our lack of vocal
disagreement was in part based upon the fact that we had witnessed the
character assault upon others who had disagreed with church leadership on
various issues. I was unwilling to see that happen with our family. As it
turned out, it happened anyway.

What Man Meant for Harm…


Clearly, the Lord used this experience in many ways and dimensions. For one,
it was an admonition to us to warn others of the inherent dangers of the
Purpose Driven methodology. Though I was able to find only a few articles
warning of this new thing in the church back then, there are now many
articles and organizations who are competently warning of the PD dangers.
When possible, I turn people toward some of those resources. The church must
understand that it is Jesus who builds the church, and not anything of our
efforts. We have such a simple role. Acts 2:42 explains it best: “And they
were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to
fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer”. There was no carefully
devised church system in that. And we see the fruit earlier in the same
chapter. Peter teaches the word, shares the Gospel, and 3,000 people get
saved. And whether that number is 1 or 3,000, God still gets the glory. Now
that is simplicity. Read I Corinthians 2:1-5. Would that Rick Warren and his
supporters could embrace Paul’s total abandonment of self-importance and
stop promoting themselves and their gospel.

However, our lesson from God and warning to others goes beyond merely the PD
methodology and current fad in church growth. Our experience opened our eyes
to many things. As we previously went with the flow of Christianity, taking
care to not make waves, it was somewhat shocking to see what happens when
you stop and make a stand. We suddenly found ourselves on a collision course
with those we previously floated along with so peaceably. This truth would
become evident far beyond the context of our former church. As we began to
take refuge in scripture alone for our source of truth, adversarial
relationships developed with those who don’t. There have always been new
fads to follow in the church. The Purpose Driven machinery is only one of
the latest fads to hit the church. There will be others. The child of God
will be careful to avoid such fads in all things, and embrace the word of
God.

The Lord used some painful events to show me the inherent dangers in
following men’s methodology in regards to church or life. The simplicity and
righteousness of scripture has become so abundantly clear to me in regards
to all things. I refuse to follow after the self-appointed Christian leaders
of our time who always seemed to be creating a new book or a new thing to
sell to the Christian masses. Psychology, marriage, family, Christian life,
manhood, and a host other topics are the subjects of a constant and steady
stream of books. Take no heed of them. The word of God is sufficient.

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*In this article, I have chosen to not go into much detail regarding the
response of some of the church leadership. In the nearly two years that have
elapsed, we’ve heard very little from them regarding this event. Perhaps in
their minds, it is a done deal. There was one person in a leadership
position who told us that the church erred in sending the letter. We’ve
heard reports that another in leadership also thought it was a mistake. At
least a dozen adult members of the congregation on their own contacted us to
show their support and criticize the letter. Though we would have
appreciated some sense of regret from the church leadership for sending this
inappropriate letter, we have also chosen to move on. For the most part, the
people and leaders of our former church have been polite toward us.

We pray that some sort of healing will occur. In the meantime, the focus of
our hearts is to encourage individuals, ministries, and churches to return
to biblical teaching in our various callings.

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