Rick Warren's presentation is everything

Religious charlatans are not new. Americans have been preached at by some of the best showmen in the world. The practice started in the upper part of the northern hemisphere the day they stepped foot on a rock in Massachusetts and continues to this day. In fact, it started with Native American shamans.

I won't mention names because they know who they are.

When I first attended Rick Warren's Saddleback tent not far from where I lived in about 1998, I was impressed with its organization. I thought the staff did a great job--the parking challenge was horrendous, but I had been so hurt in other big evangelical churches with their spiffy pastors (even the word, pastor, is really too evangelical for this mainline Protestant) that I just couldn't bring myself to really listen critically to Rick Warren. I was pretty much done with all of them.

I had heard so many of these guys who just didn't get it as far as I was concerned.

Southern Baptist Convention
Who knew? Today, they have legitimacy.

Now that the president of the Baptists can flap on TV about their own personal go-to guy for God; perhaps, flap he should. This is not a criticim. This is a suggestion that you all listen and learn and judge by the fruits of his labor.

Something new, since I've been to Saddleback is they're out of the tent and into a nice church...with lots of parking and a staff to handle all of it. Their co-missions seems to keep rolilng on, one which is close to my heart.

Saddleback doctrine-wise is just like the first baptist church in any town; they believe the exact same thing about salvation--being born again through Christ--the part that everyone who isn't goes so nutty over.

Rick Warren is no charlatan from what I'm seeing these days. Like many other great unnamed preachers before him, he knows you get more with honey than you do with vinegar. His delivery is not new. From the sounds of him, he would be the first to say any "success" he has is because God placed him where he is. After all, he comes from a line of Southern Baptist preachers, so he probably knew his Bible very, very well before he presumed to stand behind the pulpit.

Add to his obvious ability to select capable people to surround himself with, Rick Warren is a true magnet of the typical Orange County upper level technocrats. They help him deliver the message with their expertise. That's what it takes, you know--people who know what they're doing. Where else but the OC?

Rick Warren, someone whom I thought once might be another circuit preacher with a bunch of weird, ego drivenideas, as I have found out is hardly a phony. His sincerity and lifestyle actions speak as loudly as his motivational sermons. He appeals to real men and women who need a church home or something like that and have a belief in something, maybe in Jesus, but for sure in something. He has them walking in the door in droves with their kids, stopping at the desk to sign up for their own purpose driven lives.

The other more persistent, some call less tolerant Christians, including those in his same brotherhood, who have turned people off by their "demeanor" in evangelizing might take a lesson from Pastor Warren. When churches stay relevant in people's busy lives by toning down the rhetoric and turning up the concern, attracting people to Christ and His Gospel becomes its own message.

How does that happen? Well, obviously the man has to smarter than the dog, as my mother used to say. Rick Warren, son and grandson of men of God, is a leader because he qualifies as one and first knows his Bible, doctrine and understands and lives his own faith. You can't teach it if you don't live it.

The rest, Saddleback, came later.

And now that Pastor Warren is participating in history with this evening's presidential forums with Obama and McCain, I expect he will maintain his equilibrium. I'll pray for God's guidance as Warren brings more souls to Christ. His way.

Thanks for the read.