Purpose Driven

I don't know alot about it myself, I haven't read the book. But I know my pastor is really into it. I can't remember the 4 purposes, worship, fellowship, outreach?, and what??

 

The five purposes are:

1. Love the Lord with all your heart. (Worship)
2. Love your neighbor as yourself. (Ministry)
3. Go and make disciples. (Evangelism)
4. Baptizing them. (Fellowship or bringing them into the church)
5. Teaching them to obey. (Discipleship)

 

oh great, thats right. what does anyone else think of it?

 

It teaches the seeker sensitve mentality of whatever the people want,do it. the book is basically on how to grow a church....I thought that was God's business...from what I understand from the preaching is the attitude of keep it light,don't get too deep,make people feel good where they are,etc. I read it pretty open to it,but found all kinds of biblical problems with it. This is just my opinion.

 

I would ditto Molly's post. No one would argue with the aforementioned purposes, however once one gets into the methods he espouses you have gotten into a worldly mess.

 

IMO, the Purpose Driven Church has some good stuff and some bad stuff. It is good in that it focuses on people and how to move people into ministry through the five concentric circles. It helps to lay out a plan and have well-stated purposes and missions for various ministries and programs, along with formulating plans. ON the downside, it does have a definite seeker sensitive model and he says that he can tell you how big your church will be by listening to your music, a definite fallacy.

It has ups and downs and if read with discernment it can be helpful. It cannot be taken wholesale without discernment however. A friend of mine had all of church leaders and a number of church members (whoever would) read it in a directed study format and said that it proved very helpful on getting everyone on the same "page" as far as ministry goes.

 

Overall: good book on management. I know a couple of pastors who need to read this book for those principles alone.

Echoes many of the principles of management books I've studied.

Bad point: Author makes a statement about going to an airline, and not being interested in the airline president, because you know you're never going to meet him. Uses this analogy to compare to his own church (which he brags about having 10,000 members), which essentially means he isn't bothered by the fact you don't care about him because you know you'll never get to meet him.

I'm not comfortable with that thought at all.

One of many thoughts through the book that are unsettling.

 

I think what Warren is combatting here is the idea that it is the pastor's job to "do the ministry." One thing I appreciated about the book was its emphasis on getting everyone involved. Too many churches today are "pastor-centered" ministries rather than "member-centered." Pastor's are expected to do everything and they try to do everything rather than doing what they are supposed to do and leaving the work fo the ministry to those whom he is training for it (Eph 4:11-13).

Bill Hull, in The Disciple Making Pastor makes this point very well when he says, A person may be in a hospital and have 20 visits from church people but they don't feel like they have been visited until the pastor comes.

I think that is a very poor model of ministry. The pastor should not have to make every hospital call or meet everyone. Hull makes the point that it will be very hard to change from the current model of ministry to a biblical one.

The point is that, humanly speaking, personal relationships with members will be much more effective at drawing people into the church than a relationship with the pastor in most cases. I found Hull's book mentioned above very helpful.

 

I would echo most of Pastor Larry's comments. Warren has plenty of great practical ideas and principles for meeting people's needs by making a ministry relevant to those needs. Unfortunately, Warren sometimes defines those needs differently from Scripture, I think.

Here are my real problems with his philosophy:

1. He advocates a demographically targeted ministry. I am extremely uncomfortable with that kind of strategy.

2. He writes, "We should never criticize a method that God is blessing." That's baloney. God gives the increase according to his sovereign will. Are we going to say that a missionary is a failure if he doesn't see a flood of converts? Is a pastor a success just because he has 25,000 people on his church roll? I'm sure the Mormons would say God is blessing them because they're seeing so many converts.

The bottom line is that numbers don't prove anything. Any idiot can draw a crowd. Success in ministry is measured solely by faithfulness to the Word of God. Methods shouldn't be judged by visible success, but by conformity to Scripture.

 

Yes, I had forgotten this. I think he has a skewed method of discerning what it is that God is blessing as Siefriend readily points out. A football game draws a big crowd and has devoted followers but that does not mean God is blessing it.

 

Given that there are probably not two pastors in the US that agree 100% on either doctine or methodology, it is no surprise that a pastor of a successful church is given grief from fellow pastors (and active laypersons).

The book is a good history of how a pastor and his small church group (meeting in his home) decided to recognize the difference between tradition/preference and the authority of Scripture.

Folks who think that Warren is "seeker sensitive" have just not read the book. What Warren is about is doing church around the purposes that God gave the church.

Is his or his model perfect? No. Has he been able to sidestep the minefield of tradition that has kept so many of our church from showing growth (spiritual, numerical, etc..)? Yes.

If I were a pastor, I'd be envious too.

[ April 25, 2002, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan ]

 

I think from talking with my pastor this is what he is trying to do. He has saod many times what works for one church might not work for another, becasue God may not use each church the same and they need to be open to whatever God is leading that church too.

This basically my problem with mega chruches.

My pastor says if you've gotten a visit from a deacon, then you've gotten a visit from him.

Well since I haven't read the book, and everyone lese has, I think thats it for me.

 

Katie, while I may not agree with many of the tenets of the book, that doesn't mean it's not worth reading.

You can learn just as much--and sometimes more--from bad material as you can from good stuff.

 

Jonathan,

I think "giving grief" is a bad impression of this conversation. Warren has yet to show that God is blessing his ministry and I am not sure that we should view what he has done as successful in terms of ministry. The jury will not be in on that until eternity. So far, Warren has been successful at building a good organization, a large crowd, and widely read book. He is an exceptional manager to be sure. I do not doubt his motives in the least. I do question some of his discernment.

I am not sure that Warren has successul negotiated this divide between authority of Scripture and tradition and preference. Several problems have been pointed out with his philosophy and methods. Paul called us to be discerning and I think that is what it going on here.

I have used some of Warren's stuff. I am not envious in the least however of what he is doing. Where there are good things (such as organizational and discipleship principles, let us use them). Where there are bad things (such as philosophy of ministry and being undiscerning) we should reject them.

I am considering having my church leadership (deacons, teachers, etc) read this book in a directed study as my friend did so we can glean some of the good from it while rejecting the bad.

 

Clearly pastor Larry has an excellent point. You've got to take out what's good in light of scripture and what's bad. Unfortunatley, many people read such a book and think it is their "answer" to ministry. "It changed my life," kind of testimonies and such.

Ultimately, anything good coming from a book is nothing more than based on something that is good and solidly able to be exegeted from the texts of the WORD!

I think Warren's heart is in the right place and the overall thrust of the book is great. However, it doesn't quite protect itself against the readers who view it as simply a way to "grow" in numbers. It does leave one with the impression that this is the signal that God is at work.

In Christ
Michael

 

Hmmm...how long did Jeremiah prophecy before he ever saw a convert????(Was his method wrong?)

I think there is another principle to be considered for a good strong fundamental work:"Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

If my church started to fill up and the membership begin to astronomically increase...I should either consider a Revival has happened , or most likely someone has allowed some compromise. Most people(in my experience...don't want to be taught the whole counsel of God.)

It's too easy today to go find a church that will meet your social needs without convicting you of sin in your life...and allow membership without accountability...(even in good baptist circles).

To sum up my opinion: if a church is very small and doesn't grow fast..it might be applying all the right principles of scripture....that's just my experience.

 

Although I don't think the 'you can learn as much from bad stuff as you can from good stuff' is a godly approach (wasn't that the gist of what the serpent told Eve? I mean, after all, she already KNEW the good -- she knew God), and granted that I have not read the book, after reading this thread, I started thinking about something:

To review, here are the five purposes, as posted:
The five purposes are:

1. Love the Lord with all your heart. (Worship)
2. Love your neighbor as yourself. (Ministry)
3. Go and make disciples. (Evangelism)
4. Baptizing them. (Fellowship or bringing them into the church)
5. Teaching them to obey. (Discipleship)

Perhaps such a guideline should be used in a 'negative' way -- to define activities in the church (or in my life) which are NOT in line with Christ's directions for us.

HOWEVER, I disagree strongly with the equation of 'go and make disciples' being evangelism. #'s 3-5 are given as a single unit by Christ. Evangelism means to share the gospel. We cannot convert anyone. We are to obey the Holy Spirit in what we say and to whom and then He takes over from there. He knows when the heart is ready and when it is not.

So what does 'make disciples' mean? It means exactly what it says! A new believer is not yet a disciple, as he has not yet learned to listen to and obey Christ. When we make disciples, we ARE teaching them to obey (including being baptized). Making a disciple is walking alongside a new believer, praying with and for them, doing Bible study with them, encouraging them. Once a person has had some years with the Lord, that person has had enough experiences through bad and good times to know Christ can be fully trusted with every detail of our lives, but when a believer is new, a negative experience can be frightening -- doesn't God care after all? It is the older, mature Christian whose 'coattails' are needed right then, and whose encouragement and whose own experiences suddenly become so necessary.

So the last three are all part of the first two.

In the long run, obeying Christ's two commandments is something imperative for EVERY Christian. We are to love our NEIGHBORS (not just our brothers, meaning fellow-Christians) as ourselves. This is total outreach through a style of living governed by Christ and His love for everyone.

The minister is the minister of and to the church. Actually, it is his job to serve the body, not the world! If the church has grown to ten thousand members, I would wonder if about nine thousand of them are not there for reasons other than a closer relationship with Christ and the time to worship and praise together...

I can't help but get the impression from the Bible that the quality of a believer is more important than the quantities of those who give money to the organization.

As a last thought, I would suggest that human ideas and organization can often get in the way of God's preferred way of working with people.

[ April 26, 2002, 06:38 AM: Message edited by: Helen ]

 

I think 3-5 are the one act of the Great Commission. The Great Commission is not just evangelism; it is discipleship. I think you can make the case from Scripture that there are no believers who are not also disciples. After all, a disciple is a learner. There is no second stage process in the NT. There is a clear injunction in the Great Commission passages (Matt 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20; Acts 1) that repentance, faith, baptism, and teaching are to be carried out. There is also a clear injunction that those who are not following Christ by taking up the cross will lose their soul (Matt 16). The only ones that can lose their soul are the unsaved.

I think Warren's approach does seem to focus on discipleship through small group ministries. Consider this statement from a recent email from him: During our 1999 campaign, 564 people accepted Christ, 1,065 new believers were baptized, 1,628 new members joined our church, 2,701 more signed up to be involved in a lay ministry, and 5,465 were trained in personal evangelism and world missions.

It seems that there is some kind of spiritual emphasis if 3000 people are involvedin lay ministries and 5000 are being trained for evangelism. Here again, is something that I think he appears to be doing well.

 

I think the whole emphasis of his book is how to grow a church...the whole purpose in having the purposes,seeker sam,ministries,etc is to grow the church,and isn't that big business in today's "christian" circles? Doesn't God grow His church? Isn't the purpose of the church pretty clear in scripture...to honor the Lord and be a pillar and support of Truth. Don't we just need to focus on the depth(the teaching) of our church's ministry? Shouldn't everything we do be to teach believers more about God's word,so it permeates their lives and causes them to live holier lives....isn't that the purpose of the church???

I absolutely oppose his thinking on how to determine a worship style...survey the lost people and find out what kind of music they like,then make the worship and singing sound like that,so that maybe the unchurched will come to our church....where is the doctrine in that statement?

I personally think we should avoid this book.