House Church Talk - Purpose Driven Church

[Scott Dowlen]

Hi, David.  I found the Market Driven Church and companion studies to be a
mix of truth and subtle error. I'd avoid it, really.  He's vague on
essentials, and rah-rah on too many other points to make it worth your
while. He gets so close to some real truth and then quits or redirects to
old traditional frameworks. It's really annoying.

To me, I'm finding fewer and fewer study guides and devotional books to be
helpful.  I get frustrated when they talk about "going to" and "attending"
instead of "Being" the church. It's harmful when they kiss up to pastors and
leaders by pushing an ever-so-slightly skewed view of authority that
supports the artificial divide between clergy and laity. They most often
talk about doing and going and working and forget to focus on relationship
and hearing from God.

<more comments in-line below>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: House Church Talk -bounces at housechurch.org
> [mailto:House Church Talk -bounces at housechurch.org]On Behalf Of David Anderson
> Sent: Tuesday, 13 July, 2004 1:58 PM
> To: House Church Talk  at housechurch.org
> Subject: House Church Talk -  Purpose Driven Church
>
>
>       HI all,
>
> ...
>
> Needless to say, there is page after page of ways to get the laity
> involved.

While making sure they stay laity, and don't threaten the clergy. They've
got to come up through the ranks and really stand out as movers and shakers
before they will get hired on to the staff.

>
> Rick Warren, an apparent marketing genius, also founded pastors.com
> and purposedriven.com... He quickly followed up "Purpose Driven
> Life" with several companion products - things like a P D Workbook,
> a P D Diary, and an "Inspiration for the P D Life" book. Also, a
> P D Leaders Kit! Churches pay thousands of dollars, depending on
> their size, to do the Purpose Driven program.
>
> Like some in the house church circle Rick believes his books are
> starting "a New Reformation." I wonder if it crossed his mind that
> putting his books on the internet to be downloaded without cost would
> greatly increase his audience and thus hasten the coming of his "New
> Reformation?"
>

I don't think so. His stuff is successful because it can be rammed into so
many sardine-can-wannabe churches where the rank and file pew fillers think
it's great stuff, and the entrenched leadership can see the dollar signs
that growing membership will bring in. On their own, at least in my opinion,
his study materials are too vague to really teach much of anything, and too
fawning of local leadership to really build up many new leaders of any worth
to Christ (humble, obedient, seeing with Spiritual eyes rather than eyes of
flesh).


> Such a bold move might actually increase his sales in the long run and
> other Christian authors would also be forced to consider the idea of
> freely given, freely receive. Who know where that might go?
>

Too many Christian authors have to pay their ghost writers. They can't
afford to give the final product away for free. Max Lucado had to change
publishers because they wanted ghost writers to start spewing out books with
his name on them when he didn't have time to write. I understand that the
publisher he left did that sort of thing with most all of the big name
authors in their stable.

> Just a few observations from my trip to Wal*Mart, last night, while
> most of you were asleep. You are entirely free to disagree. Who
> can argue with success, anyway?
>

Are we talking Wal-Mart success, or PDL? And are we talking worldly success
or something more eternal?  <grin>


>     David Anderson



Scott Dowlen