Intellectual Defenestration

Driven

As noted on my side-blog I have now joined the myriads of readers of Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life. I know in some circles this will cause me to lose theological credibility. My excuse is that the impetus for the reading was that my church did indeed participate in the campaign. So there.

For starters, I think my church's involvement was beneficial. Small groups were both formed and further developed. And many people were challenged to think about their faith in ways they hadn't before.

Still, no book is perfect. PDL has some good things going for it, but there are also some significant weaknesses to it. First, the good:

• Overall, PDL is rightly oriented. Warren places a great deal of emphasis on saying that we are formed for God, not vice versa. This is possibly the most commendable aspect of PDL.
• PDL is effective at building up small groups. As already mentioned, I think it did help my own church in this regard. And, in general, what he has to say on fellowship and the need for participation in a local church is very good.
• I know many who have benefited personally from it, and some who have become Christians by reading it. I also consider that to be A Good Thing.
• All things considered, it's not a bad overview of basic Christianity. PDL gives a decent picture of what the essentials of the Christian life are. As such, it's a decent introduction and a good refresher.

Some of the not-so-good:

• As a minor note, PDL is far too commercialized. When the phrase "Purpose-Driven" itself is trademarked, things have gone too far.
• More seriously, the all-encompassing nature of the PDL empire is disturbing. At one point in either the book or the videos, Warren refers to an appendix in PDL that has a list of books he found helpful. The odd thing is that they are almost all written (or at least supervised) by him. This is worrisome because it looks like Warren wants to remake every church in Saddleback's image and every Christian's spiritual life exclusively defined by PDL. There's too many other resources available, much of which is significantly better than PDL, to have PDL be your exclusive provider of teaching on theology and praxis.
• There is little to no work on the role of the Holy Spirit. Warren's right to encourage people in worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and evangelism. But all of that is hard. To exhort without providing guidance on and encouragement about the means of growth and obedience leaves the door open for legalism. His teaching on discipleship particularly suffered because of this.
• There is almost nothing on cultural engagement. His scope is most likely broader than the majority of American Christians', but it is still not broad enough. There are many other aspects of a Christian's relationship to the world than merely reciting the gospel message to any and all comers.
• His teaching on evangelism was frustrating. First, I thought it was a guilt-trip - an outworking of his lack of teaching on the means of growth. The primary emphasis was on why you suck at evangelism and why so many people are going to burn in hell because you suck. Second, and related to the first, the implication was that the crucial point of salvation is Christians' evangelism. It's not. Christ saves, Christians bear witness to Christ (however imperfectly). To place the salvific center on our evangelism efforts will lead to either despair when the efforts fail or arrogance when they succeed.

To sum up: I do think PDL is useful and helpful. And this should not be construed as a critique of my own church. My two primary concerns are (a) that so little about grace as the means for growth is given and (b) that PDL is becoming the center of the American church.

December 2, 2004 03:05 PM