The Purpose Driven Church

And, you know, as we talked earlier too, about, you know, change agents and people who are writing literature and, you know, one of the k- one of the key giveaways, I think, is when you look-- when you buy a co-- Christian book and you look at the copyright page, it gives you a, a list of the Bible translations that are used.

And I've seen, I mean, some of these books, like Purpose Driven Life, Purpose Driven Church, you know, Rick Warren had quoted from thirteen or fourteen, I, I think, different translations.

And, you know, one of them is The Message by Eugene Peterson, subversion language.

Um, you know, it's, it's Subversion Bible for a new age, basically.

I'm going to share about this calling that became clear.

Actually, that summer, I read Purpose Driven Church.

And God used that book to kind of solidify that calling that he was placing on my life.

And then when we were together...

Warren became one of the most recognizable evangelical pastors in America, especially after the enormous success of his book, The Purpose Driven Life.

But before that book came out, there was The Purpose Driven Church, which became one of the most influential books in the modern church growth world.

The basic idea was that churches should know why they exist and intentionally structure ministry around those purposes, so worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, evangel- evangelism.

So rather than simply doing things because churches had always done them that way, leaders were encouraged to ask whether the church's structure were actually accomplishing the church's mission.

He wrote The Purpose Driven Life.

He also wrote The Purpose Driven Church.

And in The Purpose Driven Church, he says, "The church should be seeker sensitive, but it must not be seeker driven.

We must adapt our communication style to our culture without adopting the sinful elements of it or abdicating to it." Seeker sensitivity has become something of a loaded term in the last few decades.

It was really big in the '90s.