Paul Wilczynski's Observations

Fortune: Will Success Spoil Rick Warren?

I have to admit not being able to keep up on some of my reading. But I wanted to point out this article in Fortune Magazine entitled Will Success Spoil Rick Warren?. As you probably now, Warren built Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif. which now has over 20,000 congregants.

... Most of all, Warren gets attention because he is, as he likes to say, a "spiritual entrepreneur." Using techniques that he learned from Drucker, among others, Warren built Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif., into one of America's biggest religious institutions. "Forget any opinions you have about religion and just look at the guy as a CEO, and you've got to be impressed," says Joe Ritchie, a Chicago businessman and Warren ally who once ran the world's largest options-trading company. Today Saddleback has an annual budget of $30 million, 300 employees, a 120-acre campus, and around 22,000 worshippers each weekend. Warren also founded Purpose-Driven Ministries, a nonprofit network of about 150,000 pastors, which has its own staff of about 180 people, a $39 million budget, and a thriving website called pastors.com. Its members may be Baptist or Methodist or Episcopalian, but they use his system. Call it open-source evangelism. "We're kind of the Linux of Christianity," Warren says. ...

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 9:29 AM