Rick Warren has delivered his last sermon as the Lead Pastor of the US-based mega church, Saddleback Church, after 43 years in the ministry.
The author of the popular Purpose Driven Life and Purpose Driven Church, on August 28 preached the last sermon which was the very first message he delivered to a small group of strangers in 1980 to start the church.
The Purpose Driven Church he wrote in 1995 has sold more than one million copies worldwide while Purpose Driven Life he authored in 2002 has sold more than 50 million copies. The latter has been translated into 137 languages.
Warren, 67, had in June announced his plan to step down. He also announced at the time that the process for the search for his replacement would commence soon.
Saddleback Church, a mega church, based in Southern California, was established in 1980. It has a congregation of about 30,000 and 7,000 small groups every week.
The church grew from a modest Bible study in Warren’s home attended by a few families to 19 domestic campuses and four others in the Philippines, Germany, Hong Kong and Argentina.
Before delivering the final sermon, Warren had walked to the wooden pulpit amid applause and cheers from the congregants just as he declared his love for them, saying, “You’re going to make me cry. Have I told you lately that I love you?”
He further said, “As you know by now, today is my last message to you as your senior pastor. For 43 years, it has been my privilege to love you, to pray for you, to serve you, to encourage you, to be at the bedsides, to be at the gravesides, to be at the counselling when you’re going through a tough patch in your life; and to teach you.
“And during these 43 years, I have preached 6,500 plus messages, sermons and studies. But in this…..our final, our last farewell message, I have decided that all those 6,500 messages plus that I want to share with you, to repeat and re-preach, the very first message I preached to start this church, word for word, 43 years ago.
“One of the values – purpose-driven values – that we hold on to here at our church is, ‘begin with the end in mind.’ Whatever project you’re starting, begin with the end in mind. That’s called being purpose-driven. You know your purpose in advance. And we knew from the very beginning what kind of church this was going to be.”
Warren said Saddleback started from knowing “what God wanted us to be.”
He said, “We had no money, no members, no building, no nothing, but we knew what God wanted us to be. We announced it at that very first service. Now, the message you are about to hear today illustrates this value of, ‘begin with the end in mind,’ because I wrote this message and I preached this message only one time in 43 years.
“The very first service, it was on March 30th, 1980 a week before Easter in little theatre at Laguna Hills High School to about 50, 60 people.”
Warren recounted that he did not know any of the people that attended that first service and that he merely dispatched a letter to the community to say he would be starting a new church. He said the church has grown into one of the largest churches in the world today.
“There was no church when I preached this sermon. It was the start, the very start,” the cleric said.
Successor
Warren had in June said Andy Wood and his wife, Stacie would take over the leadership of Saddleback on September 12 when he and his wife, Kay, would effectively relinquish their positions.
Wood had pastored Echo.Church in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Warren and Kay will begin new roles on September 10.