Today me and our jr. high youth pastor went to see Rick Warren at the New York City Cultural Center in Brooklyn. Frankly, I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. I love the guy named “Rick” who has the last name “Warren”, while I am cautious of the brand of Rick Warren. I think he’d say the same on a good day.
The event promoted the New York City Leadership Circle and a bunch of other things. For instance, (in case you haven’t heard), Warren is promoting a new movement called, “40 Days of Love” and he preached a sermon to us on the topic. Honestly it was very good. Of course it was, after all, you don’t get to me “Rick Warren” the brand by not being good.
I couldn’t help but like him. He’s got personality, gives off a down to earth quality and is prepared to speak on the topic of choice. He’s interesting, inspiring (and now I’ll use any word that doesn’t begin with letter ‘i’), and seems to enjoy what he’s sharing. To contrast that with other leaders who seem to be annoyed that they have to explain these types of things to their audience. They tend to come across as condescending. And miserable.
This launched quite a few thoughts. Like what makes someone a mega-church pastor? Is it calling, talent, pedigree, money, education, the right people around you (social pedigree), circumstance, vision, etc? I have nothing against who God sets up in the places He desires to. However, I get frustrated with the “game show” senior pastor, if you know what I mean.
In the course of this morning, Rick spoke of Saddleback and several huge surrounding churches. He mentioned Greg Laurie and plugged his event at Madison Square Garden in October. This got me thinking, how we do not have nearly the East coast equivalent o mega-churches led by iconic pastoral figures. I think the two most popular North East Coasters are Tim Keller from Redeemer and Joe Fosch from Calvary Chapel. In the South, there are probably more but I can only think of Andy Stanely. Anyway, this got me thinking why and the differences between the Northeast and California culture.
I am concluding that it has to be more then the Jewish and Catholic strongholds in the Northeast. Some of it has to do with our elitism, lack of hospitality, the northeast pace (yes I realize other parts are busy too but here they call it the New York minute and until they change it to the Milwaukee minute, you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt), and I don’t know how much of it is spiritual warfare. I’d have to do some more thinking about these things but it got me concerned in a weird way. I don’t want more mega-churches, in fact, I think they’ll be sorta of a dinosaur eventually except for the mega-mega churches but that’s another story. I think I became concerned that more mega-churches will form in our area. Everything always starts in California right?
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