Rick Warren

Life

Warren was born on January 28, 1954, in San Jose, California. His father was a Baptist pastor, and his mother was a high school librarian. He spent his childhood in Ukiah, California. He graduated from California Baptist University and in 1979 received a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He later earned a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) degree from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is a pastor ordained in the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1975 he married Kay Warren, and they have three children.

In 1980 Warren and his wife began a Bible study with one other family, and this group became Saddleback Church. For a time the church met in rented temporary facilities; in 1995 it settled on property it had acquired in Lake Forest, Orange County. Warren served as senior pastor for more than forty years before retiring in 2022. He was succeeded by Andy and Stacie Wood, a married couple who jointly lead the church. Since 2022 he has served as head of the missions coalition Finishing the Task.

Ministry and Accomplishments

Warren sought to build a church that "seekers"—people unfamiliar with church who were searching for faith outside it—could also attend. Saddleback Church grew into one of the leading megachurches in the United States. According to the church, its weekly attendance in 2020 was more than 23,000.

In The Purpose Driven Church, published in 1995, Warren identified five purposes for which the church exists: worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry (service), and evangelism. The book is reported to have been used in more than 120 countries. The Purpose Driven Life, published in 2002, presents the Christian life in light of the purposes for which God created human beings. Its reported sales range from 25 million to more than 32 million copies, depending on the source. In 2009 he delivered the invocation at the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama.

Influence on the Korean Church

Warren's ecclesiology became known to Korean pastors through translated works such as The Saddleback Church Story and The Purpose Driven Church, as well as through seminars held in Korea and abroad. The Purpose Driven Life was published in Korean in January 2003 by Timothy Publishing House in a translation by Ko Seong-sam. It has since appeared in successive editions, and a revised and expanded edition was released in December 2025. His argument that ministry structures should be built on the purposes of the church was widely discussed in Korea alongside the church growth movement.

Assessment

Warren is regarded as one of the most influential evangelical pastors in the United States. In his later years, however, he came into conflict with his denomination over the issue of women pastors.

In 2021 Saddleback Church ordained three women as pastors. The Southern Baptist Convention holds that ordination is the prerogative of the local church, but it maintains that a woman serving as senior pastor or preaching pastor is contrary to denominational standards. Accordingly, in February 2023 the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention determined that Saddleback Church was "not in friendly cooperation" with the convention and removed it from the denomination. At the time, Saddleback was the second-largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In June of that year, at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in New Orleans, Warren appealed for the decision to be reconsidered. He argued that Southern Baptists had long cooperated in missions while acknowledging differences on various points of doctrine. The messengers, however, upheld the expulsion by an overwhelming vote. The episode is cited as an example of the ongoing debate among Baptists in the United States over the ordination of women.