Rick Warren

Richard Duane Warren (born January 28, 1954) is an American Baptist evangelical Christian pastor and author.

He is the founder of Saddleback Church, an evangelical Baptist megachurch in Lake Forest, California.

Since 2022, he is director of the Finishing the Task mission coalition.

Warren was born in San Jose, California, the son of Jimmy and Dot Warren.

His father was a Baptist minister, his mother a high-school librarian.

He was raised in Ukiah, California, and graduated from Ukiah High School in 1972, where he founded the first Christian club on the school's campus.

In November 1973, he and a friend skipped classes and drove 350 miles to hear W. A. Criswell preach at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco.

Warren waited afterwards to shake hands with Criswell, who focused on Warren, stating, "I feel led to lay hands on you and pray for you!"

During his time at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Warren worked at the Texas Ranch for Christ, a ministry facility of Billie Hanks Jr., where he began writing books.

He co-wrote two books, The Victory Scripture Memory Series and Twelve Dynamic Bible Study Methods for Laity, with Hanks and Wayne Watts.

He studied at California Baptist University in Riverside, California and earned a Bachelor of Arts, then he studied at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas and earned a Master of Divinity in 1979.

He also studied at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California and earned a Doctor of Ministry.

Warren says he was called to full-time ministry when he was a 19-year-old student at California Baptist University.

In January 1980, Warren began a Bible study group with seven people and his wife at their Saddleback Valley condo in Orange County, California.

In April 1980, Warren held Saddleback Church's first public service on Easter Sunday at the Laguna Hills High School Theater with 200 people in attendance.

Warren's church growth methods led to rapid expansion, with the church using nearly 80 different facilities in its 35-year history.

The church averages nearly 20,000 people in attendance each week.

In 1995 Zondervan published Warren's best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Church, which distilled many of the lessons he had learned while starting Saddleback Church and honed during years of training other pastors.

After sharing the "Saddleback Story", the book makes a case for building a church around five purposes (worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and evangelism) through what Warren called a "crowd to core" method of church growth.

In 2005, during the Centenary Congress of the Baptist World Alliance, he affirmed that the withdrawal of the Southern Baptist Convention from the Alliance, was a mistake since theological differences should not prevent fellowship with other churches.

Warren has been invited to speak at national and international forums, including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the African Union, the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard Kennedy School, TED, and Time's Global Health Summit.

He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) since 2005.

In August 2008, Warren drew greater national attention by hosting the Civil Forum on the Presidency, featuring senators John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback Church.

The forum marked McCain and Obama's first joint appearance as the presumptive Republican and Democratic presidential nominees and was broadcast live on national television.

In December 2008, President-elect Obama chose Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration ceremony.

The decision angered pro-choice and LGBT advocates and led to criticism of both Obama and Warren.

Obama defended his choice of Warren, saying that although he disagreed with the minister's positions on abortion and same-sex marriage, there should be room for dialogue on such difficult social issues.

More controversy ensued when it was announced that Warren would be the keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Annual Commemorative Service on January 19, 2009, the day prior to the inauguration.

He delivered the invocation at Obama's inauguration the next day, which was generally praised for its positive message.

In January 2009, Warren and the Reader's Digest Association partnered in the launch of the Purpose Driven Connection, a quarterly publication sold as part of a bundle of multimedia products.

In November 2009, the partners announced that the magazine had not drawn enough paying members and would cease after publication of the fourth issue that month.

In 2010, Warren was chosen to lead a prayer at the inauguration ceremony of the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame.

Since that date, he has been part of the latter's Presidential Advisory Council.

In June 2021, Warren announced he would be retiring from the senior pastor position at Saddleback, but that he would stay on until his successor is appointed.

In January 2022, he became director of Finishing the Task, a mission coalition.

In August 2022, Warren stepped down as lead pastor while maintaining a founding pastor role.

In May 2023, Warren was installed as the first honorary chancellor of Spurgeon's College.

The following month, during the annual Southern Baptist Convention, after Saddleback Church was excommunicated from the Convention for hiring a female pastor, he championed the ordination of women.

Warren taught the material that would one day become the Purpose Driven philosophy of ministry to individual pastors who called or wrote him in Saddleback's early days.

Warren gained experience teaching the material through his participation in the Institute for Evangelism and Church Growth, affiliated with Fuller Theological Seminary.