Comprehensive Health Plan
An interview with Rick Warren
July 1, 1997
Capital Punishment. Last Rites. Cape Fear. After Death. Hell Fire. Apocalypse Now. 911. Endorphin Rush. The latest movies?
Nope. Labels from Rick Warren's collection of hot sauces.
"Listen to this one," he says with a grin, reading from a label. "There is a point where pleasure and pain intersect, a doorway to a new dimension of sensual euphoria, where fire both burns and soothes, when heat engulfs every neuron within you. Once that line is crossed, once the bottle is opened, once it touches your lips, there's no going back. Pain is good."
Sounds a lot like ministry.
Rick Warren has known "the intersection of pain and pleasure" as pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church, a church he founded in Orange County, California, in 1980.
Despite the rapid growth of Saddleback, Warren writes in The Purpose-Driven Church (Zondervan) that "the key issue for churches in the twenty-first century is church health, not church growth." Leadership editors Ed Rowell and Kevin Miller, and photographer Bill Youngblood, recently spent an afternoon with Warren to talk about what it takes to develop a healthy church. That soon led into what it takes to be a healthy pastor.
Why do you say health should replace growth as the focal point for pastors?
Rick Warren: Because size is not the issue. You can be big and healthy, or big and flabby. You can be small and healthy, or small and wimpy. Big isn't better; small isn't better. Healthy is better.
There is no correlation between the size and strength of a church. I'm interested in helping churches become balanced and healthy. If they are healthy, growth will naturally happen.
I don't have to command my kids to grow. If I provide them with a healthy environment, growth is automatic. If growth is not ...
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