It’s not as excessive as the Lancet “study” on the number of deaths in Iraq, but Rick Warren has been caught inflating the number of his parishioners. Warren rented 47 screens at movie theaters to show The Passion of the Christ, and claimed this marketing effort gained him another 3,000 attenders for Saddleback:
“We booked 47 theater screens for members to take their lost friends to. Kay [Warren, Rick's wife] and I personally invited over a thousand lost community leaders of Orange County to a VIP premiere showing, including every mayor, congressman, superintendent of schools, other community leaders, and four billionaires. The results? Over 600 unchurched community leaders attended our VIP showing; 892 friends of members were saved during the two-week sermon series. Over 600 new small groups were formed, and our average attendance increased by 3,000. That’s catching a wave!”
Warren Smith, author of Deceived on Purpose, was skeptical, so he took a look at the numbers.
When I read this, I wondered: Even setting aside the theological and philosophical problems, how could these numbers possibly be true? There was something about them that just didn’t make sense. So I turned to Outreach magazine, which each year publishes lists of the largest and fastest growing churches. The 2005 list (which covered the period about which Warren writes) had Saddleback’s weekly attendance at 23,194. The 2006 “Outreach” list had Saddleback at 20,595. That’s a drop of nearly 3,000. And — at least according to these numbers, which were reported to Outreach by the church itself — at no time did Saddleback have the 23,500 that Warren asserted.
Outreach reports the largest churches and the fastest growing churches on adjacent pages in the magazine. So I flipped the page and discovered something even more puzzling. Even though Saddleback’s weekly attendance fell by 3,000, it reported a “gain” of 1,149 for the year! How does a church that loses 3,000 report a gain of over 1,000? Maybe they planted a new church. That’s an admirable thing, but even if true why should Saddleback be reporting the numbers of another church as its own?
In the “Leadership Journal” article, Warren also touted his church’s ability to attract young people, saying that “the largest Gen-X church in America is Saddleback with over 20,000 names under 29 on our church roll.” Again, how could a church with only 21,000 members have more than 20,000 under the age of 30?
I’m reminded of the scene in the movie Cool Runnings where Derice Bannock asks his coach (John Candy) why he had cheated. His coach replied, “It’s quite simple, really. I had to win. You see, Derice, I’d made winning my whole life, and when you make winning your whole life you have to keep on winning, no matter what.”
The trend of marketing God like any other product, where megachurches are competing ad agencies, is disturbing. This dishonesty about the success of the “ad campaigns” is both sad and inevitable. They’ve defined success as filling the seats, and if they don’t continue to succeed, all the claims they’ve made so far are called into question. So Warren is buying some time until his next big “spiritual wave.” If he can invent or latch onto the next big God gimmick, then cowabunga! He gets another surge of people into Saddleback and everything that came before is validated. And if not, his recent shift toward politics may be preparation for a future “call to serve” in politics – so when Saddleback shrinks, it can be blamed upon his departure.
Cynical? Certainly. But (pun intended) it’s warrented.
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Insightful post Laura–albeit disappointing. I sure hope Pastor Warren just got the facts a bit mixed up. But I’ve seen the same thing occur in “missions marketing.” It’s a real bummer to read about the number of souls won for Christ, when the facts prove otherwise. Why are we (in the U.S.) so caught up in the numbers game?
I guess because it’s something we can track. It’s certainly not restricted to the US. A friend of mine was a missionary in China – he went over to help train small group leaders. They were coming back with reports of these amazing numbers – even in China, which other than North Korea is (I believe) the fastest growing Church in the world.
I think especially in the US which is so money-oriented, there is a pressure for a ministry to prove that it’s worth the donations it’s receiving. And people do love their statistics. You can count the number of “decisions for Christ” much easier than you can track how much a new Christian has grown in his faith or the influence he has on his family or coworkers.
Even the most well-meaning and dedicated pastors can buckle under that pressure. And for these empire-building types, they’re practically bent double under the weight of their own goals, so the added pressure can easily break them. It’s sad, because they are the first ones to say that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. They just don’t believe it.
I don’t know if this is a possibility or not, but often there is a significant difference between “members” and “adherents”. Perhaps they had a drop in adherents but a gain in members. It is possible I suppose. Another possibility is that at the time he did the big Passion thing, the surge did happen, but it ebbed away before the end of the year.
I’ve been an Associate Pastor in a large church (1000+) and now the Pastor of a small church plant (30+). The questions asked in both settings by pastoral staff and church board: “Why are we not growing?”
“What do we need to do in order to start growing?”
These questions are asked for several reasons: 1. Affirmation that what you are doing is in line with God’s will. 2.The need for dollars to fund ministry and 3. The need for people to serve in ministry.
Finally, we as a culture are pragmatists obsessed with performance. Lay men and women are confronted daily with “making and exceeding their numbers”, by thier employers.
Pastor and people alike need to remind themselves that God’s economy is different from the economies of the world.In God’s economy He is equally concerned with the breadth, but the depth of the Kingdom.
It’s funny you should use the phrase “God’s economy” – we just had several sermons on that idea –
Committed to God’s Economy of Prayer and Committed to God’s Economy of Giving.