This was a very interesting piece about Rick Warren, Southern Baptists and Evangelicals in this weekend’s Dallas Morning News. I would think there’s a generation of young leaders rising up in the near future that’ll worry less about in fighting between Christians and are more concerned about fighting a spiritual battle. Here’s a clip:

Rick Warren is an evangelical anomaly, and some people think that’s a good thing.

In seminary, I heard countless slams on his preaching style. I was lectured in cheap, pithy platitudes that “seeker services” were an oxymoron, if not “Satan-friendly.” Saddleback Sam, the name Dr. Warren gives to the “target audience” to whom he ministers, was a joke, a marketing ploy to reach a certain kind of person who could bankroll a certain kind of ministry.

In my home church, there is a lady who is convinced Rick Warren is the antichrist. He’s compromising the Gospel. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothes. And then there are
those who think he’s sold out on the abortion issue by hosting U.S. Sen. Barak Obama, D-Ill., at an AIDS conference, or that he’s compromised U.S. foreign policy by visiting Syria and North Korea. Some Southern Baptists have their briefs in a bunch because he still supports the Baptist World Alliance, which the Southern Baptist Convention stopped funding a few years ago. I have good friends who refuse to read his books, and I have former professors who take regular potshots at his publishing prowess.

But Rick Warren presses on. Perhaps more than any minister today, he takes the high road.

JG