We did "40 Days of Purpose" in '03 and "Purpose-Driven Church" in '04. Same thing-huge waste of time AND we lost a couple of families who couldn't stomach Warren's man-centered "me-ology". I hunkered down and gritted my teeth and trashed the materials as soon as we were done.
I think most of those who were involved now see it as a mistake, especially "Purpose Driven Church", which Saddleback appeared to discontinue in midstream. We couldn't get the course materials for the latter weeks even though we had paid for them and the pastor was forced to improvise. We got the impression that it was a half-baked money-making gimmick. I suspect that Warren was losing interest in spiritual things even back then.
Yep. We attended a small Southern Baptist church at the time when Warren was all the rage. The preacher and his wife were really pushing "The Purpose Driven Life", his wife teaching a so-called "Bible study class" directly from it. My husband was a deacon and the preacher got him into reading it. (The dirty little secret of a lot of preachers, not all, is that they have control issues and know how to make people feel like THEY have an inroad to God that the people don't have. That is power, having conceived pull with the Lord.)
My take on Warren is that he has stumbled into a real gold mine, even if he only keeps ten percent of the total and manages the other 90% in some sort of a foundation, and now worldly political pull and name-dropping is his for the asking.
These megachurches have in many cases all but dispensed with the blood of Christ and the offense of the cross. (Paul Proctor is right about that!) They're rich country clubs and increased in goods. - We go to a small country church now with just plain people, still humble enough to practice foot washing. - Thinking of the closest Willowcreeker connected megachurch to us, neither we nor the people we go to church with would feel comfortable in that rarified Yuppie atmosphere. . not because of any self-righteousness on our part, but just because the truth of the matter is that even the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the cars we drive would not be considered to "fit in" . . and I speak from experience with that church years ago, before it became an actual megachurch; even before that it was a big old church full of "subdivision snobs".
Lord help us all to get on and keep on the narrow way.