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All the more reason for church leaders to follow the Lord, not a pre-packaged program, because His means may be entirely different for each individual congregation.

Amen! Listening to the Lord is the best thing for every individual to do. I agree with you completely, the Holy Spirit should be allowed to work in each congregation as HE wills... but if a few people do leave because of a direction a church goes (whether it be pro-PDL or anti-PDL), so be it. The pastor is still responsible to the Lord, and the Lord always adds more

A friend of mine tells me the story of a pastor who said that the Lord told him to move the location of the church more towards the inner city, which caused about 2/3 of the church to leave. Everyone questioned him and said he was not really hearing God. A couple years down the road, the Lord added many hundreds more beyond anywhere the church was in the past. His ways are not always our ways. I know this isn't PDL-related really, but again it's an issue of listening to the Lord and not to man.

Thanks for sharing that story. I totally agree with you. Over last night (since this thread was posted yesterday), I thought over some of the comments here, and I came to recognize that Rick Warren's work and books fill a niche, they bring to people's attention some things about their relationship and God's purposes that perhaps they've never thought of before. In that sense, they are instructional, and provide needed encouragement and admonition for many. But some have approached Warren's work as some sort of be-all formula for church or individual growth, and I'm not sure even he intended his work to be so used.

Follow Christ!...and if Warren's works bring a person to the point where they are determined to follow Christ, then they've been helpful.