It is the candlelight Christmas Eve service at Saddleback, and celebration is the theme of Rick Warren's sermon. Christmas, the Saddleback Church pastor tells the audience, is a party, and, "God likes a party." The audience chuckles, then listens appreciatively as Warren reminds his flock whom the party is for: Jesus Christ. Seamlessly, Warren shifts gears.

"When I wrote the book 'The Purpose-Driven Life,' the very first sentence was, 'It's not about you,' " Warren says. "You were made for more than success. You were made for significance." What follows is an introduction to both "The Purpose-Driven Life," the book that has built Warren's name, and to his PEACE plan, the program that may cement it.

Warren's pursuit of growth, along with a visible enjoyment of celebrity, has led some to question whether Warren is building a worldly, rather than a spiritual, kingdom.

It is a charge Warren vigorously denies.

Rick Warren can make all the denials he wants, but has been exposed as a liar by many. Joseph Farah of World Net Daily got a dose of Rick Warren's willingness to lie, then when publicly confronted with the outright lies he began to attack and minimize Joseph Farah. This is typical of Rick Warren and those who serve up his purpose driven arsenic.

The Christmas broadcast, however, may be a recognition of who Rick Warren increasingly is: the country boy-turned-political kingmaker, the Southern Baptist pastor who hopes to lead an ecumenical "reformation" of the Christian church, the master communicator whose gnostic style has stripped Christianity of its mystery but also of its difficulty, attracting in the process a new generation of worshippers.

How important is Rick Warren?

"Quite important," says Mark Noll, a Notre Dame professor regarded as a leading authority on evangelical history.

Like many of the new generation of powerful pastors mentioned as possible successors to the Rev. Billy Graham, Warren has his fame vested in the "holistic gospel" – on social issues such as poverty and the environment – rather than the divisive political themes that have characterized the evangelical movement for the past three decades.

Even Warren agrees the PEACE plan will succeed as an ecumenical movement only if it is authentically about the often-mentioned "common good." He also acknowledges he will succeed only if he proves himself a true representative of the elusive center and not, as some fear, an evangelical Trojan horse, carrying a particular ideology to the world in the guise of an appealing, purpose-driven message.

Warren has no problem with un-holy alliances and actually prides himself on his worldy exploits for the Purpose Driven life and now his false P.E.A.C.E. plan. The Bible has a lot to say about being friends with the world, and warns quite sternly about when the world speaks well of you.

There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 16:25 KJV)

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1537241.php