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Rick and Kay Warren: How to Lead Your Church in Times of ‘Chronic Chaos’

rick and kay warren

Rick and Kay Warren co-founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. in 1980, and it is now one of the largest and best-known churches in the world. 

Rick has been referred to as America’s Pastor and is the author of “The Purpose-Driven Life,” which is one of the bestselling nonfiction books in publishing history. He also founded Pastors.com, an online interactive community providing sermons, forums, and other pastor resources.

Following the 2013 death of Rick and Kay’s son, Matthew, who lived with serious mental illness for most of his life, Kay founded Saddleback’s Hope for Mental Health Initiative. She is also the author of several books, including “Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn’t Enough.”

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Key Quotes From Rick and Kay Warren

Rick Warren

“I have spent personally more time encouraging pastors who wanted to resign in the past 18 months than ever before in my 52 years of ministry.”

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“If your tank was already half empty before these storms hit, you’re running on empty now. And some of you probably entered this crisis with little or nothing in your emotional, spiritual tank.”

“The first step to emotional, mental, spiritual help is to be forgiving of yourself.”

“Get a Bible translation that is readable to you that you like. I don’t care what translation—you get a Bible translation and you put it by the side of your bed on your bed stand and you leave it open. You never close it. Why? Because a closed Bible is easy to ignore.”

“When you’re under severe stress, when you’re in chronic chaos, which is what we’re in right now, set and stick with a simple routine…Routine develops resilience. You need to remember that routine develops resilience, predictability creates stability in ministry and in life, structure creates steadiness.”

“This is going to shock you, but I’ve been telling it to our church for a year-and-a-half. Stop watching cable news…The reason we’re seeing more conflict rising in congregations today is because people are spending more time with the nightly news than they are hearing a sermon on Sunday.”