F. Wesley Shortridge is praying that a multitude shows up at his Bealeton, Va., church today. This weekend, at his Liberty Assembly of God, he is kicking off a 40-day program based on the spectacularly popular book "The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?" Today, he's planning to preach on the same themes.
Shortridge, 34, a beefy pastor with a shaved head and trimmed goatee, has in the past roared his Harley into the sanctuary and lit an acetylene torch at the pulpit to spread the gospel. This time around, Shortridge and his congregation -- some 50 or 60 strong, he hopes -- will be focusing on the 334-page bestseller written by Rick Warren, a supersuccessful evangelical pastor. "The Purpose-Driven Life" has been on or near the top of national bestseller lists -- the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today -- since early January 2003.
Rick Warren used the profits from "The Purpose-Driven Life" to pay back 24 years of salary to his church.
(Zondervan)
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Unabashedly religious, the book is being read and studied by millions of people in and out of churches across the country. Readers are buying extra copies at churches and in bookstores and passing them along to friends. As a crossover bestseller, flying off the shelves in both the Christian and mainstream markets, it is a modern marketing miracle.
Jane Friedman, CEO of HarperCollins, whose Zondervan division published the book, says it sold 11.3 million copies in 2003. That makes it one of the best-selling books in publishing history, in the same league with the latest in the Harry Potter series. With 15 million copies in print, "The Purpose-Driven Life" has outsold bestsellers such as Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," which has 5.5 million copies in print.
"The Purpose-Driven Life" is just one wave in a surge of sacredness in American culture. Other spiritually oriented books such as "The Da Vinci Code" and Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" also jockey for top spots on bestseller lists. And Mel Gibson's new movie "The Passion of the Christ" is a bona fide conversation-starter.
"I think everybody has brokenness," Rick Warren, 50, says from his home in Lake Forest, Calif. "There's no doubt about that. We live in a fallen world. This is not heaven. Everybody has scars. Everybody is hurting somewhere, I guarantee you that. Everyone has a hidden hurt."
Warren's book outlines a spiritual diet that lasts about six weeks. It's divided into short chapters meant to be read at a one-a-day pace. The first week is for self-assessment, for questions such as: What drives your life? Each of the next five weeks addresses a purpose: You were planned for God's pleasure; You were formed for God's family; You were created to become like Jesus Christ; You were shaped for serving God; and You were made for a mission.
It is a Christ-centered book. It is a book about God. It is filled with Scripture and it is preachy. The purpose of your life, Warren writes, "is not about you."
Theologically, Warren begins by assuming that we all come from relatively dysfunctional backgrounds. The lives of many people, he believes, are driven by guilt, anger, fear, materialism or the need for approval.
"Many people spend their lives trying to create a lasting legacy on earth," he writes. "They want to be remembered when they're gone. Yet, what ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life but what God says."
Over the 40-day plan, purpose seekers are told, in very simple terms, that "life is all about love," "there are no shortcuts to maturity" and "only you can be you." In the end, the reader has received a Scripture-based, take-these-broken-wings-and-learn-to-fly pep talk.
Warren has the creed and the credentials. He is pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church, an independent evangelical hyperchurch just south of Los Angeles. The church supports Baptist world mission efforts. About 200 people attended his first worship meeting there in 1980; today the average attendance is more than 18,000 and there are six services every weekend.
In 1995 Warren, hoping to show other ministers and churches how to succeed in the soul-saving business, published "The Purpose-Driven Church." It was no bestseller.
In October 2002 he published "The Purpose-Driven Life." By January it was on the New York Times bestseller list.
"Honestly," Warren says, "I don't think there's anything new in the book, anything that classic Christian writers have not said. I'm a translator, and I worked very, very hard at making it simple."
And it is simply astonishing the publishing world.
The book, which retails for $19.99, is just a part of the sales tsunami. Warren has also crafted a devotional volume, "Daily Inspiration for the Purpose-Driven Life," a set of Scripture cards and other spinoff products, including a leather-bound mostly blank book in which Purpose-Driven readers can jot down their meditations.
"This really is the Purpose-Driven Life program," Friedman says. "We've sold 1.7 million copies of the blank book."
Rick Warren is an inspired marketer. Widely known as a preacher's preacher, he's been peddling his sermons to other pastors for years. Ministers on deadline know they can turn to Warren's Web site, Pastors.com, and his "sermon subscription" service. For as little as $5 a sermon, subscribers get an outline, a transcript, background research and a cassette of Warren's delivery. The Web site also offers tips on composing sermons, an archive of 23 years of sermons, and many other resources, some free, some paid. His weekly e-mail, Ministry Toolbox, goes to 110,000 subscribers.
"The message I speak this weekend," he says, "will probably be preached in 8,000 churches over the next two weeks. That's about average."
Though he doesn't really mind if preachers read his sermon verbatim, he encourages them to rephrase his words into their own.
This Web site has made Warren extremely well known among clergy of all stripes from coast to coast, and the book is, in many ways, an extension of his help with homilies. He offers not only prepackaged sermons to accompany "The Purpose-Driven Life," but also visual aids, hymns, Scripture-bearing key chains and four separate indexes to the book to help pastors who want to write their own sermons about it. Those sermons, in turn, help plug the book.
"People look at the book and say it's selling almost a million copies a month, where did this overnight success come from? I say, wait a minute. I've been building into these pastors for 25 years," Warren says. "They trust me. They know I love them. I'm a fourth-generation pastor."
Pastors, Warren has figured out, "are cultural gatekeepers and they are overlooked. People do not realize how much influence they have."
Warren is a casual dresser and conversationalist. His congenial and generous reputation comes through on the telephone. He insists on being called "Rick."
"I decided a long time ago I would not copyright any of my sermons," he says. "I allow other pastors to take my messages and use them. They can add their own ideas, their own stories. It's just another resource."
Helping other preachers spread the word gives Warren exponential influence. "When we sell the sermons," he says, "we take the money and use the money to translate the sermons into other languages and give them away free to the rest of the world."
Several times a year he leads the 40-day program -- which is kicked off by a satellite simulcast -- and people all over the country read the book and study its principles. Friedman points out that when a preacher recommends a book from the pulpit, it's a must-read for many in the congregation.
"By Easter, there will have been over 12,000 churches that have completed 40 days of purpose," Warren says. "By the end of the year, it will be over 30,000. Multiply that by the number of people in each church, and the book will actually sell more copies this year than last year."
Unlike other book-selling preachers, such as Robert H. Schuller and T.D. Jakes, Warren has no television show. "There's been almost no print ads, marketing ads or such," he says. "I did not do a book tour, all the things you normally do to promote a book. What I did was, I created a new distribution channel -- I went direct to these pastors who have loved me and trusted me for years."
Warren has sold more than 4 million copies to churches directly through his Web site. Nielsen BookScan, a bookstore tracking service, reports that about 3 million copies of "The Purpose-Driven Life" have been sold through independent, chain and large online bookstores. According to HarperCollins, most of the rest have been sold through discount stores and 2,500 Christian book shops. According to Zondervan, it was the first book ever to sell a million copies in Sam's Club stores.
Since becoming rich, Warren says, he has paid back 24 years of salary to his church. He has set up foundations to help him give money away. He says that he and his wife, Kay, have not made any major purchases. They live in the same house and drive the same Fords.
He says he wants to initiate a PEACE plan: Plant churches, Educate leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick and Educate the next generation.
"The world's biggest problems," he says, "are spiritual emptiness, self-centered leadership, poverty, disease -- especially the AIDS crisis -- and illiteracy.
"What I intend to do is use both the affluence and the influence of this book and this movement to make a difference."
Using the pulpit to market ideas is as old as Moses. But Warren is taking it to a new level. His ingenious system raises some questions: What else can be sold to such a captive, captivated audience? And who else might take advantage of the opportunity?
"I think we have only reached the tip of the iceberg at this point -- even though the numbers are astounding," Friedman says.
Penelope Gladwell, 58, a business consultant from Annapolis, has been through Warren's program twice, with two different churches. The book, she says, "helps us remember what it was like when we first made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ. And it takes you from wherever you are to the next step." The book also "provides a way for Christians to have conversations with each other about their faith," she says.
On a recent afternoon, Shortridge -- one of Warren's cultural gatekeepers -- is moving boxes and running cable wires at Liberty Assembly of God. He is making last-minute preparations for the Purpose-Driven presentation. He is wearing a gray T-shirt and khakis, which also serve as his Sunday best. He and his wife, Linda, who oversees the children's ministries, started the church about nine months ago.
With the blessing of -- and $1,000 a month from -- the larger Manassas Assembly of God up the road, Shortridge runs what he calls his "brick church in a cow pasture." He does not take up an offering, but there is a slotted box in the church foyer for those who feel moved to give.
Liberty is in a century-old building set among gentle hills. Breezes zip across large open fields. The church has enough old-timey wooden pews to hold 160 or more, but the sanctuary is only about half full each Sunday. Shortridge says all kinds of people show up for his preaching and for the electrified rock-and-roll played by music director Scott Scheideler.
Liberty is also a gathering place for smaller groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and mothers of preschoolers.
The Purpose-Driven program was slated to open last night with a 90-minute video presentation by Warren. Today, and for the next seven Sundays, Shortridge will preach about Warren's notions. Folks will meet in discussion groups during the week to mull over the book's ideas. More than 5,000 churches across the nation are expected to participate in this campaign.
People are calling Liberty, Shortridge says, because they have read the book and they are looking for other readers to talk to. "The book is driving people to church," he says.
He plans on using the sermons that Warren wrote only as a rough outline. "His teaching style is different from mine," Shortridge says. For instance, Shortridge and his congregation speak in tongues; Warren and the Saddleback church do not. And "his music is not on the same page as ours. Their style is more adult contemporary; ours is edgier."
Shortridge believes that there is some sort of spiritual reawakening occurring in this country. "It maybe has something to do with 9/11," he says.
The pastor is concerned, however, that he won't be able to sell the 72 Purpose-Driven volumes shipped to him with his materials. Most of his members, he says, already own copies.
