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You know, in architecture, we say form follows function. What we mean by that is tell me what is the purpose of the building and then we'll shape it for you. We'll make the form, we'll design the building based on how you wanna use that building. Form follows function. That's an architectural slogan. But in your life, it's the exact opposite. Function follows form. What I mean by that is, You look at what you're good at and you know what you should be doing. Welcome to the Aggressive Life. Sometimes you can have guests on the podcast, you're going, Oh my goodness, I get to talk to him today? Yes, I do. I don't know how much you're going to enjoy this, but I'm going to enjoy it a lot. And as I used to sing a lot, but I haven't done it for a while. It's about time for me to reprise my favorite song. It's my podcast and I'll do what I want to do what I want to do what I want to. You would do it too if you had your own podcast, but you're not. So you're a loser. So today, oh man, I got somebody who has a huge, huge impact in my life. His name is Rick Warren. This is one of those guys who I've known. I've known him from afar and I've known him personally, and I've been inspired by him and his aggressive moves. If you're not too familiar with him, here's a brief bio. In 1980, he starts a Bible study out of his home that led to the founding of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. It's since become one of the largest, most influential churches in the world. And that's probably not why you know him. It's because he's prayed for and advised presidents. He's addressed United Nations and Hold the World Economic Forum. He's been engaged in HIV, AIDS. He's written like one of the greatest selling books of all time, The Purpose Driven Life. It's a 40 day devotional guide that helps you figure out, what am I here on this planet for? His reach and impact is almost impossible to quantify, yet he's a humble man who wakes up each morning looking for ways to bless his family, help others, honor his God. And just be a genuine good guy who I've encountered personally. So today we're going to talk about purpose calling, the favor of God, just how cool he is, how much, how much I appreciate this man. Rick Warren, welcome to the aggressive life. Thank you, Ryan. I'm very unimpressive up close, you know, from a distance, you can impress people. You can only impact them if you get up close. And if you get up close, they see your warts. But that's good. We actually help people more from our weaknesses and our strengths. That is true. We're inspired more by that. Well, you've always had a heart and made time for the little guy. I was most impressed with you. I went to a conference. I was doing the whole conference round, any place where I could learn anything about leadership, I was going. And I went to your, you had a conference called The Purpose Driven Church, which is long before the book. And you also spoke at another conference. I went to that. And somehow we got in the same room together for lunch with about 10, 15 other pastors or so, you and Kay, and Lib was there as well. And you guys, I think you and Kay express more care and interest in us than anybody else in the room. And you were the most impressive people in the room. We were the least impressive people in the room. But you genuinely were like interested. And that's a really cool thing, man. Well, you know, thank you, Brian, but it's, I genuinely do love people. I like people and I don't just love them. I like them. And you can train yourself to do this. When I walk into a room, the first question I ask is not in my mind, how do I look? Am I dressed right? Am I hair right? My first question I ask is, who in this room needs encouragement? And that makes life an adventure. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's just thinking of yourself less. You're so busy working on helping other people, you don't really have time to think about yourself. It's also a whole lot more fulfilling. Jesus said, the only people who really know how to live are those who give their lives away. And it's just a habit that you develop. And I find people, everybody is interesting. And one of the keys to leadership is, all leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning, stop leading. Growing churches require growing pastors, growing organizations require growing leaders. The moment I stopped growing, the church stops growing. So I'm trying to learn every day and you can learn from anybody if you know the right questions. Like the people who are listening to the podcast right now, if I could get any, a hundred of them, each individually in a room, in about five minutes I could get them to teach me something. And the reason why is everybody's ignorant just on different subjects. Okay. You know, things I don't know. I might know a few things others don't know, but there are people out there who know things that neither of us know. And so nobody can know at all. And so if you are genuinely interested in people, you're going to keep growing. You're going to keep learning. There's a verse in Proverbs that says, um, council in the heart of man is like a deep well. but a man of understanding will draw it out. In other words, if you're wise, if you're understanding, you'll learn how to ask good questions. And the quality of your life, the quality of my life, will be determined by the kind of questions I'm willing to ask myself and the questions that I ask other people. If you just have that curiosity that anybody can teach you something, then you're gonna keep growing, it makes life more interesting. Well, you've taken an interest in people your whole life. It's one of the impressive things about you. I mean, you wrote that book, not because purpose-driven life, not to make money, though you've made a good bit of it, money, but you've given just about all that money away because it was always about the people. What makes you so interested in people? Have you always had that as a little kid or did you read the Bible one day and you read a verse and that did? What is it about you and people? I think it's something anybody can grow into. I certainly grew into it. I think fundamentally I'm a selfish person. I think everybody is fundamentally is going first, thinking about themselves, but you can train yourself. Maturity is actually thinking of yourself less and less and less. And so when you get out there, as you start looking at people, again, you start learning, you start realizing that we really need each other. That's a big issue to me, is that nobody's got it all together. Now, you know I don't have it all together. I know you don't have it all together. We know everybody does. So why do we ever pretend that we do? Okay, we really need each other. Nobody gets all the gifts, and so that's why I need other perspectives. You know, in Scripture, the Bible says in the church, it says, treat the older women as mothers and treat the younger women as sisters. It says, treat the older men as fathers and treat the younger men as brothers. So as I was growing Saddleback from just Kay and I, you know, I started, actually I started this week, 44 years ago. Wow. January 25th is the 44th birthday of Saddleback Church. I had a whopping seven people in the little Bible study that I started, which was the first service of Saddleback Church this week, 44 years ago. By the way, also this January 28th, I turned 70. So we're having a party. And I've decided that I'm gonna do, I'm making a list of 70 fun things to do on my 70th year. Okay? And one of them makes me to come see you, okay? So. Yes, no, I like that. If I show up in your backyard, if you come see me. I know every place in Orange County to eat for under five bucks and I'm a big spender, buddy. I really do. Dude, if I'm coming to see you, we're not throwing down on $5 meals. I am a mega pastor with a mega expense account. You're a retiree right now, but I got expense accounts that can justify being with the great Yoda himself. We're going to chow down on some Jack. Yeah, well, you know, then I'm going to take you to Focal de Chow, which, you know, is all you can eat of all those different kinds of... Brazilian beef places. But your ability to be relationally connected, I want to stay there a bit longer. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, is really just humbling. The last communication you and I had, we bumped into each other at some conferences, had some lunch with some other pastors and stuff like that. But the last communication we had, or you probably don't remember, or probably do because you're unbelievable this way, was I was featured in a Wired article. And you sent me a personal note, said, wow, article was great and happened right before Easter. Perfect, bam. Like, you don't need to send me a note like that, find out what my address was, send that whole thing, but that's just who you are. You think about people all the time. Here's the thing, you can make a real difference in people's lives in literally a minute. You know, studies have shown like if you just pick up the phone and call somebody, that the encouragement, the benefit that person gets actually happens in the first 30 seconds. It's the fact that you call. You don't have to make a long call to somebody to encourage them. You just pick up the phone or write a little short note and just in the first 30 seconds of a call actually gets the most benefit for lifting the emotions of people. So. One of the things I was teaching my church to do during COVID is you need to have day. One of the things for your emotional health is you need to have daily contact with the people you love the most. Well, you know, as your family grows up and they go off to college or they get married, things like that, you have grandkids and on and on or you move out of your parents' home, whatever. It's important to just stay in contact. Pick up the phone. Just say, hey, I love you. Just wanted to say how you're doing. It doesn't have to be a long call in that first two minutes. And even the first 30 seconds, you're encouraging people. You know, the first four words of the purpose driven life is it's not about you. You know, honestly, Brian, if I had known how many times I was going to be tested by that after I wrote it, I probably wouldn't read it or written it because ever since then, every day, sometimes I have to say that to myself 10 times a day. It's not about you. And it doesn't matter. If I'm being praised, it's not about you. Or if I'm being criticized, it's not about you. Uh, or I'm being ignored. It's not about you. Uh, just to constantly remember it's all about God. It's not about me. And, and, and when you're stressed, repeat this three times. God is God and I'm not God is God and I'm not God is God and I'm not. And so you get the focus off you. The, the, the reason I'm pounding on this and the reason you're talking about. is because it's the exact opposite of our culture. Yes. Everything in our culture says, it's all about you. We do it all for you. You deserve it, baby. Have it your way. It's all about, everything in society promotes self-centeredness. And yet nothing will make you more unhappy than being self-centered. Correct. Well, one of the things that you've done, you've actually done so many things. I wanna probably just not remind, but educate people who are listening because This is not a pastor's podcast per se, but I am a pastor by day. And so I want to have some pastor talk with you later on. I really do in a little bit. But first, a lot of folks who know you, know of your name from the book and stuff, would not really know the aggressive moves that you've made in your life. Let me tell you a few of them that impacted me. And now just seem like normal, but it wasn't normal then. I went to your church when you're meeting in a gymnasium. I visited family who were in. who were in California, they were not believers. And I said, I've been looking at this church, I think someday I'm gonna start a church and they meet in a gymnasium and I just wanna go see it. So I took them out, it was the first time I was ever in a church plant in a gymnasium and pretty much wept the whole time. I just, I was like, oh my gosh. And my family was, they were really like, oh. Okay, interesting. It was clearly getting to you. Yeah, it was getting to me, but that wasn't a normal thing. That's an aggressive move. That was back in the days you wait for a denomination to build you a little chapel with pews, and then away you go. You're doing set up and tear down. That was a massive thing. You're doing, you got people on staff who are writing music and writing your own music. You've got notes. where you hand out notes and you'd fill in the blanks, fill in the blanks. Now, some of this stuff is normal, or even some sectors of society, this might be corn you're out of touch with where we were today, but not in 1985. Oh my goodness. You had leaders that you shared the stage with and had other people elevating them. You took... You took group life seriously, not just about the sermon and about that, but getting people in groups. Just so many things that you were an innovator on and made aggressive moves on and you didn't have to do it. Well, thanks. But the bottom line is innovation is really just responding to the circumstance you're in at that particular moment. The key to innovation is flexibility, being willing to turn on a dime. Most, in fact, none of the things that we did that became innovations in the 90s and 2000s that now everybody has done or is doing today, none of them were pre-planned. It was simply a response to, well, we can't do that, so how do we do that? For instance, when I first moved here, a lot of the communities in this particular area were gated communities. And I was taught back in 1970, you go door to door and invite people to church. Well, that doesn't work anymore. But on top of that, even if I wanted to, I couldn't get in. And so I figured out, well, let's do a direct mail piece because it can go over the gate and get in. And we started the church with direct mail. Most of the stuff, the idea of a commitment card that people fill out and turn in rather than a come to the front in Billy Graham style invitation. That happened because the first building I was in had no center aisle. And I got to the end of the message and I was going to invite people to give their lives to Christ. And I had always been in a church where you invite people to come to the front at the end. Well, number one, there was no aisle. And number two, at the front, we were in a little theater, was an orchestra pit. What am I going to say? Come on down and jump in the pit. And so I figured out the little welcome card also became a decision card on the back. And people could just check a box. And then I would contact them during the week and we would make contact. And then you say, well, where's their public profession? Well, that's what baptism is all about. But every one of those innovations, and I once made a list of about a hundred of them, none of them were pre-planned. It was response to the situation that we found ourselves in. For instance, with COVID, we came up with a half a dozen different innovations during COVID that allowed us to bring about 55,000 people to Christ during COVID. It was our most effective season of evangelism simply because we said, well, we can't do that. What can we do? And so that's the big thing is be fast, fluid and flexible, fast, fluid and flexible. And don't put yourself in a box. Then you'll come up with, well, we can't do that. What else could we do? Let's think of 10 things we could do. Saddleback was shut down for a year and a half because in California we had the strictest COVID rules. And so I told our church, I said, Other churches are going to get to open up sooner because they're smaller. The last two things to open in Orange County, Southern California will be Disneyland and Saddleback because we both had over 30,000 people coming every weekend. And sure enough, the last two things to open after COVID were Saddleback and Disneyland. We opened the same week. Wow. Interesting. Here I thought it was just because you live in Commie-Fornia. You're saying it was both of your sides. Well, I have battled the People's Republic of Orange County Supervisors. Rick, when you look back at your life, did you ever imagine you would be the force that you are today? When you were 25, did you ever think, man, I'm going to, everyone's going to want me on their podcast, even though I don't even know what a podcast is when I'm 25. But I'm gonna be this fountain of wisdom and I'm gonna be this beacon of light and I'm gonna be used by God in this way and that way. Of course you wouldn't know how He was gonna use you, but did you have any sense as a youngster, like there's gonna be an X factor about my life? I've always been a big dreamer, Brian, but God exceeds our dream. That verse in Ephesians where God says, God is able to do much more than you think. or ask or imagine or even dream of wildly beyond your wildest imagination. In that verse, God says, Rick, think of the biggest thing I could do in your life, and I could top that. So I'm a pretty big dreamer, and I've had big dreams. And even the very first sermon that I preach at Saddleback, I announced the dream for the next 40 years. I'm 25 years old. That took a little hootspot to announce a dream as detailed. as that dream was. It was a 40-year dream, and one of the dreams was, okay, I'm talking to 60 people who I don't even know. They're total strangers, the first service, I'd never seen them before, on a pre-service Sunday before Easter. Easter was our big grand opening. But before, I just announced we're going to have a trial-run service, and 60 people showed up. And I laid out the vision, which, by the way, the last sermon I preached a year ago Saddleback is I repreached the very first sermon and I said, 43 years later, I want you to see how God is faithful and how that every part of this vision has not simply been fulfilled. It has been exceeded. For instance, when I was 25 years old, I said, God, we dream of a church of 20,000 members by 2020. Now you see, where'd you get that number? I just made it up. Okay. It wasn't like a lightning bolt from God or anything. I just thought, It was the biggest number I had the faith to believe in. Twenty thousand by 2020. The problem with that, we hit that goal 20 years early. We hit it in the year 2000, but we were way past that by the time we got to 2020 and God exceeds what you do. So you set your goals. Now, here's the thing. We underestimate, we overestimate what we can do in a year, but we underestimate what we can do in 10. And so life by the yard is hard, but inch by inch, it's a sense. You just take it, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? It's just, I can teach any pastor how to grow a church. I can teach any leader how to grow a business, but I can't teach them how to do it quickly. It takes time. It takes time. When God wants to make a mushroom, he takes six hours. When God wants to make an oak tree, He takes 60 years. The question is, do you want your life to be a mushroom or an oak tree? You want your life to be, you want your church to be a mushroom or an oak tree? I can show you how to build a solid church that will go on for generations and generations. I've trained five generations at Saddleback, and now we're going into the sixth, and I'm still the founding pastor. I've turned the leadership over to the next generation, but I've done that even before I stepped aside to take on finishing the task, which is a much bigger. bigger thing. I, um, I had a prayer, Brian, that I prayed every Saturday night and every Sunday morning for 43 years as I was driving to churches. We'd have two services on Saturday night. I had four on Sunday for 12 years. It's quite a long prayer. You know, you know how athletes have kind of their game day ritual? Yeah, the routine. Well, I have a game day prayer. It's about 15 minutes long. It's memorized. I won't go through the whole part of it. But there's one part of that prayer that was the hardest part for me to pray, but I prayed it every Saturday and every Sunday for 43 years. And it was in that time that I offered my resignation to Christ. And as I'm driving down the freeway Saturday night or Sunday morning, getting ready to go to the services, I'd say, it goes like this, Lord, I just want to remind myself that I belong to you, and this church belongs to you. You use me to start this church, but it's not my church. It's your church and it belongs to you and I belong to you and you have the right to move me at any point. So with open hands, I offer you my resignation tonight. And if there's somebody you want to come and take it to the next step, somebody you want to come and take it in the next different direction, somebody you want me to do something else. I'm just surrendering. And I literally, Brian, at that point, I'm driving down the freeway. late or morning, I take my hands off the steering wheel for a few seconds as a symbol of surrender. I'm surrendering this to you. And then there was a sentence, which was the most hardest part of the prayer, and it goes like this, and I'm willing to do something more difficult and more complicated. Now, the reason that's hard is because I knew that leaving Saddleback, there were a thousand things that would be easier to do. It's pretty... complex to lead a church that's on four continents. We have Saddleback Berlin, we have Saddleback Buenos Aires, we have Saddleback Manila, we have Saddleback Hong Kong, we have Saddleback Vancouver and Manchester, England. And it's an incredibly complex building and compounds for all these different churches and nearly 500 staff. And there'll be a lot of things that would be easier to do. But I said, I'm willing to do something more difficult. In my mind, I'm thinking, serving a soup kitchen in New York City or whatever you need me to do. Well, last year, God took me up on that and gave me a great assignment. And that's what I'm committing the next 10 years for. So I didn't really retire. I refired. And I actually took on a bigger thing, which is a great commission in the, in the next 10 years in a thing called finishing the task. It's a coalition of about 2000 denominations and agencies and churches and stuff. That's cool. And that's capturing your imagination and you're putting heavy lifting into that every day? This next week, well, yeah, just recently I trained 6,000 pastors in Seoul, Korea. I went to Africa and they came from 39 nations. representing 55,000 churches, signing on to be a part of the goals for the next 10 years of finishing the task. This week, I spoke to 600 Anglican young pastors in England. Next week, I have the 16 pastors of the largest churches in Latin America coming to meet with me for a week for training for finishing the task. So I'm pretty busy. Yeah, I would say so. When you look back on Is there a moment for you that was the best moment? And I'm also going to ask you, is there a moment that was the worst moment? Well, I don't know that there was a single best moment. I've had so many best moments over the years that I'm multiply, multiplied, blessed, and I live in a state of grace because if God never did anything else in my life, I could just exist on the gravy of all that I've gotten to see and do. And here's the bottom line, Brian, I am addicted to change lives. I'm addicted to change lives. Preaching is actually a difficult subject for me. A lot of guys like to preach. They love to preach and they say, I just love to preach. Well, I actually have a brain disorder that actually makes preaching excruciating for me, but I'm addicted to change lives. People say, do you love to preach? I say, no, but I love the results of it. And I do it for. for others. When people tell me, I just love to preach, that never impresses me because I go, well, you just may be a ham. You just like the adrenaline rush. My leg, you might like the attention. You love the attention. You love being in the spotlight. I don't care if you love to preach. Do you love the people you preach to? Yes. That's, that's the question. Because without love, I'm a tinkling symbol, sounding brass. I, it doesn't matter. So it's more important that I love my people. than anything else and tell them that I love them. In my 43 years that I was pastor at Saddleback, I baptized 54,000 new believers. That's a city. I could be a mayor. But the worst without a doubt was the death of my son who struggled with mental illness his entire life and was clinically depressed as a toddler. And he made it to 27 before he took his life. It was the worst day of my life. I mean, I remember, and of course, because I was well known, it's on all the magazines. It's on the cover of People magazine. It's on the CNN ticker. I'm walking through an airport, and I see my son's name Matthew Warren's suicide. That'll grip you as it's devastating as a dad. And my wife, I wouldn't have made it if we hadn't had a small group. I believe that every leader needs to be in a small group. The one I'm in right now, I've been in with four couples for 23 years, been through every kind of bankruptcy and cancer and kids in prison and mental illness and suicide and on and on. They've carried me and I've carried them at different times. And, um, one of the, I just learned a lot about grief in that time. We received, I'm not making this up, Brian. I probably got 35,000 letters of condolences from people around the world when Matthew took his life. And he was a great kid, great young man. He had a tender heart, loved the Lord, tortured mind. Tender heart, tortured mind. It's not a sin to be sick, okay? If you take a pill for your heart, you're not ashamed of it. If you take a pill for your liver, or for diabetes or your back, you know, but if your brain isn't working, you take your pill for that. Why are you supposed to be embarrassed by that? It's just another organ, okay? And it's not a sin to be sick. How have you, are you, where are you in the healing process with Matthew being gone? Was, I mean, does it still hurt every day or did it lessen every day or what's that been like for you? It does get easier. You don't ever get over. a major trauma in your life, you get through it. You don't get over it. Are you over it? No, you never get over it. You get through it. Like if I were to lose this arm, this left arm, it got cut off, I'm gonna notice it's gone the rest of my life, okay? I can manage with it. I can get through it, but I'm gonna notice it's there. One day, either Kay or I will die first. We will remember that the rest of our lives. Now, the thing about grief is, there's no expiration date on grief. Okay, it's not like milk that expires and then all of a sudden it's gone. You can be triggered 10, 20 years later by a sound, a song, a taste, a smell, a joke, something funny, anything could trigger that wave. Grief comes to you in waves. It's like one minute you can handle it, the next minute you can't. One minute I can handle it, next minute I cannot handle this. And you can go through those waves many times in a minute. And by the way, your wave will never match your spouse's wave. Okay. And you never grieve at the same time and people grieve in different ways. And so that's why a lot of families struggle after a major trauma, our major loss, and a lot of families split up. Kay and I made a decision. We weren't going to be a statistic. And we decided that, um, since we knew that our waves didn't match, that anytime I see her triggered in a way where she sees me triggered in a wave, what we do is we walk over, we put our arm around them and say nothing, just walk over and put around and say nothing. Now I've been teaching pastors for 43 years. I've taught over a million pastors in 165 nations and I've been teaching them for at least 20 of those years. The deeper the pain, the fewer words you use. I tell them guys, the deeper the pain, the fewer words you use. Um, if somebody's having a bad hair day, you can go talk to them for 30 minutes, but if they just lost a loved one or a suicide or something, you show up and shut up that people say, I don't know what to say, say nothing, say nothing. There's nothing you can say. In fact, if you say something, it'll probably be stupid. So you just show up. What I teach pastors and everybody who's listening can do this because you're all gonna have grief. I hope you have anatomy, but you're gonna have loss in your life. This is the world. Everything that is living on this planet dies. Animals, plants, people. So you're gonna have loss in your life. So what do you do? Well, you show up and you shut up. It is the ministry of presence. And what I tell them to do is use the model of Jesus. Jesus gave a look, a word, and a touch. Everywhere he went, a look, a word, and a touch, a look, a word, and a touch, a look, a word, and a touch. He would look people in the eye. Now, when he looks people in the eye, it's saying, you matter to me. The most important thing you can give people in your life is your attention. It's far more important than money. You can always get more money. but you can't get more time. When you give people your attention, you're giving them your life. You're giving them a part of your life because you're never getting that back. When my oldest, Amy, was little, and I'd be reading the newspaper and she'd come up to me and say, Daddy, and I'd go, yeah, babe, Daddy, yeah, babe. She'd grab the paper and pull it down and say, Daddy, look at me. What she wanted was my attention. I've talked to so many husbands who their wife walked out on them and they said, I don't understand what went wrong. I give my wife and kids all they want. What do they want? They want you. They want your attention, not your things. They want you. So when Jesus gives people a look in the eye, you're saying, you matter to me. You're valuable, you're worthy. And so you give a look and then you give a word. And it's not a things will get better because they don't always get better. The sun will come out tomorrow. Sometimes it doesn't come out tomorrow. Don't make platitudes. That's Pollyanna. That's not faith. What you just say is, I'm here. I'm here for you. That's what you can promise. I am. It is the ministry of presence. A look, a word. I'm here and I'm just here for you. And then a touch, a squeeze of the hand, a pat on the back, a hug, a physical touch. Human beings, human skin is made to be touched. I'm not talking about sexual touch. I'm talking about just compassionate love, brother, sister, love. Babies that are not stroked, preemies in hospitals, they get failure to thrive syndrome. The skin has to be touched. That's why as a pastor, as more important as my sermon is, out on the patio every weekend was the hugs and the pats on the back, the shakes. And sometimes people would say, you know, Pastor Rick, the only physical affection I get is at church. And when I hug somebody out on the patio, I'll go, I wonder how long that hug's gotta last that person. because so many people are single adults today that don't have a regular physical touch of some kind. So what we did is we learned to, when somebody is triggered, you don't go over and try to talk them out of it. That's stupid. Just go over and give them a look, a word, a word say, I'm here, and a touch. And today, Kay and I are actually closer in our marriage. after that great tragedy of losing a son to suicide. Rick, I normally, I have nicknames for everybody who's close to me. I think I just made a nickname for you. I got an answer. It's plaque man. Everything you say should go on a plaque. You have more pithy things, not platitudes, but like, I don't go, you'll get over it, you go through it. Oh, that's good, put that on a plaque. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now that is just the way, that honestly, Brian, is the way I think. In fact, when I wrote Purpose Driven Life, it actually took me 12 hours a day for seven months. I would get up in the morning at about 4 a.m. and about 5 a.m. I would go to a little study, put on a pair of... uh, you know, shorts or sweatpants and a t-shirt. And I'd start writing about 5 a.m. And I'd write till about noon. And then my ADD would kick in. It's like a thousand ants crawling up and down your back. And I got to get with people and somebody would bring me on the staff and bring me a lunch. I'd walk around the church facilities, start up at one again and type a type to about five and then go home, play with the kids, eat dinner. And I was in bed by about eight o'clock. It took me seven months, 12 hours a day. Because good material is not written, it's rewritten and rewritten and rewritten. And what I was doing on, so I was always going, I got a 20 word sentence. How can I say it in 15? And I got a 15 word sentence. How could I say it in 10? And I was always trying to shrink it to make it simple. The reason purpose-driven life is in Guinness book of world records, not only as the bestselling book in English history, but as the most translated book in the world, except for the Bible, it's in over 200 languages. The reason it's translated is because it's simple. I was made for Twitter before Twitter existed. How can I say it's short? And, and it's, it's funny because when I wrote that book that way, um, the publisher actually initial letter came back said, this will never work. You might want to get a ghostwriter to rewrite it. And I said, well, I'll just self publish it then, because I believe it's what I'm supposed to say. It's not full of illustrations. I took out all of the stories that were American. because I wanted it to go global. I wanted people in Botswana to read it and it makes sense to them there, and people in Burundi and people in Belgium to all read it. And so I went, before I wrote the book, I actually went and read all these books by the Desert Fathers, books like, how do you get a book to last 500 years? Like imitation of Christ. And it has to be timeless. And so I had to take out all of, the only illustrations pretty much in that book are either from the Bible. from family, but everybody's got family, so they can understand fathers on that kind of stuff. Best-selling book in American history. Explain that, please. You're saying more of those books have been bought in America than any other book ever written other than the Bible? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It sold 60 million in hardback in English, just in hardback, before it went to paperback. It sold, I know, 10 million in hardback in Spanish. but it's in 200 languages now and it's still selling. It's still selling a million a year. Is it really? Yeah. Jeez, that's crazy. When you wrote about the purpose thing, I remember when we did a number of studies on it here at Crossroads, we did book studies and everything. And the bummer about that is a lot of people that I knew personally. got fixated on what is my purpose and stressed out over it. Like, oh no, there is a thing that I'm supposed to do and I can't find that thing or I am doing that thing, but maybe it's the wrong thing. Have you seen people interpret that way in the book poorly or what would you say to that kind of thinking? Yeah, it means they didn't read it very well because it's not about a single thing. It's about the big things that God puts you on the earth. And here it is in a nutshell. God made me to know him. God made me to love him. But first, God made me so he could love me. The reason your heart is beating right now, the reason you're breathing, the reason you exist, is God made you to love you. You were created to be loved by God. If God hadn't wanted to love you, then you wouldn't even exist. Now, the Bible says that God is love. It doesn't say God has love. It doesn't say God... does love, it says he is love, it's his nature, it's his essence. The only reason there's love in the universe is because your Creator is love. And the only reason you have the ability to give and receive love is because you were made in God's image. Snails don't love, cows don't love, birds don't love. Only human beings are able to give and receive love because we're made in the image of God, in the image of our Creator. So, the first purpose of life is to let God love you. before you do anything else. We love Him because He first loved us. The very first purpose of life is to understand how much God loves you. This weekend, I've been asked to speak at Saddleback again on my 70th birthday, and I'm gonna talk about how our hope comes from understanding how much God loves us. So we're made to be loved by God, we're made to learn to love Him back, then we're made to grow in Him, then we're made to serve Him. and then we're made to share Him. That's it. Now, that has nothing to do with your career. It has nothing to do with your talents and your gifts. Well, the service part does because you're shaped to serve God. And if you wanna know what you're supposed to be doing with your life, you look at your shape. I call it S-H-A-P-E. In architecture, we say form follows function. What we mean by that is tell me what... is the purpose of the building, and then we'll shape it for you. We'll make the form, we'll design the building based on how you want to use that building. Form follows function. That's an architectural slogan. But in your life, it's the exact opposite. Function follows form. What I mean by that is you look at what you're good at and you know what you should be doing. Okay? S-H-A-P-E. Five things God shaped you to do. You five things God used to shape you. S are your spiritual gifts. What am I gifted to do? Everybody has at least one gift. H your heart. What do I love to do? What's your passion? I might have the gift of teaching, but my passion is with children. I might have the gift of teaching, but my passion is with prisoners or CEOs. So how your passion determines how you're going to use your gift. S my spiritual gift. H my heart. What do I love to do? A are my abilities. Abilities are different than spiritual gifts, because spiritual gifts you get when you're born again, abilities you get at birth. You're naturally good at math, or you're naturally good at mechanical things. You're naturally good at athletics. Some of us are terrible at athletics. You have musical abilities. Some people can't carry a tune in a baggie. We all have different abilities. P is your personality. And we all have different personalities. Some people like routine. They want to do the same thing over and over. Some people like variety. They don't want to do the same thing over and over. Some people like to work in a group. Some people like to work by themselves. Some people are morning risers. Some people are late, stay up late at night. Early birds always marry night owls. Okay. They always do. Uh, when two people agree on everything, one of them isn't necessary. So you eat with a knife and a fork, not just a knife. Plack man. This is a plaque. He's laying them down. Go plaque man, keep going. So spiritual gifts, what am I gifted at heart? What do I love to do? That's my passion. A, what are my natural abilities? P, what's my personality? And E is my experiences. Your experiences shape you. Personal experiences, family experiences, school, educational experiences, job experiences, but most still important of all, painful experiences. God whispers to us in our pleasure, He shouts to us in our pain, God uses painful experiences. And oftentimes our greatest contribution will come out of our deepest hurt. Who can better help somebody with an addiction than somebody who went through addictions? Who can help somebody going through a divorce than somebody who went through a divorce? God never waste the hurt. He wants you to turn it around and use it to help other people. and falling in the hands of the woman in Atlanta who was held at gunpoint by an escaped murderer. Yeah, yeah. There was a man who had escaped from, he had shot a judge in the courtroom and grabbed the bailiff's gun and got out and they were doing a national manhunt for him in Atlanta. And Ashley Smith was just starting to read my book. She was going to celebrate recovery. She was trying to recover from addiction and one night she went out about 1 a.m. in the morning and this guy saw her and kidnapped her and brought her back to her home, tied her up with the duct tape and put her in the bathtub. She thought she's going to die. And as they began to talk, he kept her, they were together a couple days. And because he's hiding from the police and it's national. In fact, it's international news. I actually at the time was working in an AIDS hospice over in Africa. And I had just come in from a day's work, threw myself down in the bed in the hotel, I was staying at turn on the TV and I see Larry King holding up my book. And I'm going, what is going on? And what happened was she had been given that book at celebrate recovery, purpose-driven life. And she's reading it one more. She made him some pancakes. He finally let her go and they calmed down, but she was still his prisoner. And he said, what are you reading? She said, what's called perfect human life. She said, you think God has a purpose for my life. And so she said, well, let me read. And so she started reading it to him. And the more she read, the more he wanted to read in the bottom line is it so turned around his life that convinced him to give himself up. Wow. And she called the police and he, you know, uh, without, uh, um, incident turn this murder, turned himself into the police because of purpose driven life. I've had some amazing stories like that, but that's one of the, one of the big ones. That is unbelievable, man. Flying K Ranch. Today's episode is brought to you by them because I believe they're producing some of the most mouth-watering, healthy burgers, steaks, roasts I've ever had. They're in Finley, Ohio. Flying K raises their beef with no hormones or antibiotics. So you know you're getting the most natural product. It's a family business partnering with state national certification boards to ensure both cattle and customers are happy. You can find out more, place your orders I'm liking it a lot. If you had to go back and do it again, you're still doing it. You're not out of the saddle. You're still being fruitful and productive and pushing forward. But if you were to go back and do it again, what would you do different? And don't tell me I wouldn't do anything different because I know you're smarter than that if we wouldn't do anything different, we say we basically lived a perfect life. Like, if you thought much about that, what would you, what would you like to do over on? Well, I think everybody has regrets that they wish they had done differently. The things that I wish I'd done differently in the church, I didn't understand the power of music in the early years of Saddleback. I would have done that differently. I would have done that. When I was struggling with some personal anxieties, I would have gotten counseling a whole lot earlier to help me work through, instead of struggle in quietness with the anxiety that I was feeling. I wish I had gotten counsel. And I would encourage anybody, find a Christian counselor and get some help. It may take some medication, but whatever you need, because it's not the end of your life. I remember I was about three months after Kay and I got married. I got so depressed and had so much anxiety in my life. I ended up in the hospital and I was 25 years old. Kay thought she was having what we called at that time a nervous breakdown. I'm in the hospital, totally depressed. The psychiatrist comes in and says, uh, so what are you angry about? I said, well, I'm, I'm not angry. I'm depressed. He goes, well, a lot of times depression is frozen anger. And that was kind of start started me on a trail, but I remember having to take about six weeks off. I was a youth pastor in inner city of LA at the time. And we went up to my parents' house who lived up in the Redwoods in Northern California and took six weeks. And I was just, I thought I was maybe going crazy. I really thought I was going crazy. And I remember waking up one morning and I had a horrible dream that I was being chased by demons. And I was just in a panic. And all of a sudden, my mother knocks on the door. My parents had given us their bedroom to sleep in. And she knocks on the door and she said, somebody on the phone. And I don't know who it is, but they're asking for you. I said, how they would know that I'm here? So I go and I pick up the phone and they said, is this Rick Warren? I said, yeah. I said, well, I was supposed to call you and I'm just supposed to tell you one thing. And I said, you don't know me, we've never met, but I got your number and I found you were here. And I'm calling to say this, the scripture says in 2 Timothy, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And Rick, you have a right to a sound mind. And that's all I'm supposed to say. And he hung up. That was a little bit of ray of light that God was saying, I haven't forgotten you. I thought that my life was over. My life had not even started. And I thought my life was over. There are people listening right now who are going through major depression, major anxiety, major fears. We have an entire foundation called Brighter Hope for Tomorrow, which helps people who are going through these kinds of things. They think my life is ending right now. Your life has not even started yet, okay? Don't give up, look up, but go get help. You're not gonna get better on your own. There's a verse in James that says, Confess your faults to each other and pray for each other. Thereby you may be healed. Revealing your feeling is the beginning of healing. Confess your faults. Revealing your feeling is the beginning of healing. Placman strikes again. You don't stop. They're all good. Keep going. Yeah. Well, that's, that's it. And the bottom line is as long as you hold your anxiety, your depression, the things that you think are making you go crazy inside, you're not gonna get well on your own. God made us that we're better together. We only get well in community. That's why we started Celebrate Recovery. That's why I believe in Christian counseling. That's why I believe that in small groups, there would be a lot less need to confess sins if we said, I'm struggling with this. I haven't done it yet, but I'm struggling with this. I'm being attracted over here, whatever. If we had a lot more confession of temptation, which is not a sin, Jesus was tempted in every way and then he did not sin. If there was more confession of temptation, we'd have a lot less confession of sin. Well said. Need for it. Well, Rick, I want to get some personal counsel from you. I don't get to talk to you enough. As I sang earlier, it's my podcast, so I'll do what I want to. You're one of the very few people. that I can look up to because we're in similar jobs and you are finishing well. And there's people that both you and I know who have just crushed their life, didn't finish well, like, wow, crazy. And here you are. I wouldn't say you finished well because you're not done. You're still pushing. But you're I'm in act two. Yeah, act two, you say. OK. I'm in act two now. So I'm 58. If you were to go back to 58, you're 70 right now. What kind of things should I be thinking or doing right now? Well, that's a good question, Brian. The first thing is, to last the long haul, I was 43 years in the same church. When I finished that, I was 53 years in ministry. I actually started when I was a teenager. I was led to Christ during what was called the Jesus Movement. And I was a typical hippie, long-haired, played guitar, played drums, and came to Christ. And at 16, I was licensed to preach by my church. And while I was going to school during the week, in high school, every weekend I was preaching crusades. I was hired by the Baptist Convention of California, and I did 120 harvest crusades before I was 20. So I've been in ministry 53 years. How do you last a long time? How do you last in ministry? So you don't burn out, you don't flame out, you don't rust out. Well, the first thing is pacing. And it's more important that you pace yourself. The Lord is my pace setter. And you have to build, our best requires rest. That's an important thing. Our best requires rest. So I have a little saying that I've taught pastors all over. Divert daily, withdraw weekly, and abandon annually. Divert daily, withdraw weekly, abandon annually. What I mean by that is first divert daily. Divert daily, you need to find out what recharges your battery and do it every day. Your emotional battery is what I'm talking about. Not just your spiritual battery, but your what recharges your emotions. Anybody who's in leadership, you as a pastor, me as a pastor, or anybody else in leadership leading a group of people, you're constantly being drained. Now, if your life is like a battery and you attach one light bulb to it, it'll last a long time. If you attach two light bulbs to the battery, it burns out in half the time. If you attach four light bulbs to the battery, then it's gonna burn out in a quarter of the time. Now, the people who are listening to this podcast, they probably, they're the kind of people who have 18 light bulbs attached to their battery. Right, yeah, you didn't sign up for the, let me lay on the couch life. You signed up for the progressive life. The very reason that they're listening for this listening podcast is because they're go-getters. They are achievers. They are saying, I want my life to matter. I want my life to count. I want my life to have meaning and purpose. So you have your, your work life. You have, uh, your family, every individuals in your family is everyone of them to light bulb. You have friends who get problems. They that's a light bulb that you have to help them with. And so how do you recharge your battery? Well, one of them is divert daily, withdraw weekly, abandon any divert daily, do something that, that recharges you. Uh, it could be playing a sport. It could be a hobby. It could be a music. Uh, it could be sitting outside in the sun, uh, whatever recharged you, for instance, with me, uh, I have a theory that if you work with your mind, you relax with your hands. And if you work with your hands, you relax with your mind. If I'm a carpenter or a builder or a plumber, I'm using my hands all day, I need to come home and do something to stimulate my mind. I need to read a book. On the other hand, you and me, we're in the world of ideas and people all day. So I don't need to come home and read a book. I'm in the world of people and ideas all day thinking. I need to come home and do something mindless with my hands. So I actually am a gardener. Now, last year I grew 56 kinds of vegetables and 17 kinds of fruit, and I have put them all in my backyard, and I get my hands dirty in the, you know, did you know the word humus, which is from earth, and human, of which we are, and humor all come from the same root word? Wow. And so, for instance, if you're humor and humility. and humus, all these things come from the same root word. So humble, humility was one of the keys to lasting in ministry, or lasting in life. But divert daily, do something fun. When my kids were little, I used to come home and wrestle with my kids. And I'd get on the floor and wrestle with them. And I actually took an old dairy milk container, painted it, and I put it out at our front door, and I called it my worry can. And every day when I'd come home, I'd stop at the front door for walking into my wife and kids. And I'd say, Lord, I'm dumping all my concerns in that can right now. I'm not going to bring them into the house. I'm not going to dump them on Kay or the kids because tomorrow when I come out, they'll be there in a can and I'll pick them up and we'll go back to work on them. But I'm not going to bring them in into my family. So, divertly, withdraw weekly. I believe in taking a Sabbath. Now, As pastors, Sundays are Saturdays are Sundays, not their work days for us. So you need another day beside Saturday or Sunday is your Sabbath. If you're a pastor, I would take Mondays off for 30, 40 years. I didn't like doing that on my day off because I don't like feeling that bad on my day off, but I felt like I had to do it. And by the way, whatever career you've got, don't call it your day off, call it your Sabbath, because if you call it your day off, you'll cram it. doing all the honeydew stuff that you didn't get done the rest of the week, and you work just as hard on your Sabbath. Sabbath means rest your body, restore your relationships, reconcile with God, relax and entertainment, anything so you're recharging, spirit, soul, body, all that. Divert daily, withdraw weekly, and then abandon annually. Once a year, you just chuck it all, and you disconnect, and you go somewhere, and you don't. take your phone or your laptop. Ouch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you take your phone, you don't, you certainly don't, you make a covenant. You're not gonna check your emails and you're certainly not gonna look on social media. I see all these people go to Tahiti and they're sitting there and they're just as stressed out because they got their laptops sitting on the beach and they haven't really disconnected. Rick, that's a. That's fantastic. I think you're smart enough. Actually, I'm going to say right now, Dirt, I'm going to say Rick's going to be the greatest lightning round guest that we've ever had. He's calling it. I'm telling you right. The plaque man is up for that. Black man is ready. The lightning rounds. Rick, I give you I give you a question and you have to answer it like lightning, like a couple of sentences. Are you up for it? You know, I can hardly say anything in two sentences. No, not true. It's against my nature, but I will try. Not true. Not true. I believe in you. Most aggressive move that you've made recently. Taking on finishing the task by 2033. And I can't explain that in two sentences. Well, you just did. That's good. That's excellent. Aggressive mistake that you've made and what you learned from it. Early on, I used to respond to critics. That's a waste of time. Look how good you are at this. You're perfect. You're two for two. I told you black men was going to be amazing. Let me say about that. The reason why is somebody doesn't want to like you. They're not going to like you. And they've got that's motivated reasoning. So if they tell you something and that why they don't like you, and then you prove that what they just said was wrong, it just makes them more mad. Okay. We're off the lightening round for a moment. Just pause it, but let me ask you a follow up question on this. Do you, did you find that you got less criticism as you were proving yourself more faithful and as you got older? Oh, absolutely not. Oh, not? Not, absolutely not. This criticism is actually coming from the other world. And he's just using human mouthpieces. Satan wants to discourage you, depress you, detain you, detour you, you know. get you off in some other direction. And so Jesus said, beware when all men speak well of you. And so Christ was perfect and they nailed him to a cross. So we shouldn't expect any less being imperfect. The problem with critics is they criticize the wrong thing. I could give them a list of things they criticize about me. I know my greatest weaknesses and those are they always get the wrong thing. But here's what I've learned. I am most like Christ when I refuse to defend myself. When Jesus stood before Pilate, and the Sanhedrin and Pilate accused him of all kinds of stuff that was wrong, and he said, he spoke not a word unto them. And I am most like Christ when I let people attack me and I respond with, well, bless you. Yes. And actually, when you do that, Brian, you actually end up getting more power and anointing from God because God goes, that's my boy. You did that right. And so critics can actually help you even when they're wrong because if you respond correctly, God goes, I'm going to give you more anointing. I'm going to give you more power because you respond with humility and grace and you bless them back. You did not return evil for evil. And so... Uh, don't, don't return evil for evil. Don't criticize back. Don't defend it. You can correct incorrect things, but it's don't expect it to change anybody. I've used your line a number of times. I probably should have quoted you on it. It's one of your plaque sayings that I've used a lot. It was, you know, if you're a servant leader based on how you act when you're treated like one. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's yours now. I tell people the first time you use something I've said, you say, now Rick says the second time you use it, you say, it's been said. And then the third time you use it, say, you know, I've always thought. So I tell pastors when they've been to a conference that said, if you can use it twice on the, you know, out on the parking lot before you can get in your car, it's yours now. There you go. Yeah, but that's a good call, you know, who doesn't want to be a servant leader, but no one wants to be treated like a servant. And that's the test of our humility. Now the only way you can be treated as a servant is if you know who you are. I'm going to preach on this weekend. Jesus said, in Scripture it says, knowing who he was, he put a towel around his waist and he washed the feet. Insecure people can't be humble. It's the people who know who they are, then can serve. And Jesus takes on the form of a servant, not that he just does what servants do, but putting that towel around, it's really humbling. He's butt-ass naked under the towel. He takes his garment off and is only wearing a towel. Oh, sheesh, talk about humble. That's the ultimate, and then he says, "'As I have done to you, do unto others.'" He's modeling humility for us. So powerful. All right, back to the lightning round and we'll take detours whenever we can. This is great. Well, you've been perfect, Rick. You've been perfect. I gave us a pastor. Here's another one here. A favorite book of yours other than Purpose Driven Life and the Bible. I like the spontaneous expansion of the church by Roland Allen. It's 150 year old book, but it's the greatest book teaching us how to plant churches. It's a great book. Any pastor and church planter should read that book. That's good. Spontaneous expansion of the church. Expansion of the church. Roland Allen. We'll pause the lightning round rules for just a moment because I want to dig in that more. Everyone in the aggressive life probably doesn't know this. Rick has had a habit of a goal of reading a book a day for decades of his life. And how many times? I have a couple hundred thousand volumes in my library. If you want to come out sometime, I'll give you a tour. It's like a church history thing. What I recommend is that you read 25% in the first thousand years of Christianity. Nobody reads that stuff. But God was at work for a thousand years. A lot of people think the Holy Spirit showed up at the Reformation and nothing happens since then. But then 25%… in the last 500 years, then 25% in the last 100 years, and 25% contemporary. If all you do is read contemporary, you're no smarter than everybody else around you. So the way you get smarter is to read the books that outlasted more than a few years. The typical book, when it goes out, it sells for about six months, and then it's gone. If a book lasts a year, that's a pretty good book. If a book lasts 90% of all books aren't going to be here after five years. If it makes it five years, 90% of those won't make it to 10 years. If it makes it past 10, it'll be selling for a hundred years. And so look for the ones that have so spent, uh, stood the test of time. That's that, you know, like Oswald changer chambers, you know, his, my utmost for his highest. That book's going to be selling for hundreds of years. That's a. That's a good push, Rick. The reading I do tends to be all contemporary stuff, which is why one of the things that I say is 90% of all books I only read halfway through because I've got 90% of the content. Well, I guess hearing what you're saying, that probably makes sense with contemporary books, because they haven't stood the test of time. But if I read some of those ones that are well known. Books that have been around for 100 years, you know, see us list books will be around 100 years from today, that kind of stuff. Well, I was going to talk about your library, so glad you did. So I thought that was aggressive move right there. I've seen pictures of it. So yeah, we'll come out and do something nice and I'll have to check your thing out. It is a library. Like you've got bus of Cicero in there, somebody in there. I mean, it is a library. Pretty impressive. So that's, By the way, quote Cicero, Cicero said, if you have a garden and a library, you have all that you need. And I have both. I have a garden and a library. There you go. All right, here we go. Get on the latin round, and then we'll let you go here in a bit. The most important lesson you want to pass on to your grandkids? Never give up. I think it's always too soon to quit. You're never a failure until you give up. That's a good one. We often give up too soon and life is tough. So keep on keeping on. Lowest hanging fruit we can grab when it comes to living a life of purpose. Start and end each day in God's word. There's, I have a habit, I have a habit called GWFW and GWLW. And let me just explain this. This isn't a, this isn't a minute thing, but it's, it's called God's word, first word, God's word, last word. And what I do is get a, get a Bible in a modern translation that's easy for you to read and open it and put it by your bedside, never close it. It's easy to ignore a closed Bible. Fascinating. Open it, leave, never close it. So you open up, you pick a book, Philippians, John, Proverbs, Psalms, whatever. And here's what you do. When you get up in the morning, you sit on the side of the bed before you can get out of bed and go to the bathroom or anything like that, you don't look at your phone first, you don't look at your email first. The first thing you do is you pick up that book, that Bible, and you start reading. Now, it doesn't matter how long you read. You read until something speaks to you. And then you stop. The first time something really speaks to you, man, I need to think about that today. So sometimes you might read one verse, go, whoa, that's all I need. I need to think about, you might read a paragraph, you might read a chapter. It's not about how long you've read. You read until something speaks to you, a question, a challenge, an encouragement, comfort, anything like that. And then you just stop. That's what I'm gonna think on that today. That's good. Then at night, Right? As you get to bed, the last thing you do before you put your head down in the pillow is you pick up that Bible again and you start there and you read again until something hits you. And you go, I need to think about that. And as you go to sleep, so here's where God's word, first word, God's word, last word, that will be recharging your batteries. That's fantastic. Yeah. Rick, this has been an utterly fantastic discussion. Is there anything that you want to talk about that I haven't asked you about? Your sex life would be real interesting, I'm sure. That would not be interesting. Actually, it would be interesting. It would not have been interesting a couple of years ago, but I'm on testosterone, so it's actually more interesting now. But you don't want to hear about it. It's basically the same old, same old. So yeah. Let me wrap it up with this. If this is the year 2024, and most of the world agrees it is, we're on the Gregorian calendar, 2024 means 2024 AD. since the birth of Christ in the year of our Lord. So according to this calendar, Christ was born in year zero, okay? It's been 2,024 years, Christmas, first Christmas year zero. We know that Christ started his ministry, the book of Luke tells us when he was 30 years old. That's typical, rabbi started at age 30. So we know Christ started his ministry in 30 AD. We know that Christ had a three to three and a half year ministry. So we know, that according to this calendar, Christ died on the cross in 33 AD. Christ was resurrected in 33 AD. Christ gave the Great Commission in 33 AD. Christ ascended back to heaven and promised his return one day. He did that in AD 33. And Christ sent the Holy Spirit to start the Christian church in 33 AD. That means in just 10 years, 2033, Pentecost, which will be June 5th, 2033 will be the 2000th birthday of the church. It will be the 2000th anniversary of the resurrection. It will be the 2000th anniversary of the giving of the great commission. It will be the 2000th anniversary of the ascension. So the birthday of Christianity, the birth of the church, what are we gonna give Jesus for the 2000th birthday of the body of Christ? What do you give a birthday boy who's got everything? Well, he doesn't have everything. He doesn't have your heart unless you give it. He doesn't have your trust in him if you give it. And he doesn't have your obedience unless you give it. But what God wants more than anything else, what Jesus wants more than anything else is he wants his lost children found. And so I am leading a coalition that was actually started. Billy Graham asked me to start it years ago and I had to get, because I was preaching at Saddleback, we got Paul Eshelman deleted for the first 18 years. a coalition called Finishing the Task. It's a church's mission agency's denominations all around the world. It involves the whole body of Christ, Orthodox, Catholic, Pentecostal, fundamentals, reform, non-reform, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist. It's the largest coalition in history moving to complete the Great Commission by the 2000th birthday of the church. Why not? Why not? We now have, when Jesus told the disciples, go make disciples in the whole world, it was physically impossible. They couldn't go to Australia. They couldn't go to North and South America. There were no ocean-bearing vessels, no planes, trains, automobiles. Today, any Christian can sit in their pajamas in their room and talk to anybody anywhere in the world. You don't have to leave home to be a world-class Christian. And so. We have four big goals. I won't go into them right now, but they're called Bibles, Believers, Bodies of Christ, and Breakthrough Prayer. And it is going to be the next 10 years, the biggest push to complete the Great Commission. And last week, last month, 55,000 more churches signed on to be a part of finishing the task. And it's going to be huge. And if you want information, go to the website or write info at finishingthetask.com and we'll send you information on how you can be a part of the greatest movement in history. Info at finishingthetask or fini Yes, info at finishingthetask.com or you just go to the website and sign up there and we'll get you involved. Rick, you're a deep well. I'm humbled that you gave us time. I'm humbled by how... You've built into me either close by or very far away, just pouring your wisdom in a very selfless way. Lib has always loved Kate at death. She's like a sister from another mother. And I'm just thankful you gave us your time today, man. You always give your best. You're not aging at all. You just have as much, you're not. You have as much zeal, as much intelligence, insight, drive as you ever have. And it's a good push for me. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, well, I love you and bless you guys. All you're doing Brian, I'm grateful. Thanks for letting me be on the podcast today. You're my pleasure. Hey friends, look, you just learned from a master here today and he's a master because he doesn't think things, he does things. He doesn't just have ideas, he doesn't have just plaques things that go on a wall. They're inspirational because those things actually get done in his life. They've been getting done for decades, decades in his life. The doers of the word, not hearers only. There you go. There's the last word, we'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes and live events over at bryantome.com. My new books, a repackaged edition of The Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man Tactical Guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps get the show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram, at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.