"My wife and I made a decision to serve God which led to five decisions about money. We would not change our lifestyle (not spend money on us). We would take no salary, (work for Saddleback church for free); Give back every speaking fee for the last 5 years; Set up a foundation with three parts - Mercy, including HIV; Equipping - training next generation and a Peace project. We would also institute a reverse tithe. Each year since we were married we would give 1% or more. In the first year we gave 10%, in the second year we gave 11%, the third year 12%, and on and on. Now we give 90 percent. Finally I added up what the church had paid me over the years and gave it all back. The point is you can't out give God."

"I don't think God gives you money for your own ego," he told 3200 Anglicans gathered in the Pittsburgh Conference Center. And he candidly admits that there is nothing new in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, even though it is the best-selling book in US history and one of the best selling books of all time. "You can never out give God," he says. "I tithe everything back to the lord; it breaks the bondage of materialism. Every time I give I become more like Jesus."

Try telling that to mega-church guru Joel Osteen or health and wealth aficionado Robert Tilton. When I asked him about these men and other self-help gurus and self-esteem type preachers like Robert Schuller, he says quite simply, "that's not the gospel."

He rolls off one liners like a rapid fire machine gun. "There are two concerns: the Great Commandment (love of God and love of neighbor) and the Great Commission (go ye into all the world and preach the gospel). There is a stewardship of influence and a stewardship of affluence. God gave me two passages of Scripture. In 1 Corinthians 9 we are to teach those who teach the gospel, that's the stewardship of affluence. Then there's the stewardship of influence - power - found in Psalm 72. We are to perform acts of mercy. If you want God's blessings you must care about God's children. There are two great problems in the world: one is egocentric leadership and the other is what Jesus taught, namely servant leadership. We are about discipleship and edification. We are believers not belongers. There are 58 commands you can't obey if you don't belong. We must adopt God's agenda. He is building a kingdom. Jesus mentions the Kingdom 157 times...we must abandon all distractions. Seek first the kingdom of God...the Kingdom of God is wherever Jesus is king." His thoughts pour out of him in staccato fashion.

He tells the story of his father who was a carpenter. "He built 150 churches around the world on mission trips. As he lay on his deathbed he kept crying out, 'Gotta save one more for Jesus.' Warren, it seems, is driven by his father's passion to save souls. He is relentless, driven, passionate...and surprisingly humble. He is also well educated with a doctorate though he never flaunts it.

"What is in your hands? Will you lay it down so that God can make it come alive" he cries out to his Anglican hearers. "Abandon all the strategies you have ever known. It is not about size (Saddleback Church has 20,000 members) it is about strength. There is no correlation between size and strength. Big is not necessarily good and small is not necessarily bad. I am not into church growth; the focus should be on church health. The Church is a body not a business, it is an organism not an organization...it is alive."

Warren says he has 82,000 on the church rolls. He has trained 400,000 pastors, he says. "We should be committed to sharing the faith not just defending the faith. Sharing is where the joy comes from. The church that doesn't want to share its faith is going to hell." Warren has started some 32 churches in the U.S. but he has a big heart for the Two-Thirds world.

For Warren heaven and hell are real, and you go to the one (if you believe) or to the other (if you don't.) He doesn't apologize for being literal. There are no doubts, no ifs or qualifiers with Rick Warren. He just knows and he wants you to be as excited about God's plan of redemption and for God's kingdom work, as he is.

I ask him the only 'Anglican' question I can think of; "Can you have ecclesia without an ecclesiology?" He takes up the question and mulls it momentarily. I watch, waiting for a Southern Baptist response. "The New Testament writers nowhere lay down a formula for how we should worship. There is nothing in Scripture to describe the worship, only that it should be in Spirit and in truth. I can't find what the liturgy should be. The qualifications for a bishop, elder and deacons are much the same. They are used interchangeably, There is no job description. There is no biblical structure but biblical authority and biblical accountability. No man or church is an island."

Warren rockets on. I try to formulate another question and he is already on his seventh idea, a steady stream of biblical analogies and modern stories cast into the mold of the 21st century preacher/pastor.

Warren has traveled the world. He has met thousands of Anglicans in the Global South. He is impressed. "I think the structure of the Anglican Church is terrific. Clearly it works. I can learn from them. It doesn't matter what label people use, if you love Jesus we are on the same team."

He understands the pain many orthodox Episcopalians are going through and says this: "Be glad about what you are facing, even if it is necessary for you to suffer for a while, the purpose is to prove your faith is genuine. God is interested in what possesses you. It is your faith not your facilities. The church is not the steeple it is the people." People begin to clap. He has struck a chord. He likens the rift in the Episcopal to the Reformation. He praises and said he prayed for the six congregations that left the Episcopal Church in Florida. "They are trailblazers," Warren told the Times-Union shortly after delivering the keynote sermon at the ongoing Anglican Communion Conference in Pittsburgh. "They are as much reformers as the original reformers who created Protestantism in the 16th century," Warren said.

He talks about Katrina and the impact it had on churches. "I saw this in Katrina. When Katrina came through there were 3800 churches that were purpose driven, about 50 of which were destroyed. Let me correct that. The buildings were destroyed, the church was not. I said to those pastors: this is a chance for you to rethink your direction. At Saddleback we did not build the first building until we were 10,000 people. We worshipped in a total of 79 different locations. If you could find us that week you could come!

He seems to anticipate my next question about the size of Saddleback Church and drops this; "Big does not equal shallow. We have an enormous discipleship program. We have a purpose driven strategy."

He has built his church on a series of covenants. They are membership; maturity, mission and worship.

Questioned on small groups and the possibility of one or two persons sucking the energy out of them he responds easily, "There are little Saddams everywhere. Every church has them. The answer is to develop leaders who can control small groups without being dominating or belligerent." He has a winning formula; it's all about servant leadership.

He wants to talk about communication. He is ahead of me...and this is my business.

He loves the Internet. It is how we first met. I had written a mildly critical review of Saddleback church as just another cheese whiz California mega church whose methodology and worship wouldn't fit or suit Anglicans. A sort of big equals shallow. A number of Episcopalians took me to task and criticized me for saying so.

Unfazed, Warren saw it (how I don't know) and promptly wrote me a note saying that he was speaking at an Anglican conference in Pittsburgh and could I help him with some pointers. The man has stones. Instead of getting into a snit, he took it as an opportunity to reach out and learn. For my "criticism" I got an interview. One can't help but admire the man. He thinks BIG, not small. He'd like to convert the whole world to Jesus Christ if he could, but he's not God. He says the JESUS film has been one of the best tools to reach millions for Jesus Christ. "One billion have seen it and 100 million, about 10 percent, have prayed to receive Christ." That's a good return on the film's investment. It's been translated into multiple languages. He loves the whole communication thing.

Warren is a man obsessed that the majority of God's six billion children still don't know Jesus. He doesn't want anyone not to hear the gospel; he doesn't want anyone to go to Hell. He is a big man with restless energy. He is constantly looking for new ways to reach the lost. He is born again Baptist to his receding hairline, but he won't waste money on a hair transplant.

He sees the Internet as the way forward. "Every time there is a new technology God has a new awakening. It was so with the Gutenberg Press invented for the Bible. Within 50 years we had the Reformation. The Word is now being spread in a multiple channeled away." Luther, he said, wrote a new tract every three weeks. "The Internet is the new printing press. The Internet is going to make geographic dioceses irrelevant. (A grin spreads over his face). It has compacted space, distance and time." Warren reaches 189,000 pastors globally through the Internet. He has a heart for bi-vocational ministry. He has trained 82,000 by video conference.

He tells the story of a black South African pastor, miles from anywhere who has no electricity, living a minimalist existence with a tent church of 75, many orphaned by AIDS. Warren wanted to get away from the bright lights and big name pastors in Johannesburg and see the other face of South African life. He walks into this small church and the pastor stands up and says, "I know who you are...you're Rick Warren." Stunned Warren asked him he could possibly know who he was as he had no electricity, no computer let alone Internet access. The man replied, "I walk two hours to the post office which has an Internet connection and I read you online." The story blows Warren away.

When the money from his books began to roll in he had another epiphany. He read Scripture and saw it had more than 2,000 verses about the poor. "How did I miss this thing on poverty?" he said. "I went to Bible school and seminary and got a doctorate. How did I miss 2,000 verses in the Bible?" He's playing catch up fast.

For Warren that meant helping the poorest of the poor. The message hit home when his wife discovered she had cancer. She was lying in bed at home recovering and she began to read about HIV/AIDS - 15 million orphans due to HIV/AIDS, got her attention. It will soon be 40 million. "My wife says I'm called to orphans. I said, your call, not mine. I'm pastor to pastors and pasturing Saddleback. She turned him around. The Rick Warren P.E.A.C.E. Plan was born and Rwanda became the focus of his attention. Now he and his wife have a plan to save that African nation, its homeless, helpless, but through the church.

He is in your face with whomever to make his point, even billionaire software guru Bill Gates. He told Gates that Christianity was global before anything else was. "I was talking with Gates at a conference recently and I told him you are trying to solve the problem of HIV/AIDS with a two legged stool. You need the third leg, the church. Don't you understand the church has the widest distribution network. I go to places where there is no post office, no government, no grocery, no government, but the church is there. The church is where there are no businesses and no government. I trust the local pastor. He knows the people and he knows their needs. You need to add the third leg to your efforts. It is the most globalized thing in the world. Before there were government structures there was the church. So start there."

Reaching the homeless was the third crisis for his purpose driven church. Then he saw poverty - three billion people living a few dollars a day. Then a fourth problem - pandemic diseases. 300 million will get malaria, he says. The fifth problem he saw was illiteracy. He developed a PEACE plan.

"God wants to move the Anglican Communion. God wants to use the Anglican Communion; will you be divided by politics? What is it going to take for a new reformation in the church? This country needs a spiritual awakening. Use lay readers, he urges. The old style of training is too low. He has developed something called JUST IN TIME training. He is even taking the Vineyard church movement and leading it to becoming purpose driven. "We must move the American church away from consumerism "it's all about me" and from self centeredness. Worship is for God not for you he bellows, and then he turns up the heat...it is all about JESUS."

What do you say? Will you be like Moses who said, who me? Jonah who said, Why me? Habakkuk who said, not me! Isaiah who said, Send me.

In a final burst he says, "Check us out, come and see. Take up your cross and follow me, that's what Jesus said. It is all about relationships. Only the church can solve the problems of the world."

END