It Takes a Couple to Replace Rick Warren: Andy and Stacie Wood to Replace Iconic Mega-Church Pastor

LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA - I just learned about who will be replacing Rick Warren, 67, the senior pastor at Saddleback Church. The new senior pastor will be Andy Wood, 40, of Echo Church which has a three-campus and online program up in the Sunnyvale, San Jose, and Fremont, CA area. 

As far as I can tell, one of Andy's chief virtues as a candidate for the lead pastor position was his wife, Stacie Wood. Stacie is a teaching pastor at Echo Church and would have the same role at Saddleback Church. She is more telegenic than her husband and is perhaps well suited to such a role. This approach would represent a further movement in the direction of ordaining female pastors which the church initiated in 2021 to the chagrin of those who hold to the tenents of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Apparently, Echo Church has similarly been in the crosshairs of SBC complementarians because of allowing women to preach.

Warren, as you may know, is leaving due to health problems. According to Christianity Today, he told the church last year that he has spinal myoclonus, which causes tremors and blurred vision, and that it has worsened in recent years. 

Rick Warren was a pioneer in creating a “seeker” church that is designed to not turn off the newest visitors. In fact, the essence of the seeker concept is that the Sunday service is purely focused on attracting new people. The actual religious services of the church take place mid-week instead. This makes the Sunday services an all-hands-on-deck performance piece for the newest visitors. As such, he was part of a larger movement to take the word “Baptist” out of church names to make them more seeker-friendly. 

I first got the news when one of our small group members from Saddleback Church forwarded me a copy of a video of Andy breaking the news to his existing Echo Church followers. He and his wife Stacie were quite emotional, and tearful, in delivering the news to their flock. 

Ever since I moved to Laguna Niguel, I have been interested in following the story of who would succeed the charismatic mega-church pastor who built a small church into an international monolith based on the ideas in his book Purpose Driven Church (1995). This was a book that was later vastly over shined by his exceptionally successful The Purpose Driven Life (2002) book. More news about this appointment is available on the Saddleback website. 

In this video, Andy mentions he was an early convert to the book in 2001 and that it inspired his own church-building, and church planting efforts. Moreover, Andy earned a master’s degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, as did Rick Warren. 

All in all, I have to say I found them to be charming, and easy to look at the couple. His wife, Stacie, looks like she could be a Christian broadcaster. Stacie reports she was inspired by Kay Warren's book, Yes to God: A Call to Courageous Surrender (2010).

What do I make of the choice based on my understanding of charismatic leadership? First, it is almost impossible to follow another charismatic leader. No matter what, there will never be another Rick Warren, not for a century or more. Consequently, whoever follows in his footsteps will be forever labeled as less than no matter what they accomplish. Among charismatic leaders, the sustainability of their efforts is almost always shaky at best. A ministry based on a charismatic leader like Rick Warren can easily unravel in their absence due to a scandal, a schism, or a poorly implemented plan. 

As George W. Bush often joked about his father George W.H. Bush, "I inherited half my father's friends and all of his enemies." 

So, I start, pessimistically, by observing that Andy has a difficult task. Listening to Warren's over-the-top self-confidence and assurance is always a bracing experience. Nevertheless, it is a tough, even impossible act to follow. Even for someone like Andy who appears to be a sincere student of his approach. 

Personally, my advice to him would be to bring with him as many of his current staff as he can so that he has a strong, personally loyal team around him. This too would be an homage to Rick Warren, who employed his sister's husband, Tom Holladay, as his somewhat awkward, even goofy, right-hand man since 1991. What Andy may not fully realize is that his success at Echo Church was a team effort and that it is not always so easy to retain one's charisma in a new environment with a different leadership team in place. 

What else? There are a lot of ways the church, by which I mean Rick Warren himself, might have gone in picking a successor. 

First, it looks like Saddleback was conservative racially. They picked a white guy with a white wife. In a sense, the Warrens have replaced themselves with a younger version of themselves. 

This meant that Rick Warren probably considered and turned down the opportunity to hire an extraordinary black, Latino, or Asian pastor. Doing so would have symbolized the movement of the church into a perhaps more contemporary minority-majority direction and placed greater emphasis on its growth internationally. 

For me, I was assuming that Saddleback would end up with an Asian or Hispanic lead pastor. After all, I tend to see Rick Warren as perhaps too left-wing for the good of his local church, but left-wing enough to the advantage of his international church. I remember Trish and I were particularly disillusioned when he made an early exit during a veterans day service and left the job of thanking U.S. veterans to the always cheerful Holladay instead. 

Likewise, I thought Warren was wrong to go along with the recent mask mandates, lend support to the Black Lives Matter cause (thereby offending law enforcement), and - most recently - violate the tenents of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 2021 by ordaining three women pastors. 

This, as you may know, is contrary to the Convention's confession of faith which asserts pastoral ministry is reserved for men. According to Christianity Today, Saddleback was reported to the Credentials Committee, which is charged with deciding whether or not a church is in “friendly cooperation” with the denomination. Significantly, though some churches have left the SBC after naming women as pastors, the denomination has never officially removed any church for having a female pastor. 

Previously, Warren distanced himself from conservatives by focusing too much on people with AIDS, opposing the use of waterboarding, and contributing to global warming hysteria. 

Second, it looks like they made a decision to go with a relative unknown rather than an existing, Christian celebrity figure. I am particularly thankful Warren did not hand over his ministry to Edward John Stetzer, 56, who would have probably brought both stature and an unpleasant aura of wokeness to a church that has already gone too far to the left for my tastes. Stetzer, as you may know, is the Billy Graham Distinguished Chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton College and Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

Finally, it is clear that Rick Warren decided it was best to bring in an outsider as well. The most normal approach would have been to promote the next senior pastor from among the ranks of the existing pastors. Here, technically, I think Rick Warren made the right decision. Charismatic leaders typically surround themselves with less powerful people, in large measure, to prevent anyone from outshining them. Accordingly, I am guessing that an insider would have been someone with less boldness and less business/entrepreneurial experience. Bringing in a talented outsider may have been the only way to actually bring in new talent at all. 

From the videotape above, it looks like Kay and Rick Warren believe they have found younger versions of themselves. Kay, in particular, is blown away by the things the two couples have in common and the coincidences they share. 

Given Stacie's confidence in front of the camera, it looks like the Warrens wanted to leave in their wake not just a strong individual leader, but a strong couple. 

After all, at Echo, Stacie is regarded as a teaching pastor. She will apparently have the same role at Saddleback. 

Will that be enough of a difference, that is a useful edge, to keep Saddleback Church thriving for the next decade or so? At least it gives Andy of fighting chance of differentiating his approach from Warren's approach. Then again, it may be that the Warrens have set him up for failure already.

Is Warren betting that having Stacie serve as both a female teaching pastor and the senior pastor's wife is the wave of the future? I am completely sure that this is the case. Frankly, I think it is a mistake. To the extent that Kay influenced Warren's ministry, I think she influenced it in a negative direction. Caving into the feminist approach to mega-church leadership cannot possibly end well. 

Is this part of a larger effort to bring men into the church by first bringing in their wives and children? Potentially, that is the case. Unfortunately, by feminizing the church, Warren's successor may very likely take away the conservative approach which made the church so attractive to its local followers in the first place.

Again, what is my take? I think Rick Warren has always believed the Southern Baptist Convention's prohibition on female pastors is old-fashioned and a hindrance to the growth of the mega-church movement. Nevertheless, he knows this is an unpopular stance. He was ready to implement it only after it was clear he and Kay would be handing off the church to someone else. In a sense, he made his decision and then decided to get out of Dodge.  

Andy will take over full responsibilities on September 12, 2022. He will be an instant national leader in a larger experiment to see how well you can sustain a church with a strong role for female pastors. On the bright side, Echo Church in San Jose was roundly criticized for not taking masking so seriously last year. Perhaps this is a sign that Andy is not as feminist or as woke as the Warrens hope? If so, that would be good for Saddleback Church and good for all of its stakeholders too. 

I do not think you will ever see a mega-church successfully led by women. I doubt Saddleback will be the first. 

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I don't have the time or energy to do a new article on this topic. I will add, however, that the Southern Baptist Convention reacted to the appointment of Stacie as a teaching pastor with a bold and decisive effort to kick out Saddleback Church. This was an effort that completely succeeded on June 13, 2023. I left this post as a comment on a blog site. I thought it made sense to leave it here too. 

I attend Saddleback. I thought it was a mistake to ordain female pastors. I think they tend to be more liberal than male pastors and the last thing we need is a more woke Christian church. 

I think where Rick went wrong is that he campaigned on attacking the leadership of the SBC instead of making a Biblical case. To be sure, his case was weak. He tossed out three Bible stories that really had nothing to do with women serving as pastors. And that was it. He never had a good rebuttal to all the straightforward evidence that the Bible opposes the ordination of women. 

The SBC rightfully called a stop to this and voted against him by 88%. 

What's really going on? 

I suspect Rick is betting that large female-led churches (he keeps mentioning one in Asia) are the secret sauce that will save Christianity for the future. 

I think the supposed superpower of a female-led Church is what attracts him to suggest that the Christian Church of today should model the egalitarian, out-of-control, miracle-popping house churches which developed in the immediate wake of Christ himself. 

As a political scientist, it looks to me like Rick has gotten himself caught up in some sort of bizarre fantasy world where a pre-Paulinian matriarchy becomes the model for the worldwide resurgence of Christianity. 

If that is the case, I just don't think that makes any sense at all. Ultimately, I don't see how you create a larger church by ignoring its foundational document. Or, to put it more bluntly, reconceptualize conservative Christian leadership by wrapping it around a vague feminist-friendly Great Commission instead of the straightforward words of Paul. See,

1 Corinthians 14:33–35 (NIV) states:

"As in all the congregations of the Lord’s people. Women should remain silent in the churches, They are not allowed to speak but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

or, the equally straightforward, 

1 Timothy 2: 9-15 (NASB) says:

"Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint." 

Even worse, I suspect female-led churches will turn into Canaanite fertility temples...staffed with the hottest priestesses on the planet. 

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist who has taught at many of our nation's formerly prestigious schools including Williams College in MA.