Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren is focused on keeping religion relevant 40 years after his first Easter service

LAKE FOREST — On Sunday, Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren will preach his 40th Easter service.

The milestone is one he and his wife, Kay, vowed to keep when the couple selected the Saddleback Valley as the place to start their church in 1980.

“Kay and I made this crazy promise when we were 25 years old that we would give 40 years to one location, that we wouldn’t move and that we wouldn’t be tempted to go to another church,” Warren said Thursday, April 18. “I’ve been offered all kinds of different jobs with Christian organizations, seminaries and denominations. I’ve never moved and as I stood up at the first service this year, I’m thinking we did it, we kept our promise, we gave 40 years to one place and I’ve loved these people.”

What the next decade may bring is hard to say — Warren is focusing on this year right now, he said.

As he takes the pulpit for three services on Easter Sunday, Warren will preach to an audience of about 35,000 congregants in Lake Forest, 35,000 more watching at 17 affiliated venues and another 30,000 streaming the services live online.

It’s dramatically different from the 205 people he addressed in a Laguna Hills High School classroom in 1980.

“When I started the church, I was so inexperienced,” said Warren, 65. “I’d never been a pastor. I’d never led a church. Now, having 40 years experience, that’s a big difference. I’m a lot more confident but I’m a lot more forgiving, understanding and patient.”

But even though he’s now a megachurch pastor, Warren’s message of hope and purpose remains the same as when he started.

“A lot of people look at what will change in the future,” he said. “I look at what’s not going to change. People will still have marriage problems, they’re still going to be lonely, they’re still going to want to know the purpose of life, they still have problems with depression, fear, bitterness, jealousy. They’re human problems. If you’re dealing with personal lives of people you’re always relevant.”

That said, much has changed for the church — and Warren — in four decades.

Saddleback Church, with its main campus in Lake Forest, has 14 locations in Southern California with an average weekly attendance of 30,000 and more than 7,000 small groups meeting in homes. There are four international campuses — in Hong Kong, Germany, the Philippines and Argentina.

Warren, who has 8 million social media followers, has written eight books including “The Purpose Driven Life,” which has sold nearly 40 million copies in English, according to Publisher’s Weekly. In 2005, Time magazine named Warren one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

In August, the church reached a milestone when it held its 50,000th baptism. It has launched three community PEACE Centers with food pantries and has a farm that produces 15,000 pounds for church food pantries, serving 20,000 families a year.

Beyond the church’s physical growth, the greatest change for Warren is the makeup of its members.

“When I started, everyone was young,” he said. “Today, we have young, middle-aged and old people and we have 67 languages. Then, it was a pretty homogenous group, they all looked like me — young, white people. Today, we have all cultures.”

It’s that diversity, Warren said, that will carry the church forward — as will its message of hospitality.

When the Warrens started the church in 1980, they invited members over for dinner twice a week. In the first two years, they made sure every member came over to their home at least once. The plan was to build relationships.

“I think that’s still relevant 40 years later,” Warren said. “In fact, hospitality may be even more needed. We’re in a society that thinks they’re connected but they are actually more disconnected. They don’t know their neighbors, they don’t know people, they feel more isolated. We are in an epidemic of loneliness right now.”

Warren said he remains focused on the human need for love and restoration. He is always on the lookout, he said, for others who are in pain or are struggling.

“Kay and I, over 40 years, have had pain a lot, including the loss of a son through suicide because of his mental illness,” he said. “We’re not going to waste any of that pain, we’re going to use it to help others. If you’re authentic and you’re open about your pain then it causes others to open up their pain.”

While some churches have struggled with membership as people turn away from religion, Warren said, those human needs will continue to keep his ministry and his church relevant.

“Society has changed but human behavior has not,” he said. “If you focus on that, you’ll always have a listening audience.”