The purpose-driven priest: Pastor Rick Warren’s important message for Catholic priests

The purpose-driven priest: Pastor Rick Warren’s important message for Catholic priests June 20, 2018

Courtesy Pastor Rick Warren / Wikimedia Commons

From Catholic New York newspaper:

Nearly 800 New York Catholic priests received a message about how to maintain their moral integrity from Pastor Rick Warren, who used Scripture passages and his experiences from 40 years as an Evangelical Christian pastor, to speak personally to fellow pastors.

His talk, “Maintaining the Moral Integrity of the Ministry to Which God Has Called Us,” was delivered during the archdiocese’s biennial Safe Environment Convocation at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie June 6-7.

“Brothers, what we do matters more than what anybody else does in the world,” said Pastor Warren at the outset of his presentation.

“That’s because the only thing that’s going to last on the planet is the Church of Jesus Christ.”

He said the job description for a pastor can be boiled down to three basic criteria: having a message worth remembering, a lifestyle worth considering and a faith worth imitating.

“That’s our calling,” he said simply.

Pastor Warren, author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life,” is the founder and longtime senior pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., one of the largest religious congregations in the United States.

The pastor told the archdiocesan and religious order priests before him that, in his four decades of ministry, he has conducted training sessions with 480,000 pastors in 160 countries. He noted that there were at least “a dozen homilies” in the handout materials he was providing. “I willingly give this away to you…Use whatever you can. We are all in this together.”

The context for his discussion with the priests was that Satan has no new temptations. The three worldly temptations are outlined in 1 John 2:15-17, which says, “Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes and a pretentious way of life, is not from Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.”

The temptations can be boiled down to passions (pleasure), possessions and positions (power, prestige).

Antidotes to the three temptations are integrity, generosity and humility.

That’s just the beginning. Read more


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