How To Impress Your Famous Pastor

In April 1998 we were between churches and attended a mid week bible study at Saddleback Church because our son, Rick, was singing a solo for it that night. Tom Holladay was leading the study every Wednesday night to about 1,800 people and we decided to start attending Saddleback Church. Tom is Rick Warren’s brother-in-law. An excellent teacher of the bible.

It is not easy to find a time to meet Rick Warren and let him know who you are. At the time probably 15,000 people attended the weekend services. Mr. Warren had not yet written his book, “The Purpose Driven Life” which made millions of dollars for his personal use and made him known world wide.

A few years later we were asked by the Executive Pastor, Glen Kreun, for a favor. Pastor Glen’s in-laws lived on our street and he asked us to bring his mother-in-law to a wedding reception of his step-son’s as she was the grandmother of the groom. We weren’t invited to the wedding but he wanted us to bring the grandmother who we knew. We said ok and made arrangements for taking her to the party.

As you can imagine, most of the guests were from Saddleback Church and we didn’t know most of them. But we can fit in just about anywhere and was assigned a table with some of the staff of the church including Pastor Warren's daughter Aimee.

I wanted to check out the buffet line and while there, Senior Pastor Rick Warren also checked it out. We were alone and I went up to him and introduced myself. I said “Hi - I’m Dick Moore and I attend Saddleback Church. Who are you?” He doubled over with laughter and so did a number of guests who heard what I said. Mr. Warren then introduced himself to me and we had a nice chat.

Everybody knows who Rick Warren is because of his high profile as founding pastor of one of the nations largest churches. He is even more known since his book has been published. As we all know, he was asked by Barack Obama to offer the invocation at the inaugural of the new president of the United States this year.

I know who Rick Warren is but he still doesn’t know who Dick Moore is. Small world isn’t it?