Rick Warren Promotes Female Pastors At Lausanne Congress

America did not send its best to the Lausanne Congress. Among its attendees were Ed Stetzer, the gay-affirming dean of theology at Biola and media mogul, Trevin Wax of The Gospel Coalition, and Rick Warren, the liberal pastor of Saddleback Church which got disfellowshipped over overtly supporting female pastors. Rick Warren spoke at the Lausanne Congress in South Korea in late September, early October.

The Lausanne Movement is a faith statement and global congress of Evangelicals. However, the Lausanne Movement has always been a major proponent of Social Justice and environmentalism. This congress, the fourth of its kind, condemned nationalism and resistance to mass migration.

Rick Warren gave a speech on the closing day and used it to attack the church and advocate for female pastors. It was later uploaded to YouTube, hence the delay in covering it. 

Rick Warren gives a sermon outline on Acts 2 that he intends for the people in the room to fill and make into a sermon. He starts off immediately arguing that “the church at its birth is the church at its best.” This sentiment is also believed by Andy Stanley, and its a way of diminishing God’s intention for the church. Is the church something that has lost its way, or is the church something that God is nurturing to grow in size and understanding of Him? The answer is the latter, as the Kingdom of God is growing. Heretics, like Rick Warren and Andy Stanley, fetishize the early church as a means to introduce vain ideology into the church.

Rick Warren would support this claim about the early church by stating that it had the fastest growth in the first century. This is technically factual, but more importantly, it is an unintelligent argument. The law of diminishing returns would dictate that each additional member added to the church would result in the reduction of the rate in growth. The church went from nothing, in a sense, to 120 people, to a few thousand in the first thirty years of the first century. This exponential growth is mathematically not matched in later centuries, but this is not a failure of the church. Rather this is to the church’s credit.

Moreover, Rick Warren argues that everyone is to be a preacher. He cites Acts 2 to argue that men and women were preaching on Pentecost.

¹⁴ But Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them: “Men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. ¹⁵ For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day; ¹⁶ but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says,
‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit on all mankind;
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
And your young men shall see visions,
And your old men shall dream dreams;
¹⁸ Even on My bondslaves, both men and women,
I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit
And they shall prophesy.
¹⁹ ‘And I will grant wonders in the sky above
And signs on the earth below,
Blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke.
²⁰ ‘The sun will be turned into darkness
And the moon into blood,
Before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come.
²¹ ‘And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

Acts 2:14-21 NASB1995

Rick Warren either cherry-picks the one translation that uses the word “preach” in verses 17 and 18 or he dishonestly substitutes the word “preach” over “prophesy” as even most contemporary translations agree with the more word-for-word translations on the word prophesy in these verses.

Rick Warren has previously used the Great Commission to justify female pastors. And while its not his first time using Acts 2, it is a high profile and rather dishonest instance of him doing so.