Archival Consumed: “The Purpose-Driven Life”

One central message of the book ”The Purpose-Driven Life” is this: ”It’s not about you.”

Who wants to hear that? Millions of people, apparently. The book, published by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and written by Rick Warren, founder of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., is the No. 1 seller at religious bookstores tracked by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. It is also available in traditional bookstores and even Costco, and has been on the New York Times Advice best-seller list for more than 60 weeks; at the end of March, it was in the top spot.

”The Purpose-Driven Life” is divided into 40 chapters, meant to be read one per day. It starts with a blunt dismissal of ”pop psychology, success-motivation” and the entire self-help industry. In the end, you are instructed to ”abandon your agenda and accept God’s agenda,” which boils down to spreading the word about Christ. Even Lance Witt, Saddleback’s spokespastor, seems puzzled that the book is a popular phenomenon. ”It’s a very countercultural message,” he says. ”It does cause us to scratch our heads and ask, ‘So why are so many people buying this?’ ”

Saddleback is a megachurch, with an average attendance of 18,000 every weekend, but Warren does not preach on television and is by no means a celebrity. He has, in fact, described his approach as a ”stealth strategy,” built not on a big personality and a hard sell, but through a meticulously constructed network. Any number of consumer-product companies must envy his results — 15 million books sold! — but they would have an extremely difficult time duplicating his method.

A big chunk of sales are driven by church campaigns called ”40 Days of Purpose,” which revolve around the book. About 3,000 churches participated in the most recent campaign, and Witt reckons that by the end of 2004, some 20,000 will have done so. Each church pays a few hundred dollars for a ”resource kit” including sermons, a teaching video and posters. Book orders for the congregation are extra; churches can buy them in bulk for about half the cover price.

Why do these churches do it? Because Warren is known in religious circles for filling the pews. For 15 years, he has taught his methods to other church leaders. Through one of his Web sites, pastors.com, he distributes a weekly e-mail ”toolbox” (including sermon ideas) to 115,000 subscribers. And before ”The Purpose-Driven Life,” he wrote ”The Purpose-Driven Church,” again aimed at pastors. That book urges, with the help of practical suggestions and diagrams, that church leaders study their local demographics and ”create a composite profile of the typical unchurched person your church wants to reach.” (For instance: cellphone-wielding ”Saddleback Sam,” who is skeptical, well-educated, a contemporary-music fan and ”self-satisfied, even smug.”) Warren also suggests creating a service ”intentionally designed for your members to bring their friends to.” A service built around ”The Purpose-Driven Life” may be the ultimate example, with its (rather self-helpish) promises to ”reduce your stress, simplify your decisions, increase your satisfaction” and ”help you understand why you are alive.”

According to purposedriven.com, participating churches have seen attendance grow by 20 percent on average. What would you call those results, the site asks: ”A revival? An awakening? A miracle?” The point is that the book attracts crowds, the crowds buy books, the cycle repeats: Holy synergy! No wonder Mel Gibson included Warren among those who saw early screenings of ”The Passion of the Christ”; Warren may be the most talented religious marketer in America. Actually, some naysayers have suggested that he overdoes it. On a half-dozen occasions, the book mentions ancillary products like ”The Purpose-Driven Life Journal” and ”The Purpose-Driven Life Scripture Keeper Plus,” and the appendix lists more, including a 12-song CD. Apparently the Lord moves some mysterious merch, and it’s tempting to conclude that Warren has on some level given in to the culture of marketing and consumption that his book criticizes. But that’s probably not quite fair. After all, marketing is usually about inventing a message to move products. What Warren is doing is inventing products to move a message.

[This installment of the Consumed column appeared in the April 11, 2004, New York Times Magazine; it was posted on this site some time much later, despite the fiddled-with time/date stamp.]