Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Story Behind the Story

One of the first blogs I ever read was called Evotional by Mark Batterson, the pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C, a church that meets in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the DC area. NCC also owns and operates the largest coffeehouse on Capitol Hill.

If you haven't ever read his blog, you need to. He is a great writer and is always challenging you with thoughts on church, leadership and life. But this post isn't really about Mark.

It's about a recent conversation Mark had with Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback. He asked Warren how his book Purpose Driven Life came about. This response is from Evotional.com:
He said the book traces back to a Saddleback building campaign in the early 90's when Rick and Kay felt led to go public with their personal pledge like King David did when they were building the Temple. He said he felt very awkward about going public, but he knew the Lord wanted him to. To make a long story short, they pledged their entire salary for three years and had no idea how they would be able to pay the pledge. To make a long story short, it was a few weeks later that Zondervan offered Rick a book deal to write Purpose-Driven Churchand Purpose-Driven Life. The advance? The exact amount of money they had pledged.


What a cool story about a book that has sold more than 50 million copies. Now I can see why it has had such an impact on thousands of lives; it was born out of obedience and trust.

2 comments:

Kelli said...

Thank you so much for sharing this. I agree. Huge things can happen when someone stands up and says "use me Lord." What would happen if a whole bunch of people did that? :)

The Gang's Momma! said...

That was so encouraging - in light of our faith steps with this adoption! Thanks for sharing it.