Many people around the world have read Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. As a matter of fact, it has been on the New York Times hardcover best seller list for over one hundred weeks in a row! The unbelievable thing about this book is that Warren is committed to given away 90% of his royalties to ministry.

What spurred this book to the success that it has had was initiated through a spiritual campaign that Rick’s church, Saddleback Valley Community Church, called the 40 Days of Purpose. Our church was one of the pilot churches for this program when it was unveiled in the fall of 2002. Through this program our people learned in depth about the five biblical purposes that God has for their lives and their church. Our church became a church that began to seriously implement the five purposes into everything that we do. As a result we were awarded a Church Health Award for 2005 from Purpose Driven Ministries. We are committed to lead people to become fully committed follwers of Christ and to fulfill God’s purpose for their lives.  Even our church logo has the five purposes in it (see if you can find it and email me back – www.lakeridgechurch.com).

This fall we will be participating in the 40 Days of Purpose from October 8th through November 20th. We have lots of new people in our church who weren’t here when we did the 40 DOP in 2002 and I am excited about them doing the 40 DOP. This will lead up to us going out to Saddleback for the Purpose Driven Conference in 2006 to accept the award.  I am hoping that dozens of people from Lake Ridge will travel to California next May for the conference and award ceremony.