a little rant on a life with purpose (and Warren)

I'm gonna get straight into it... no mucking around. Rick Warren is taking over my life. I can't escape him. He's everywhere. And he doesn't do videos at all well.

I headed off to Leaders meeting ("empower") tonight at church, ready and anticipating a sesh of calling down the hoooooly ghost... and i got Rick Warren. Don't get me wrong, the dude's got some good ideas, but. hmm.. yeah. Darn you Andrew and other people! Once upon a time i liked the dude, this may have been because i read 'the purpose driven life' at 6.45am's while passing in and out of slumber, and only remembered the part that said "you should know your testimony" and the section on "bad things happen to make you stronger". I couldn't even remember what the five (i hope its five or i'll look like a wally) porpoises ..er i mean purposes.. are. But after reading all your debates on the campaign, i am really starting to notice some of the same nuances that you all did.

For a start, the word 'purpose' is driving me crazy. That word will never be the same in my eyes again! I used to like it. I don't think i've ever come across it in my NKJV and Good News bibles, however Warren manages to find it in his numerous bible translations. Its everywhere, gosh darn it. In fact, if we're not careful, purpose will take over the world. Everywhere we look we will see "PURPOSE" screaming out at us. Leering at us like a drunkard, un buveur.. er um sorry... got carried away.

ANYWAY, i rolled on up for the holy spirit time and we are watching Rick Warrens video about small groups. My favourite part is where Monsieur Warren makes jokes that are terrible, then chuckles away, "hoh hoh hoh", at his own humour. I also like the part where he turns around, you see him turn, THEN the camera joins him at his new position... BRILLIANT :) I was a little disappointed, to say the least, at having to watch 15-20 minutes of this video. You could clearly see Warren reading an auto cue, and he made numberous mistakes -not that theres anything wrong with having his notes written or making mistakes, he just didn't seem genuine when he read them; he seemed stiff and contrived.
I don't mean to be so overly critical, i just find it very hard to digest so much of his material.

You see... I am a cell group leader (Sadly of a group of 13-16 yr old girls who aren't Christians, so the purpose driven life is really gonna have to be cut down to mean something to them), so i have to do the material on Tuesday nights, as well as preparing for it beforehand. I am expected to read the book daily, and if possible, to attend my own cellgroup to discuss the concepts. Also, we get a sermon summing up the previous 7 days on a sunday morning, and every second sunday when we have evening church, we get an extra bit. In addition, we have the leaders meetings, where we get to talk about what's happening in our groups, and we get to watch a Warren video.

Argh. It's everywhere!