Warren shares grief, tells pastors to use pain

Rick Warren, speaking at the 2014 Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference on Monday at the Baltimore Convention Center, spoke about how God helped him overcome the suicide of his son last year. The Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting begins today.
Rick Warren, speaking at the 2014 Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference on Monday at the Baltimore Convention Center, spoke about how God helped him overcome the suicide of his son last year. The Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting begins today.

BALTIMORE -- The week before his son killed himself, California megachurch pastor the Rev. Rick Warren spread a message about hope.

That Easter Sunday, Warren, best known for his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life, preached 14 services on the hope of the Resurrection to more than 55,000 people, and more than 4,000 gave their lives to Christ, he said Monday at the annual Southern Baptist Convention Pastors' Conference at the Baltimore Convention Center. He was "on a high," he told thousands in the crowd.

"At the end, I actually teared up and said, 'You know, as more of my friends and family are in heaven, the closer it means to me.' My father is in heaven, my mother is in heaven, my older brother is in heaven," Warren said. "I didn't know five days later, my son would be in heaven."

Warren spoke about suffering and how God helped him overcome the grief of his son's suicide during the last day of the Pastors' Conference. The Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting will start today.

On Monday, Warren said the theme of hope continued throughout the week before his son's death.

On April 1, 2013, Warren publicly announced he would allow his sermons to be aired on an Internet and a radio program called The Daily Hope. The next day, he said, he decided he would write his first book in a decade, to be called The Hope You Need. The day after, he told his staff at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., that they would start a series that weekend about dealing with hopelessness. Christianity Today published an article that Thursday about a plan for churches to take the Gospel to unengaged people. The article was called "Rick Warren's Final Frontier: Taking Hope to the World."

"On Friday, the day Matthew took his life, the message that was playing across America on The Daily Hope program was called 'Winning the Battle for Your Mind,'" Warren said. "Friends, that's just painful. I was under spiritual attack."

That Friday -- April 5, 2013 -- Warren's 27-year-old son fatally shot himself after a lifelong struggle with depression and mental illness. It was the worst day of Warren's life, he said.

"If you want the blessing of God on your life, if you want the power of God on your words, if you want the anointing of God on your ministry, you must be willing to suffer," Warren said. "What Jesus promised was trials, tribulation, testing, temptation and thorns."

Looking at church history, he said, behind every publicly successful ministry, there is "private pain."

"Because pain is God's megaphone," he said. "There is no testimony without a test. There is no message without a mess. There is no impact without criticism."

But God will direct, inspect, correct, protect and perfect those who are suffering, he said.

His wife, Kay, had pregnancy complications while carrying their son, Matthew, Warren said, adding that questions spun around in his head. Would his wife live? Would the baby live? Would the baby be OK?

"Kay lived. Matthew lived," he said. "But the baby was not OK."

At 17, a teary-eyed Matthew came to his dad, saying it was "real obvious" he wouldn't get any better. He asked Warren, "Why can't I just go to heaven? Why can't I just go now?"

God has a plan for relief and it's not just on the other side of eternity, Warren said. For Matthew, it was an "amazing sensitivity" for people, in knowing who in a room was in the most pain and encouraging that person, Warren said.

"Even in God's garden of grace, even broken trees bear fruit," he said.

After his son died, the pastor received an influx of letters of condolences, but the most meaningful came from those from people whom "Matthew had led to Christ."

"Let me let you in a little secret," Warren told the crowd. "We're all a little broken."

That April day, Warren and his wife went to his son's home and stood in the driveway; they watched as someone broke down the door to let the couple inside. At the same time, his wife clutched her chain that read "Choose Joy."

"How do you choose joy when your world is falling apart?" he asked. "Use the pain to draw closer to God."

Warren took four months of grief sabbatical after his son's death, but he continued to pray, he said.

"When something bad happens, we always want to ask, 'Why did this happen?'" he said. "Explanations never comfort. What comforts is the glory of God."

Draw close to other people, and use the pain to become more like Jesus, Warren said. Use the pain to comfort others in redemptive ministry, and use the pain "as a witness to the world," he said.

"The Bible says it is our suffering that gives us credibility," he said. "We think fame earns us respect. Faithfulness under fire earns us respect."

During the last few minutes of his sermon, Warren called up those in the audience who were suffering and prayed for them and with them. The pastor knelt at the podium and placed his hands together as people began filing forward.

Audience members prayed along with him.

"It was really, really moving," said the Rev. Steve Fehrman, pastor at Southern Calvert Baptist Church in Maryland, after Warren's sermon. "It was pretty universal. A lot of people are hurting. Whether you're a pastor or not, we're all human beings."

The pastor added that the sermon showed that Warren is "just as human as anybody else," even though he pastors at a megachurch.

"It's all people, relationships and having your heart right with God," Fehrman said.

The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention begins today. The delegates, known as messengers, will convene as the denomination is noting its seventh consecutive annual drop in church membership and a second consecutive annual drop in baptisms.

During the convention, messengers will elect a new president for the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Three men set to be nominated are: the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, pastor at Cross Church in Springdale; the Rev. Jared Moore, pastor at New Salem Baptist Church in Hustonville, Ky.; and the Rev. Dennis Kim, pastor at Global Mission Church of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, Md.

The new president will succeed the Rev. Fred Luter, pastor at Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans and the first black president of the denomination.

During last year's convention in Houston, Floyd mentioned the suicide of Warren's son when he introduced a motion asking Southern Baptist leaders to help churches in aiding the mentally ill. The Springdale pastor said 58 million Americans meet the criteria for a mental disorder in a given year. Messengers approved a resolution voicing their support in helping the mentally ill and their families.

A section on 06/10/2014

Upcoming Events