Rick Warren

Read a great interview with Rick Warren yesterday. You can find the entire article by clicking here. It really was a great interview and worth the time. What impressed me most was his willingness to turn the church over to a group of young leaders, and then mentor them. He is right when he said he doesn't know of another church that has ever done this. If there are more I would really like to hear about them. Any way, here's what he said when talking about having a successful transition at Saddleback Church...

You're right; I did not answer that question. I knew that with me being 10 years out, I wanted a successful transition. So we did at Saddleback Church something that I don't know any other church has ever done, almost a year-and-a-half ago. We lowered the age of the leadership body in our church by 16 years in one week.

We had a group of pastors who have been with me pretty much since the start that we call our elders. Most of us are in our 50s, mid-50s, and we have led the church all these years. All along we've been mentoring the next generation, which is what I'm doing. I'm spending the rest of my life mentoring the next generation.

We had a group of young guys who were in their 30s and a couple reaching 40, and in one week we turned over the leadership. We moved all of the guys out of leadership who were in, including me - I'm just a teaching pastor - and we moved these guys in their 30-somethings into the leadership, which we call the PMT, the Pastor's Management Team, and we turned over the leadership of a megachurch to - how many guys, David? David is on that - how many guys are on it?