Saddleback Church Welcomes Presidential Candidates


A Summary Of The Event From Pastor Rick Warren

I was so proud of our entire church and the witness of love and civility we modeled for the entire world.

WHAT I WAS THINKING

I now have much greater sympathies for journalists! During the interviews, every bone in my body wanted to ask follow-up questions....... yeah but...yes but....yeah but what about....? When I quickly realized the candidates were going to take longer with this new format, I made a strategic decision to go broad and get more topics covered than to go deep on just 2 or 3 questions. I could have gone 30 minutes on each question. Instead I just bit my tongue and asked the primary questions and ignored my follow-up questions I'd written down and ones I was dying to ask in that moment.

Even still, we ran out of time. Many of the questions I personally wanted to ask (about AIDS, poverty, right & wrong, the environment, the constitution, containment of nuclear material, corruption, etc) were in the last section on International issues and I had to scuttle them so they could answer, "Why do you want to be president?"

I hope you enjoyed the Forum. I wanted to prove that voters could learn more about the candidates through a civil discussion than through an antagonistic debate. I also wanted to challenge the goofy caricature that many people have about Evangelicals.

By the way, I have no intention of leaving my day job!

I love you!


Rick Warren
Saddleback Church
Purpose Driven Network
P.E.A.C.E. Coalition

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