When Pastor Andy Wood watched Saddleback Church founder Rick Warren announce in a video he would step back as senior pastor, he said he caught himself thinking, “I wonder who will be the crazy person who gets to follow Pastor Rick Warren?”
That was the summer of 2021 and Wood, the founder of Echo Church in San Jose, would find out a year later that he and his wife, Stacie, were being considered for the role after they were invited by Warren to speak at Saddleback Church.
The Woods, both 42, have been at Saddleback for a year and said they have felt welcomed and embraced as they step into the roles held by Warren and his wife, Kay, who for 43 years led the church – taking it from a congregation of dozens in a Laguna Hills classroom to a mega-church with 40,000 weekly worshippers globally. The church has 15 Southern California locations and six international campuses. This weekend, the church celebrates with block parties at its Southern California campuses. The events on Saturday and Sunday are open to the public.
“One of the things that has been so awesome is the love this first year, the way Saddleback has welcomed our family, our three kids,” Wood said this week in his first interview after stepping in as lead pastor. “There’s a challenge in any transition. The thing that has been surprising to me is the way we’ve been so welcomed by the church family.”
“People say that Saddleback is the ‘smallest, big church in the world,’ so you might think a church this big, it could feel overwhelming, but because people are so personable, it’s made the church feel small, like a family that loves and cares for us and so many other people,” he added.
Getting the job
“When I came here, I didn’t think it was a candidacy for the role,” Wood said of giving a guest sermon. “Pastor Rick, who had been a hero of mine in the faith, invited me to come and I asked Stacie to come because I always like to be together when I’m doing stuff like that.”
After Wood spoke at the church, the Warrens invited the couple to their offices in Rancho Santa Margarita. After chatting for three hours, Warren mentioned he was looking for a pastor to step in when he semi-retired and the four prayed together.
“It was clear that God was doing something, and by the time we went home, we both had a sense,” Wood said. “It was like a Polaroid picture; it gets clearer and clearer as you go along. For the next two months … they were discerning do they want to hire us, and we were discerning if we felt called.”
Wood said he’d read Warren’s book “Purpose Driven Church” in college and, with his wife, had used that as a road map to plant their own church in the Bay Area. Like the Warrens in Lake Forest, the Woods thought they’d be at Echo Church for 40 years. But in early 2022, Wood said, he had an “internal stirring” and thought “God was leading us to do something different.” That feeling, he said, didn’t go away.
“I prayed, if you, God have something different, I want to ask you to bring it to me,” he said. “And, you’d have to put it into Stacie’s heart and I pray you take care of a solution for the church we started.”
So after their visit to Southern California, the couple said they struggled with the decision to leave Echo Church. They had many close relationships within and outside the church. Their children – then 15, 13 and 8 – had lived in the Bay Area their whole lives and had a huge network of friends.
“The process comes with sadness and grief; like Pastor Rick and Kay, we gave up a season of life and ministry at the same time,” Wood said. “There was a lot of possibility of what could be, and the wrestling through of what no longer would be.”
But even “in the sadness and process, there was peace,” Stacie Wood said, “and sometimes when you make a really hard decision, you have both. I think you go where the peace is and there was a peace about this. Follow the peace and eventually, your heart catches up.”
The difference a year makes
Pastor Rick Warren stepped into a less visible role at the church and held his final sermon on Aug. 28, 2022. In it, he called on the congregation to support the Woods and commit to helping carry the church forward to new generations.
It was that outreach during the transition that really helped, the Woods said.
“It was very tender between us and the Warrens,” Stacie Wood said. “They were entrusting the church into our care. There was a weightiness and you wanted to steward it well. The day of the installation, Kay was getting into the car and I said, ‘I promise we will be faithful.’ We both felt the weight.”
Warren also gave Wood the space he needed and has stepped back from the day-to-day leadership.
Now, Wood said Warren is a mentor and coach, and occasionally gives advice if Wood asks for it.
“I’ll have an idea and I’ll bounce it off him,” Wood said. “It’s fun for me. You think of Pastor Rick, this icon, this legendary pastor that millions of pastors would get to learn from. I get the privilege of bouncing a message series off Pastor Rick and having him help me make it better.”
Recently, when three people were killed in a shooting at Cook’s Corner, not far from Saddleback’s Lake Forest campus, Wood organized a vigil at the church. In addition to those who died, six others– including a Saddleback Church member – were injured.
“Pastor Rick called me and said that was one of your finest moments,” Wood said.
The Woods have “continued Saddleback‘s signature style of loving everyone in Jesus’ name,” Rick and Kay Warren said. “Over their first year, we’ve been delighted to watch both them and our church family flourish. We couldn’t be more pleased with their loving and wise direction, and we are thrilled that both our congregation and our communities are blessed by their service.”
Reaching the community
Outreach to the community, Wood said, is among the things that drew him to admire Warren. As he was starting his own ministry, Wood said it was Warren’s efforts in the community that inspired his own work in the Bay Area.
“Before we ever started the church, we served in the city,” he said.
“In times of crisis, stepping forward to show love and compassion to those in need, mental health, helping people who are in deep loneliness or walking through great crisis, that’s at the core of the vision of Saddleback,” Wood said. “I’d say it’s not just the vision of Saddleback; it’s the vision of God and Jesus when he came and said, ‘The son of man did not come to be served, but to give his life for others.’”
“The mission is to love, to serve, to be known by what we are for, rather than what we’re against,” Wood said. “That means when there’s a crisis in the community, we want to show up.”
Wood said his goal has been to get to know the church, its staff and members. Still, Saddleback expanded in the last year to three more satellite campuses: Whittier, Canada and the United Kingdom. In the next year, Wood said there will be more focus on getting into the communities.
Among some larger initiatives is establishing a leadership college, Wood said.
“You’ve got problems downstream and problems upstream,” he said. “One of the best ways to solve problems upstream is to raise up next-generation leaders. In the next several years, we’re going to launch out a leadership college that will equip next-generation leaders that can shape communities, shape churches and make differences in the world.”
“Another big heartbeat that we believe is significant in the world right now is the longing inside every human being to connect with our creator,” he added. “There’s a spirituality to the current generation and prayer simply is talking to God, having a conversation with God. We have a huge heart to mobilize the church to pray and to create spaces where people can pray.”
And with that plan comes building more facilities where people can find spaces to pray and be prayed for.
Southern Baptist Convention
While Wood was focused internally, Saddleback Church made some headlines in his first year, too. In June, the Southern Baptist Convention expelled the church at its annual convention in New Orleans over having women as pastors. Warren first ordained three women as pastors who led worship for children and students and provided visits to hospitals and funerals.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s statement of faith officially opposes women as pastors, adding in 2000 the words “the office of the pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture.”
Warren was there to defend Saddleback and urged the voting delegates to stay close to their Baptist roots and “agree to disagree.” But more than three-fourths of the delegates voted to expel the church.
Stacie Wood, daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher in South Carolina, was made a teaching pastor this summer. Kay Warren, while never labeled a teaching pastor, worked in that capacity for years.
“My journey as a woman growing up in the Southern Baptist denomination, overall, I would say, was very positive,” Stacie Wood said. “When I was in high school, my dad could see in me a passion for ministry, a love for people, and so he allowed me to start teaching a junior high class of girls. Ever since that time, I’ve been able to use that teaching gift in different settings.”
Stacie Wood taught at Echo Church on special occasions such as Mother’s Day. As she had more practice, Wood said he recognized people seemed to connect with her and gave her more opportunities.
“God designed family for there to be a mom and a dad, and a mom and a dad serve together at the side of one another with sons and daughters,” he said. “Of course, not every family has both sons and daughters, but the beauty of that is by design and that’s how God designed it. I believe the church is the same way. That the church benefits from a loving and engaged father, and a mother who is right there alongside him. So Stacie and I try to model that for the church because we feel like it creates a level of stability. Certainly, every environment is better when she’s present and everyone I know likes me more when she’s with me.”
Wood said he was “grateful” that Warren represented the church at the convention but said he has no “desire to participate in trying to advocate for the church to be in the convention.”
“Our people in our church come into our services with their own challenges, fears and anxieties,” Wood said. “What happens in New Orleans at a Southern Baptist Convention is not what’s on the minds of people in our communities. So, I would much rather give my energy and our church’s attention to those things to help faithfully serve our community.”
Source: Orange County Register
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