"It's not about you." That is the now-famous depersonalization that opens Rick Warren's self-help guide The Purpose-Driven Life.
Unfortunately, they are apparently words that his biographer took to heart, because despite its promising subtitle, this portrait tells readers almost nothing about the man behind the bestseller. Mair spends most of the book superficially exploring the phenomenon of megachurches and introducing some of Warren's role models for ministry. What information he does give us about Warren's life is sparse and blandly hagiographic: the son of energetic, saintly California church planters, Warren appears to have realized his pastoral calling early on. Because he's depicted as both pious and entrepreneurial from childhood, readers don't get to see him grow or evolve as a leader. Moreover, the book says almost nothing about his family life—for example, Mair tells us that when Saddleback Church was founded, the Warrens had an infant daughter, but she's never named or even mentioned again—nor is the fact that the Warrens went on to have two more children. If these perfectly basic elements to include in a life story are missing, it goes without saying that Mair also reveals no conflict, no difficult struggles and no rough edges to Warren's personality that could make him a real person instead of the smiling, guitar-playing, Hawaiian shirt–wearing cardboard cutout depicted here. (Mar.)
