The Table Video

Rick Warren says: “We gotta figure out how to disagree without being disagreeable. You can have unity without uniformity. You can walk hand-in-hand without seeing eye-to-eye.”

Despite our unavoidable diversity, our society can’t successfully communicate when we disagree.

Transcript:

You may not like it, but the future of the world is diversity. And we’ve gotta learn how to get along together. I do not believe in relativism, but I do believe in pluralism. Because the world is different. We’re all different.

You know, when I started Saddleback Church, I was thinking about that. In the first two years of church, it was a lily white, young, urban, professional, yuppie church. Today, Saddleback Church speaks 67 languages.

Robert: Wow.

And actually, in our values, S-A-D-D-L-E-B-A-C-K, each letter represents a value. And the A stands for second chance grace place. But the A stands for all nation congregation. And we want our church to look like heaven’s gonna look.

If you don’t like getting along with other people, you’re not gonna like heaven. ‘Cause they’re not all gonna look like you and be like you, sound like you, or smell like you. So we gotta figure out how to disagree without being disagreeable. You can have unity without uniformity. You can walk hand in hand without seeing eye to eye on every issue.

And one of the two things that these two brothers have done, is they have shown, they’ve modeled civility. Now, let’s just admit it. Our society is getting ruder. Would you agree with that? [crowd murmuring] And the internet is provoking this. And the problem with criticism on the internet is everything is permanent, searchable, and global.

And anybody can say anything about you, and it’s never going away. And you just have to deal with that. So how do you learn to get along with people in a world that are lots of differences? Because I… did the prayer at two presidents.

One was a Republican, and one was a Democrat. I’m often asked, “Are you left wing, or are you right wing?” And I always say, “I’m for the whole bird.” [laughs] Have you ever seen a bird with one wing? It flies around in a circle. Now I don’t know about you, but it’s my opinion that nobody gets it right all the time, especially me.

And so sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re right, [crowd laughing] and we’ve just gotta learn from each other. And so over the past 12 years, I was talking to Cornel about this back stage. I’ve had the opportunity the last 12 years to really learn to work with people who I totally disagree with, and who totally disagrees with me around the world. 12 years ago… Actually this Saturday is the twelfth anniversary of the PEACE Plan, which Saddleback started.

I came up with the idea, the vision, actually sitting on the ground in South Africa 12 years ago. And PEACE stands for Promote Reconciliation, Equip Ethical Leaders is the E, A in PEACE is Assist the Poor, C is care for the sick, and E is Educate the next generation. And I was telling Cornel that I’ve sent out 24,869 of my members to 197 countries doing the PEACE Plan. When you do that, you have to learn to work with all kinds of people.

And there are bridge builders in life, and there are wall builders in life. I wanna be a bridge builder. And particularly, as an evangelist, you can’t win your enemies to Christ. You can only win your friends. And before people are gonna trust Jesus, they wanna know, “Can I trust you?” Before anybody ever asks, “Is the Bible credible?”, they wanna know, “Are you credible?” “Can I trust you?”

And if you’re credible, well then maybe I’ll listen to what you have to say. And so, tonight, we’re gonna talk about freedom, we’re gonna talk about civility, we’re gonna talk about disagreeing and agreeing, and all of those things combined. Now these two guys, there are a lot of differences between the two.

But they’re more similar in ways that you imagine. First, they both love the Lord. They both love the Lord. Second, they’re both patriots. They’re both Americans. And as third, they’re both brilliant. They both taught at Yale. There are a lot of other things that you’ve done together, and so while they have different perspectives…

Robert: Both pretty good looking.

Oh, stunning. Stunning.

You said pretty good looking?

Pretty good looking. [crowd laughing]