Pastor Rick Warren to Give First Sermon Since Son's Suicide

By Martin Henderson

Almost three months after the suicide of his youngest son, Rick Warren is returning home—his home being center stage at Saddleback Church.

A spokesperson for Warren made the announcement Friday that the founding pastor of Saddleback would begin a series of sermons at the end of July titled, “How To Get Through What You’re Going Through.”

The announcement came one day after Matthew Warren would have turned 28, although Rick Warren casually mentioned in a tweet on July 15, “This weekend July 20-21 #DuckDynasty speaks @Saddleback. Then July 27-28 I start teaching again. Come early for a seat.”

His sermons figure to draw heavily on his and wife Kay's experiences since their son Matthew shot himself at his Mission Viejo home; he was discovered on April 5.

The sermons will take place at the Lake Forest campus of Saddleback on July 27 and 28. The five sermons, beginning with the Saturday, 4:30 p.m. service, will be streamed live at saddleback.com. 

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Although this will be his first sermon since the tragedy, it will not be the first time Warren has been on the Saddleback stage. He and his wife appeared at the end of a service on May 26, seven weeks after Matthew's death. At that time, Warren said he would continue to take "two or three months to recharge," and though exhausted physically and emotionally, he had "spiritually, never been stronger."

The title of the proposed series, "How To Get Through What You're going Through," differs from what he said in May, in which he announced the series would be titled, "What's On Your Mind?"

Rick Warren had revealed his son suffered from mental illness.

The last time Warren taught at the church was Easter Sunday.He asked his brother-in-law, Tom Holladay, to teach the following week on an eerily prophetic subject, "How to survive the worst day of your life." Later that week, Matthew Warren shot himself with an unregistered gun purchased on the internet, Rick Warren said.

To date, Warren’s May 26 comments have been his only public comments, though he has continued to use social media.

In addition to being the founder of one of the largest Christian congregations in the nation, Warren gave the invocation at President Barack Obama's first inauguration and wrote the international bestseller, The Purpose Driven Life.