Rick Warren Returns to Pulpit at Saddleback Church, Finds Healing in Opening Up with Six-Week Sermon Series on Grief 

Rick Warren returned to speak to his home congregation at Saddleback Church for the first time last Sunday (July 28) since his son Matthew's suicide four months ago (April 5). 

The mega-church, which Warren found, has had guest speakers coming to fill-in while Rick and his family have time to grieve and reflect before resuming his pastoral roles. 

Rick and his wife, Kay Warren, were greeted with a standing ovation. "I love you, too," a smiling Warren replied. "Have I told you lately that I love you?"

Warren, dressed in his usual casual black shirt and jeans opened up a six seek sermon series entitled, "How to get through what you're going through." He will speak on one of the six stages of grief each week: shock, sorrow, struggle, surrender, sanctification and service.

He opened up on some of this personal thoughts and feelings about his son and the struggle of mental illness. 

"It's amazing to me that any other organ in your body can break down and there's no shame and stigma to it," Warren said. "But if your brain breaks down you're supposed to keep it a secret."

"I was in shock for at least a month after Matthew took his life," Warren told his congregation. 

The Warren family are going to use proceeds from the sale of their son's house to fund a mental health ministry. 

"Ten years ago, God called Kay, and then me, to help remove the stigma attached to HIV & AIDS," Warren said. "Now, it looks like we're being called to help remove the stigma for a much bigger disease. 34 million people have HIV & AIDS but 400 million battle mental illness worldwide."

"For 27 years I prayed every day of my life for God to heal my son's mental illness," Warren wrote in a letter to his congregation after his son died. Matthew had shown signs of mental illness and depression since he was a child. 

Warren's book "The Purpose Driven Life" is the best selling hard-cover book of all time and catipulted him into the national spotlight and the topic of faith and self-help.  

Rick Warren  delivered the opening prayer at President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration.

Saddleback, the church he founded in 1980, has grown to 20,000 members. It is located in Southern California in the city of Lake Forest.