AMESTOWN, Calif. — The campus of Rick Warren's Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif., covers 120 acres, and draws up to 20,000 people on Sundays. But to appreciate the full reach of this church and its leader you need to look in less manicured surroundings.

On a recent Saturday, a pastor from Mr. Warren's church stood in a drab hall at the medium-security prison here, 330 miles northwest of Saddleback, preaching to about 200 men in prison blues. "You guys have exactly what the disciples of Jesus Christ started out with, which is nothing except the Word," said the pastor, Steve Rutenbar.

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The evening was a milestone in both spiritual formation and brand expansion. The prisoners, whose crimes range from robbery to multiple homicide, were celebrating the completion of a 40-day Christian worship program outlined by Mr. Warren in his 2002 book "The Purpose- Driven Life," which has sold 16 million copies.

The prisoners are the first Purpose-Driven church in prison; this year, they added a Christian substance-abuse treatment program based on another Saddleback curriculum called Celebrate Recovery.

Mr. Warren's programs, which have made him perhaps the most influential evangelical minister in America, have acquired a unique status within the California Department of Corrections, the nation's largest. Prisoners who finish the drug program can qualify for an early furlough to a halfway house. Such furloughs have long been available through secular addiction programs, but the Saddleback program — which combines 12-step methods with Christian teachings — is the first religious program accredited in this way, said Terry Thornton, a department spokeswoman.

Next month the Celebrate Recovery program will get its own building in the prison, a 200-bed therapeutic community comparable to the prison's secular recovery building.

Though the program has elicited no protest, some civil libertarians say it amounts to government sponsorship of a religion.

"This is the first program I've heard of where Bible study or religious study gets you early release," said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit group that is suing a prison in Iowa for its religion-based programs. "Converting people into being Christians or better Christians is not a legitimate purpose of California government."

Barry Smith, who oversees religious programs for the California Department of Corrections, said that because the program at the prison here, the Sierra Conservation Center, was voluntary and because a comparable non-Christian alternative was available, it met the standards for separation of church and state.

Prison officials like the program. Hector Lozano, the prison's substance abuse administrator, said that since the first 40 Days of Purpose program last year, there had been fewer fights, which he attributed to both the guards and the ministry, one of several religious groups in the prison.

"We manage behavior very well," Mr. Lozano said of the administration. "But we've not done as much trying to change and shape behavior. That's what these guys are doing effectively."

Before, he said, "We couldn't stay off lockdown for more than two weeks. Since that time, we've only been on lockdown once. The ministry has softened the tensions between the adversarial groups in the yard."

Some research has suggested that prisoners who participate in ministries are less likely to be arrested again after they are released, but these studies are small and far from conclusive.

The ministry at Sierra Conservation Center is just one marker of how far Mr. Warren's gospel has spread. "The Purpose-Driven Life," a Bible-based self-help book, has been on best-seller lists since October 2002, selling about a million copies a month, plus Purpose-Driven journals, videotapes, music CDs and sermons. More than 320,000 pastors from various denominations have attended his Purpose-Driven Leadership seminars, Mr. Warren says. Some 20,000 churches have used his 40 Days of Purpose program to increase their membership.

Going against the grain of many popular self-help books, Mr. Warren delivers a message that Christianity Today magazine summarized as "forget your bliss." The book's opening line is, "It's not about you." Mr. Warren uses extensive biblical quotations to organize life into five spiritual purposes: to worship, cultivate community, become Christ-like, serve God and evangelize. He is folksy but not permissive.

His popularity reflects a savvy merger of business growth strategies and biblical message. He counsels pastors not just in their message but in their amenities, including their music, activities and the way they handle parking.

"He's a brilliant marketer of ideas," said Chap Clark, a professor of youth, family and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, who compared Mr. Warren to the evangelist Billy Graham in his elemental appeal and to a C.E.O. in his organizational skills.

Mr. Warren, who favors Hawaiian shirts and plain language in his sermons, last year returned 23 years of salary to the church. He also "reverse tithes," donating 90 percent of his royalties to the church and three foundations he started with his wife, Kay. In an e-mail interview, Mr. Warren said he had given more than $10 million to the foundations. The church donated all materials for the prison ministry and recovery program.

Instead of thumping politically divisive issues that alienate nonbelievers, Professor Clark said, Mr. Warren "has been able to step in the middle and refocus on the core elements: that there's a God who loves us, that we have walked away from him, and that his invitation is for us to rejoin him. Some say it's simplistic, but the forces behind it are anything but. He is very solid in his commitment to historic Christianity."

Though Mr. Warren was trained at a Southern Baptist seminary, both Saddleback and his books reject the boundaries of denomination. "Almost no one chooses a church because of its denominational label anymore," he said. "People choose the church that meets their needs." Churches that use his programs maintain no ties with Saddleback.

If Mr. Warren's doctrinal strokes are broad, "the most successful religious leaders in American history have been populists, not theologians," said Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department at Barnard College.

"He's almost a cult of personality," Mr. Balmer said. "One reason his sales are so strong is that pastors are trying to imitate his approach," recruiting their whole congregations in 40 Days of Purpose drives.

Some critics of Saddleback and other megachurches, and of the branded merchandise they produce, say that the churches reduce congregations to spiritual consumers — coming for the music, the marriage counseling or the men's group rather than to prostrate themselves in worship.

"The churches resemble shopping malls, with services for everyone," said Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia who has studied the megachurch phenomenon. "They draw on the methods of McDonald's or Taco Bell, spreading not just the message but the model."

At Sierra Conservation Center, which is responsible for 6,400 inmates, Mr. Warren's agenda played out on a cellular scale. Using off-the-rack materials, the prisoners minister to each other in small recovery groups, weekly services and full-time "accountability" partnerships.

At a recent Sunday service, the men moved easily with one another, offering hugs or pats on the shoulder. Ministry rules prohibit telling "war stories" of their crimes, but several described harrowing conversion experiences, often in jail. When an inmate began to cry during his Christian testimony, others yelled out, "I love you, Turtle," or "Group hug on Turtle."

Mr. Warren said he had gotten inquiries from wardens around the country, and expected more prisons to adopt 40 Days or Celebrate Recovery programs, for which he would continue to donate materials.

Pointing to the popularity of his work and the movie "The Passion of the Christ," he said that America had reached "the tipping point of another national Great Awakening," one involving self-denial, service and evangelism. This message applied as well in prison as in the middle-class suburbs of Lake Forest, he said. "People are spiritually hungry because materialism and secularism have both failed to live up to their promise."

Calvin Davis, 32, who was in Sierra for manufacturing methamphetamine, said that he had resisted many Christian groups before taking up Mr. Warren's book. "My dad was a deacon of a church, but I never could grasp it," he said. "The 40 Days gave me an outline where I can apply it to my life."

After his conversion, he was embarrassed by his wife's language in the prison visiting room. "I thought, how am I going to tell my wife not to cuss, she'll think I'm a nut," he said. But Mr. Davis prayed, and his wife has joined his turn toward church. Both have quit smoking. "We're not Bible-thumping weirdos," he said. "We're just regular people."

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