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LAKE FOREST, Calif. — A mammoth Christian mobilization effort—with a goal of tapping the time and talents of a billion believers worldwide.
Pastor Rick Warren developed the PEACE Plan and unveiled it during a three-day, invitation-only conference that drew 1,700 pastors and business leaders from all 50 states and 38 countries.
In a post-summit news conference Saddleback Church spokesman A. Larry Ross called the conference in May 22 at Saddleback Church in California “a fire hose of information.”
“We invited people he (Warren) calls ‘force multipliers’ from both business and the church community, people who are committed to the Great Commission and the great commandment and (who) want to share those principles, pass them on through modeling, mentoring and ministry sessions.”
Described as a five-part manifesto for renewal, the effort will focus on the “global giants” of spiritual emptiness, lack of servant leadership, extreme poverty, pandemic diseases, and illiteracy. The issues are based on the themes of PEACE, an acronym for Promote reconciliation; Equip servant leaders; Assist the poor; Care for the sick; and Educate the next generation.
“The PEACE coalition is not trying to be a brand; it’s trying to be a network of networks where each of these denominational networks, institutional networks, church planting networks, health networks, fellowship networks, and things like that, can all come together and say, ‘Let’s work on these things together,’” Warren said. “That’s why we call it a coalition because in a coalition, you still retain your identity. We are not trying to create a denomination. We are not trying to create another association. We are just creating a coalition that is working on a specific project together.”
By the end of the conference, spontaneous commitments were already received from Promise Keepers and Biola, California Baptist, Azusa Pacific and Liberty Universities, Warren said. Dozens of churches had also signed up to become members of the coalition.
Army of workers
Warren said the concept, piloted for the past four years by more than 7,000 Saddleback members and several other congregations, offers the best practices of the “Purpose Driven Life” and the “Purpose Driven Church,” two in-church focused programs that have become models for other congregations around the globe. In all, the volunteers participated in more than 1,000 PEACE teams in 68 countries.
Among other things, Saddleback’s test plan involved the rehabilitation of health care in western Rwanda, a two-year project that involved that nation’s ministry of health, the University of Maryland, three hospitals, Saddleback Church and its network of churches.
Warren said the plan was also developed as part of an international two-year listening campaign in which church officials met with church pastors, leaders, business and government.
During the conference, business and church leaders discussed a variety of topics and issues affecting humanity.
“The peace coalition is a new coalition that we have quietly been preparing,” Warren said in the news conference, which was also broadcast live on the Internet.
“There are governmental partners, there are commercial partners, there are institutional partners, there are ecclesiastical partners. So it’s all in different areas, health care, business, government, churches, it’s the different legs of the school that say, ‘Can we get together and actually work on these big problems?’
“The problems are so big that they are going to require a big response. When you do a big response, it is extremely complex. This is the most complex thing I’ve ever attempted in my life.”
Modeling Jesus
While the approach may be complex, Warren said the movement is based on the basic model used by Jesus—reaching the poor, the vulnerable, the least.
“The churches have become fragmented and segmented in a large degree, and there are a lot of silos,” he said. “When you travel as much as I do and you get not just a national picture, but an international picture, you realize that there’s enormous talent and enormous potential in the church, but it’s not connected.
Warren singled out politics as a major distraction in the church’s efforts for global service.
“I think a lot of pastors that I’ve talked to really felt that in the last few years their church got hijacked by politics and they are going, ‘OK, now, here’s a voice, here’s a movement that we can say is going to pull us back into what we should have been doing all along.’ Things that the people have always expected the church to do. Care for the sick, the poor, the uneducated, the things that Jesus did. The answer, we believe, is not in politics; the answer is in the church.”
Despite the magnitude of the PEACE plan, Warren said he’s convinced that the church, operating under the power of Jesus, is more than equipped.
“We tend to set our goals too low, and try to accomplish them too quickly,” the pastor said. “What we need to do is set bigger goals and spend the rest of our lives trying to reach them. This is a lifetime goal. What we are attempting here will not be done in five, 10 or even 20 years.”
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