Church, HIV/AIDS Conference: Global P.E.A.C.E. Plan Presented
Megapastor Rick Warren presented the global P.E.A.C.E. plan, a comprehensive strategy addressing the five ‘‘giant’’ problems in the world affecting billions of people, as a solution to HIV/AIDS and other global problems during the Chur
LAKE FOREST, Calif. – Megachurch pastor Rick Warren presented his comprehensive strategy addressing the five ‘‘giant’’ problems in the world affecting billions of people as a solution to HIV/AIDS and other global problems during a Church and AIDS conference this week.
The global P.E.A.C.E. plan was presented on the second day of the Disturbing Voices conference – a meeting for pastors and church leaders about the role of the church in the HIV/AIDS pandemic - held at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., on Nov.19 - Dec. 1. The plan – whose acronym stands for Plant churches, Equip servant leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, and Educate the next generation – is a global church-to-church plan to mobilize Christians to fight against the five “Global Goliaths.”
“God says nothing’s too hard for me. I can outdo anything you ask or imagine,” said Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Church and co-host of the conference. “I began to think about what are the biggest problems on this planet. I think God gets the most glory when we attack the biggest problems. When the little guy takes on Goliath, people go, ‘Yay God.’”
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The Saddleback pastor – who was named “one of the 15 world leaders who mattered most in 2004” by Time – believes the five largest problems, or as he likes to call them, the “Global Goliaths,” are: spiritual emptiness, egocentric leadership, extreme poverty, pandemic diseases, and illiteracy and education.
The P.E.A.C.E plan emphasizes that the Church, in addition to governments and businesses - is an important component to the answer to these five goliaths, including the pandemic disease of AIDS. Throughout the conference Warren emphasized the Church’s wide distribution network around the world, its 2.1 billion members, and its longevity as factors why the Church is the solution to the world’s biggest problems.
“I can’t make a big difference in the world, but together, we can make a big difference,” said Warren. “Today, what if every Christian in the world one time in their life did a short term project that would mobilize a billion people at least. It would be unbelievable.”
Warren also spoke about “church in a box,” an idea derived from the P.E.A.C.E. plan to make a simple template that new Christians can use to set up the church around the world. He compared the template to McDonalds, which has created an easy step-by-step model that all employees can use to run the store.
“We were trying to work out a model, a template and make it so simple that it could be passed on,” said Warren.
“The average McDonalds makes a $1 million a year and it’s run by kids. It’s goof-proof. As a result, you can buy McDonalds almost anywhere in the world. We need the same thing. We have to figure out simple ways to do it.”
The Saddleback pastor said that the “church in the box” plan could include showing a Christian movie, the designated pastor listening to tapes everyday and teaching what they learned to villagers, and other “how-to” programs to make setting a church simple.
“It [P.E.A.C.E Plan] involves every member of the church. It’s a lay movement, designed to mobilize average person. Everybody can participate in personal, local, and global peace,” said Warren.
“It links congregations. Your church hooks up with another church overseas. Every church is a sending and a receiving church – linking church to church directly. All the mission work was done by local churches. Today, it’s possible for everybody to go.”
According to Warren, the P.E.A.C.E. plan has been tested for the last two years in 63 countries.
