Rick Warren Desires World P.E.A.C.E.

One of the biggest results from Rick Warren’s recent church leadership conference, the Purpose Driven Network Summit, is that Warren wants to take the “purpose” global, through a worldwide church network called P.E.A.C.E.  

Time Magazine reports that Warren unveiled his plans for P.E.A.C.E. during the summit, which he called “the most important conference of my life” with its 1,700 pastoral attendees. The P.E.A.C.E. coalition will be a giant web of churches putting at their forefronts the mission to decrease poverty in developing countries. In the early stages, Warren has sent 8,000 members of his Saddleback congregation and 12 other congregations as missionaries in 68 countries. In Rwanda, which is the flagship country of the project, President Paul Kagame has vowed to make Rwanda “a purpose-driven nation.” The hope, according to the article, is to grow the number of involved congregations exponentially, which would boost the number of international volunteers and missionaries into the hundreds of thousands. But Warren isn’t just inviting the churches represented at his conferences. He will send tens of thousands of DVDs out to every congregation that participated in his “40 Days of Purpose” programs and will stream a P.E.A.C.E. pitch to congregations on his Web site.

Reportedly, the pastoral reaction at the conference was overwhelmingly supportive, with pastors eager to start missions in nations such as Mozambique and Nigeria. Warren told Time that he’s already received commitments from the Salvation Army and the Assemblies of God.

The uniqueness of P.E.A.C.E. is that it’s a revamp of older missionary methods. Churches in the United States are accustomed to using intermediary agencies as ways to send money and cultivate trained missionaries. In Warren’s new model, U.S. congregations will be directly linked with congregations in the third world, both churches being members of the network and both sharing resources.