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TechnoratiLets amateurs lead: When I first started telling people about the P.E.A.C.E. Plan, I got a lot of funny looks when I mentioned my commitment to using amateurs. People thought it was the craziest idea they’d ever heard. How do you solve these five crushing worldwide problems with amateurs?
I love the word amateur. It comes from the Latin word amore, which means love. Amateur literally means “out of love.” That’s what amateurs are. People who do what they do out of love. There simply aren’t enough professional doctors to heal all the diseases. There aren’t enough preachers to start all of the churches. Revival has always started with the peasants not the kings.
Links public, private, and church sectors: Over the last few years I’ve spoken at the Davos Economic Forum. I always hear about the need to link governments and businesses together to help solve some of the world’s problems. But if governments and businesses could solve the world’s problems on their own, they would have done it by now. We need a three-legged stool. A one-legged stool and a two-legged stool will fall over. But a three-legged stool will stand. The third leg is the church.
There is a role for governments. The Bible tells us that. They bring order and execute justice, along with other responsibilities. There’s also a role for business. Businesses bring management skills and capital, for example. But you can’t forget the church either. We have a crucial role to play. There are things the church brings to the table that neither business nor government can.
Attacks all five giants: P.E.A.C.E. is a comprehensive strategy. Why? The five global evils we’re fighting are intertwined. Poverty is often related to disease. Corruption (bad leadership) is often related to education problems. They are interconnected. Other groups can attack just part of the problem. The church is called to deal with all of the problems. We can’t shirk our responsibility.
Re-organizes efforts within a network: We have something we didn’t have 15 years ago – the Internet. It allows us to talk to one another even though we are in different parts of the world. Every time God’s Word has been put in a new technology, revival has come. When Gutenberg developed the printing press, we had the Reformation. Why? The Word could get around faster. Through the Internet we have a great opportunity to spread the Word even faster.
The Internet has allowed us to network churches all around the world to solve these problems. In the past, if two churches from different parts of the world were working in an area, they couldn’t share information. Often, they wouldn’t even know the other was working there. Now they can communicate. Over the past four years at Saddleback, we’ve been working on a P.E.A.C.E. software suite that we plan on giving away to all the churches in the P.E.A.C.E. network. It has six suites all focused on networking churches together.
Shifts to sustainable funding: This means that P.E.A.C.E. doesn’t depend on fundraisers, bake sales, or garage sales. It creates self-generating and self-sustaining projects. It fosters sufficiency not subsidy, a hand up not a hand out. We’re going to reinvent how missions work is funded.
Did you know that a $50 gift can change a person’s life in most places in the world? Buy a chicken and you have an egg factory. Buy a goat and you have a milk factory. It’s amazing how a little money will make a big difference in a person’s life if it’s done in a way that can be sustained.
I believe in the P.E.A.C.E. Plan. Why? It’s simply about mobilizing the church to do the five things Jesus did while he was on earth. God will bless that.
Rick Warren is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., one of America's largest and best-known churches. In addition, Rick is author of the New York Times bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life and The Purpose-Driven Church, which was named one of the 100 Christian books that changed the 20th Century. He is also founder of Pastors.com, a global Internet community for ministers. Copyright 2005 Pastors.com, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved
