International (MNN) — Rick Warren of Purpose Driven Ministries recently announced
the launch of the P.E.A.C.E. Coalition, an international alliance of churches,
businesses, ministries, universities, and other institutions, reports the
Christian Post.
The coalition plans to attack the five “Global Giants” of
the world by encouraging believers to be involved in five areas of service that Jesus modeled: Promote reconciliation, Equip servant
leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, and Educate the next generation. These five principles make up the P.E.A.C.E.
acronym.
The coalition will include pastors, business leaders, and
other institutions, but it will be a lay movement led by amateurs. It will target the five most evil, global
problems of our day: spiritual
emptiness, lack of servant leadership, extreme poverty, pandemic diseases, and illiteracy. These “Giants” affect billions of people
worldwide.
Warren announced the launch
of the coalition at Saddleback
Church on May 22, at the
end of the Purpose Driven Network Summit. 1,700 pastors and Christian leaders from 50 states and 39 countries had attended.
Warren
calls the P.E.A.C.E. plan “the most complicated thing” he’s ever done. It will involve the public and private
sectors as well as the local church, and he expects it will not be finished in
ten or twenty years.
The launch of the coalition will coincide with the second
phase of the P.E.A.C.E. plan. The first
phase of the P.E.A.C.E. plan began four years ago.
Since then, 7,700 members of Saddleback
Church have tested it out
by traveling in over 1,000 teams to 68 countries. Information and experience gleaned in the
first phase will be used to plan the second phase.
Warren
hopes to involve 500 churches in the launch and ultimately to involve 1
billion Christians in the P.E.A.C.E. plan.
