Over 1,700 leading pastors, business and Christian institutional leaders from 39 countries gathered in Lake Forest, California, to create The PEACE Coalition, a new international alliance of churches, businesses, ministries, universities, and other institutions.
The launch of the PEACE Coalition occurred at a three day Purpose Driven Network Summit last week hosted by Saddleback Church, where Rick Warren is the founding pastor. The coalition will cooperate in a global mission strategy called the P.E.A.C.E. Plan, which is a massive, long range effort to mobilise one billion Christians in local churches around the world to copy Jesus' model of ministry.
"For followers of Jesus, one of the most important words in our vocabulary is the word 'Go!'" Warren said. "Jesus repeatedly commanded every believer to go; you can't spell gospel or good news without 'go' - ours is an active, not passive, faith."
P.E.A.C.E. is an acronym for Promote reconciliation; Equip servant leaders; Assist the poor; Care for the sick; and Educate the next generation. Coalition members see these actions as Jesus' antidote to five "global giants" - problems that affect billions of people worldwide: spiritual emptiness, self-centered leadership, poverty, pandemic disease and illiteracy.
For the past four years, thousands of members of Saddleback Church have been testing prototypes of the P.E.A.C.E. Plan around the world. During this phase, called P.E.A.C.E 1.0, more than 7,700 members volunteered on over a thousand P.E.A.C.E. teams to serve in 68 countries.
A dozen other Purpose Driven Network churches were invited to beta-test the plan with Saddleback. After studying the data reported back by these teams, Warren felt confident that the second phase, PEACE 2.0, was ready to be released with the public launch of the PEACE Coalition.
At a post-summit press conference, Warren pointed out that the size and complexity of the P.E.A.C.E. Coalition's objective would likely take decades to accomplish. "We usually set goals too low and try to reach them too quickly," he said. "Instead we should set God honouring goals in faith, and then invest the rest of our lives working toward them. This plan could take 50 years so it might not be completed in my lifetime. That's why I call the next generation the Reformation Generation."
During the summit, Warren outlined how the P.E.A.C.E. Plan is both a framework and a network for global mission. Confiding that a leader of a large, well- known parachurch ministry had told him the P.E.A.C.E. Plan was too ambitious for "mere amateurs", Warren reminded summit attendees that it was simply the same strategy that Jesus modelled with his disciples.
"The P.E.A.C.E. Plan just follows the instructions Jesus gave to his 70 'amateurs' in Matthew 10 and Luke 10 when he sent teams into villages," Warren said. "It is Jesus' framework for ministry, not ours."
Warren said of the P.E.A.C.E plan, "Ordinary people, empowered by God's Spirit, doing what Jesus did, together, wherever they are."
It is based on Jesus' final instructions to the church in Acts 1:8, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
