'Purpose Driven' AIDS Conference Concludes in USA

|PIC1|CALIFORNIA, USA. – The last general session of the first church-sponsored AIDS conference concluded Thursday with a call to pastors and Christian leaders present to love God and love AIDS victims.

“Because God is love, you can’t know Him if you don’t know love,” said Kay Warren, whose life-changing visit to Africa made her the impetus behind the three-day conference.

On Nov. 29 - Dec. 1, church leaders, government officials, and prevention experts convened at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., for the Purpose Driven conference on AIDS and the Church to talk about accepting people with AIDS, not attacking them.

Warren’s message urged pastors and others to repent, accept others, be present, and endure in the fight against evil.

“Some of you here are leaders. You’re church pastors,” said Warren. “There may need to be repentance on the part of the shepherds because you have not loved as God has taught you to love.”

|TOP|“We would be humiliated if any other human being knew the depth of the depravity, and the gross stuff that’s in our hearts,” added Warren. “That same God who sees that embarrassing crud has accepted me in Jesus Christ.”

“Now you look at every other person and you treat them the same way.”

On stage sitting on a small cot, Warren described her transformation from a distant American to a person who is there for another as she embraced a woman at Mother Theresa’s hospice for the dying.

“You’re not alone. God loves you,” she told the dying woman. “He brought me today to tell you that.”

|AD|She challenged church leaders and others in the audience, “Before you offer your talents and abilities and strengths, before you offer a cure next time, will you offer your caring, your presence?”

The crowd responded when Warren denounced the HIV virus as the enemy, rather than the people. She used The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy as an example of the depth of the love people should have for the suffering.

“Frodo is now comatose. He is so done with the battle of evil. It is about to kill him. Sam his friend said, ‘I can’t carry it for you but I will carry you,’” said Warren.

Through compassion and forgiveness, “it is our job to make the invisible God, visible,” she said.

In a ring of solidarity, close to 20 people revealed they were HIV-positive, boldly stepping on stage at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. Senior Pastor Rick Warren prayed for them. The audience slowly went forward, one by one, to embrace them.


[Editor's Note: Rhoda Tse reported from Lake Forest, California, USA for this article]






Rhoda Tse
Christian Today Correspondent