Word: plan
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...Warren were content to be merely the most influential religious figure on the American political scene, that would be significant enough. He isn't. Five years ago, he concocted what he calls the PEACE plan, a bid to turn every single Christian church on earth into a provider of local health care, literacy and economic development, leadership training and spiritual growth. The enterprise has collected testimonials from Bono, the First Couple, Hillary Clinton, Obama, McCain and Graham, who called it "the greatest, most comprehensive and most biblical vision for world missions I've ever heard or read about." The only...
...Warren's insight was to combine both models in a plan aimed at energizing Third World churches. He knew they were everywhere, including backwaters unreached by government or NGOs. He started comparing them to McDonald's franchises. Or to desktop computers: if they could be infected with the virus of good works, the world could be transformed. (Put simply: if every pastor in the world taught basic water hygiene, it could significantly cut rates of dysentery, a major global killer.) Scores of short-term activists, armed with Saddleback-crafted training, would go into a foreign country, locate its most promising...
...that stupid." But there is nothing in his sales pitch - to thousands of pastors, dozens of heads of state, financiers at the Davos World Economic Forum and editorial boards - that suggests where its limits might be. He refers repeatedly to the "1 billion" Christians he thinks the plan can mobilize. His sell combines the aid wonk's jargon of "self-sufficiency, scalability and reproducibility," the dotcommer's dream of exponential growth and something older. Says one pastor participant: "This is like the fishes-and-loaves story. People think that that kind of miracle is happening...
...Warren, who had been beta-testing the plan, held its "IPO." He convened 1,700 pastors from the purpose-driven network to Saddleback and urged them to send out teams as part of the "PEACE Coalition." "There was a lot of energy afterward," he says. "Guys with tears in their eyes. A guy was going, 'I'll take Mozambique,' and one was going, 'I'll take Nigeria.' They were dividing up the world...
...others, rather flatly, claim Warren's effort is invisible by the very terms on which he sold it. Visitors interested in the PEACE plan are still invariably flown not to a church but to the hospital in the town of Kibuye. PEACE is working with the University of Maryland to upgrade the facility and next year will give $500,000 as part of its province-wide $13 million commitment. But so far, aside from a paint job and some tidying up, there is little improvement. Laura Hoemeke, director of Twubakane, a USAID-funded Rwandan decentralization and health program, says, "Warren...