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How did Warren become an instant celebrity in places like Tembisa while remaining an unknown throughout much of the U.S.? His unexpected success makes him a model evangelical leader, but his ideas are larger, more impressive, and ostensibly less complicated than anything American Christianity has seen before. Wearing a trademark Hawaiian shirt and emphasizing “Purpose” over publicity, Warren has initiated a quiet Christian revolution that stretches from his headquarters at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, all the way to small African townships like Tembisa. Admiring onlookers have described Warren as a potent combination of John Paul II and Billy Graham, a man whose big heart and simple vision might reinvent Christianity in the twenty-first century. His charismatic leadership transformed his Saddleback congregation from a small prayer group in his living room to the nation’s largest megachurch. His self-help book, The Purpose-Driven Life (2002), recently became the best-selling hardback of all time. With 22,000 weekly attendees at his home church, 26 million books sold, and 162 countries in his international “Purpose-Driven network,” Warren has proved he can catch the Christian world’s attention.

But Rick Warren is not one to waste time citing his impressive accomplishments. Instead, he has devised a plan that makes his previous work seem like merely an opening act. If successful, his proposal to address global disease and poverty will become the world’s largest ever faith-based initiative. Warren’s Global P.E.A.C.E. Plan, which he unveiled last April, calls for Christians to “Plant new churches, or partner with existing ones, Equip leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, and Educate the next generation.” To begin, Warren and his team have focused on Rwanda, sending “Small Groups” of Saddleback congregants to partner with local churches in an effort to convert Rwanda into the world’s first “Purpose-Driven Nation.” Over the course of a two week trip, American Christians will work with Rwandans to develop homegrown solutions to local problems.

The initial partnership between Saddleback and Rwanda will serve as a model for Purpose-Driven Christians worldwide. In time, the P.E.A.C.E. Plan’s leaders hope that Christians from all 162 countries in the Purpose-Driven network will partner with needy churches in Africa and Asia, devising solutions to what Warren terms the “Five Global Goliaths: Spiritual Emptiness, Egocentric Leadership, Extreme Poverty, Pandemic Disease, and Illiteracy.” Eventually, the plan may outgrow the Small Group model altogether, as Warren uses radio and internet technology to spread awareness beyond the reach of even the most intrepid volunteers. Such an ambitious and open-ended plan defies easy explanation, even with the aid of Warren’s beloved mnemonics. As one of his staff members told P.H., Warren sums up his dilemma with a concise aphorism: “control or growth, take your pick.” To implement this ambitious scheme without creating chaos, however, Warren’s followers will need more than just Purpose.

Despite his esoteric pronouncements about the plan, Warren approaches public health problems with an eminently practical attitude. He promotes physical, spiritual, and community health as part of a holistic package and imagines sending small kits – he calls them “clinics in a box” – to needy African villages. To accomplish “C, Care for the sick,” the fourth component of P.E.A.C.E., Warren realizes that his team will have to address the AIDS epidemic that has devastated sub-Saharan Africa. Toward that end, Warren meets frequently with Ambassador Randall L. Tobias, the first-ever U.S. Global AIDS coordinator charged with implementing PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). When P.H. interviewed volunteers about Warren’s AIDS program, one noted the parallel to Christ’s ministry with lepers. In the twenty-first century, “what will be equivalent to leprosy?” he asked. “If we are real Christians, there is no problem that this is what we need to do.”