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Warren’s wife Kay could not agree more. Kay Warren became interested in AIDS before her husband did, and she helped to persuade him to focus his energy on global missions. In an interview with Christianity Today, Kay admitted that she had not really thought of AIDS as a global problem until 2002, when she saw a magazine article about the 12 million African children who had been orphaned by AIDS. Before then, she confessed, “I pretty much thought that anybody who had HIV was gay. If they were gay and had HIV, they probably deserved it.” Eventually, Kay realized that God was calling on her to fight the AIDS epidemic. She became, in her own words, “a seriously disturbed woman,” eventually convincing Rick to join her in answering God’s call. Realizing that the instant success of Rick’s A Purpose-Driven Life could be used to help the world, the couple began “reverse tithing,” keeping 10% of their income and giving 90% to charity. Rick returned twenty-five years worth of salary to Saddleback Church, Kay established her own foundation, and they took that momentous trip to South Africa, where Rick realized there would be no turning back.

Given its tragic history, Rwanda seems a strange place to begin an American evangelical movement with worldwide ambitions. For many Rwandans, visiting Americans and local religious leaders serve as living reminders of the year the world left them to die. Over the course of one hundred days in 1994, Rwanda’s Hutu government exterminated some 800,000 individuals, most of them Tutsi minorities or moderate Hutus. As journalist Samantha Power has made clear, U.S. officials repeatedly refused to intervene to stop the tragedy. Although many Rwandan religious leaders acted courageously in opposing the genocide, others aided the killers. According to the U.N. indictment against him, one Anglican bishop asked Hutus to take Tutsis away from his diocese before killing them. Two Catholic nuns were convicted of helping to burn alive a garage full of refugees. A decade later, survivors who witnessed massacres in churches refuse to reenter the buildings. A small percentage have rejected Christianity altogether, turning to Islam or atheism. Because of overcrowding in jails, most convicted Hutus perform community service throughout the Rwandan countryside, wearing pink uniforms that mark them as perpetrators of genocide. Few countries have suffered so deeply.

Despite this grim legacy, Warren sees only opportunity in Rwanda. He believes that “God gets the most glory when you tackle the biggest giants.” Because Rwanda has been so victimized by the Five Global Goliaths, Warren envisions a special role for the church in connecting local communities and promoting forgiveness and reconciliation. In a nation with only 800 physicians to care for more than 8 million civilians, the church is a logical vehicle to transport development projects into rural areas. The Rwandan people remain overwhelmingly Christian, though divided along denominational lines. (According to the American CIA, approximately 56.5% are Catholic, 26% Protestant, 11.1% Adventist, and 4.6% Muslim.) Some worry that religion could become another divisive issue in a country that desperately needs unity, but Warren has pledged to work with Catholics, evangelicals, and atheists alike.