from stress avoidance to world class christian

this article from Christianity Today covers more about Rick Warren's "plan to defeat poverty".
an interesting read to follow an earlier post on Pastor Rick repenting. this article also includes extensive comments from Kay Warren.

it's great to hear such honesty from well known Christian leaders.
here are a few choice quotes:

"The church is the body of Christ. The hands and feet have been amputated and we're just a big mouth, known more for what we're against." Warren found himself praying, "God, would you use me to reattach the hands and the feet to the body of Christ, so that the whole church cares about the whole gospel in a whole new way—through the local church?"

"Every revival and spiritual awakening in history starts with the peasants, not with the kings. It starts with average, ordinary people," Warren says. "There are not enough superstars to win the world. It has to be done by average people."

"There are millions and millions of local churches around the world and now we have the technology to network them." This mobilization strategy, Warren says, also incorporates two ideas from Luke 10. Individuals would be sent out in teams, and on entering a village, they would seek "a man of peace. Find the man of peace. Bless him. He blesses you back. Who is the man of peace? He's influential and he's open. He doesn't have to be a Christian. Find a non-Christian who's influential and open—a Muslim or an atheist."

As Warren was developing the PEACE plan, Kay was getting the brush-off from secular HIV/AIDS activists and judgmental church members. But she was undeterred. "I pretty much thought that anybody who had HIV was gay. If they were gay and had HIV, they probably deserved it, because they had lived a lifestyle of risk. Therefore, I didn't really have to care very much about them. Not a pretty attitude. I'm not proud of it, but it is where I was."

Once an individual church adopts the Purpose Driven model, there are many more moves to make. They describe those steps as moving around a baseball diamond. The goal is mission-minded disciples. Warren says, "You can't get the church to jump from total selfishness, where they want all the sermons about 'How do I avoid stress,' to caring about Angola." "How do you get them to become a world-class Christian?"

How indeed.