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Warren, founder of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, did more than pray. He immediately had his staff contact church leaders in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and India with a directive: "Head for high ground. There is a disaster." The e-mails arrived before the tsunami hit. The following Sunday, he stood up at Saddleback and said, "Folks, we need to help these people who have gone through this tidal wave. Please give a little extra." The donations that morning totaled $1.6 million, about a million dollars more than the usual Sunday offering. Warren sent it to the churches in the stricken region; it paid for everything from fishing nets to boat repairs. When Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans nine months later, Warren asked his congregation to give again-and this time raised $1.7 million.
Saddleback, a mega-church in the hills of affluent Orange County, California, is one of the few in the world with the members and the means to manage such generosity. But then, Warren is used to big numbers.
Some 83,000 people worship at Saddleback, choosing from 28 church services on four campuses each week. Warren's first book—The Purpose Driven Church, published in 1995 and aimed at pastors—has sold a million copies. In 2002 he released The Purpose Driven Life, which has sold 30 million, making it one of the bestselling books of all time. He and his wife give away 90 percent of their income to charity, much of it anonymously; in 2004, the last year the figures were made public, they donated $13 million.
The number Warren is focused on now, though, is five—the problems he calls the five global giants: spiritual emptiness, self-serving leadership, extreme poverty, pandemic diseases, and rampant illiteracy. His solution? A five-part PEACE Plan spearheaded by pastors like him and, he hopes, supported by politicians worldwide: Promote reconciliation. Equip servant leaders. Assist the poor. Care for the sick. Educate the next generation. "When I preach about this to pastors around the world, I tell them you're blessed to bless others," Warren says. "Whatever you've been given, God doesn't give it to you so you can be a fat cat but so you can help other people."
Helping the poor and the sick wasn't always Warren's focus. He spent the first decade of his ministry building an ever-bigger church. Then his wife, Kay, read an article about AIDS orphans in Africa and made her first two trips there to see how she might contribute. After that, she learned she had breast cancer. Her diagnosis only strengthened her resolve to help the impoverished. Rick Warren took his wife's illness—and her response to it—as a sign that he needed to refocus his ministry. "It was like the blinders came off," he says. "I've got three advanced degrees. I went to two different seminaries and a Bible school. How did I miss the 2,000 verses in the Bible where it talks about the poor?"
Through his global network of pastors, he's recruited hundreds of thousands of volunteers to battle adult illiteracy in North America and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, among other causes. Warren envisions a billion Christian foot soldiers mobilized around the world using local churches to dispense everything from medical care to agricultural tools.
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