Peace Plan

Excerpts from Mark Batterson Are You OK With This? | Evotional

I spent my morning at the Civil Forum on Global Health sponsored by Rick Warren and Saddleback Church. Thought I'd share a few reflections.
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The focus on the forum, in my estimation, was how we as churches can leverage our God-given resources and use them to fight what Rick Warren calls the five global Goliaths--spiritual emptiness, self-serving leadership, extreme poverty, pandemic diseases, and rampant illiteracy. Those five issues are the focus of Saddleback's Peace Plan.

I'm not sure I can do this justice, but Rick shared three slides that made a profound point. The slides showed the western province of Rwanda, population 700,000. The first slide showed the locations of all hospitals. There are only 3 of them. The second slide showed the location of all the health clinics. There are 22 of them. And the third slide showed the location of all the churches in Rwanda. There are 728 of them. Then Rick made a simple observation: The church is the largest organization on earth. What if we viewed churches, especially in less-developed countries, as distribution channels for things like education and health care? The church already has the infrastructure. The church already has the workforce. The church already has the motivation. We just need to strategically mobilize to make a difference.

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