LAKE FOREST, Calif. – “Purpose Drive” Pastor Rick Warren opened the Saddleback AIDS/HIV Conference on Tuesday with a talk on how the church must be more than just a mouth.
“The problem today is that the Church is the body of Christ, but the hands and the legs have been amputated, and all that’s left is a big mouth,” said Warren, who pastors Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. “Most of the time we’re known for what it’s against. I’m tired of that. I want the church to be known for what it’s for, not for what it’s against.”In his opening talk, “How God Got Our Attention,” Warren lectured to the 1,300-plus participants – from pastors and ministry workers to government staff – about turning the church’s attention to caring for the sick.
“God hates it when we ignore the needs of sick,” said Warren, “especially when spiritual leaders ignore it.”
“Stop spending so much time planning on your worship. Plan how to take care of the sick,” he exhorted. “Stop sacrificing, but be merciful.”
Warren, 51, heads up one of the largest church networks in America, the Purpose Driven network, comprised of 10 percent of America’s congregations or 13,000 churches. The conference invited pastors and others to talk about systematically and pragmatically eradicating HIV/AIDS in this generation. The conference will last three days, until the Global AIDS Day on Dec. 1.
It was back in 2002 that Kay Warren’s heart opened to the suffering of 12 million children in Africa orphaned because of AIDS.She was home reading a news magazine when she saw photographs of Africans suffering with AIDS – images so horrifying she had to cover her eyes, according to the Baptist Press (BP).
“I made a conscious decision to open my heart to the pain,” she told BP. “When I did, God broke my heart. He shattered it in a million pieces, and I cried for days.”
She said she knew that God was calling her to make a difference in the pandemic. Kay brought Rick along with her on a second trip to Africa, and together they gave birth to the global P.E.A.C.E. Plan, a missions strategy that aims to harness small groups from churches everywhere to tackle the world’s five global ills – spiritual darkness, lack of servant leaders, poverty, disease, and ignorance.
