Pastor Argues Faith is Missing Link

Rev. Rick Warren, the founder and leader of a nondenominational megachurch, argued that faith-based organizations provide the missing link to successfully face the world’s biggest problems yesterday in Gaston Hall.

Warren, the senior pastor of the 100,000-person Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., is the best-selling author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” and was featured in the April 9, 2007 issue of Newsweek.

In his speech, Warren argued that the solution of the world’s greatest problems lie in what he called the “third partnership.” The third partnership involves a relationship between faith communities, the government and the business sector.

“If business and government were able to solve the world’s problems by themselves, they would have done it by now. A combination of the public, profit and parish sector is needed,” Warren said. “The government has the administrative power to form agendas and set goals, the business sector can provide the expertise, the capital and the managerial skills, and the church can provide the distributive network and the local credibility.”

Warren said that tapping into the world-wide network of faith gave the greatest potential for widespread volunteers and resources. His current “prototype” for the partnership between faith and secular sectors is Rwanda.

“Secularism is quite small outside Europe and Manhattan,” he joked. “The future of the world lies in religious pluralism.”

Warren pinpointed the world’s problems in five main broader issues: spiritual emptiness (lack of God’s love in life), egocentric leadership and corruption, extreme poverty, pandemic diseases and illiteracy.

“Jesus did five things, the antidotes for those five problems: He promoted reconciliation, equipped servant leaders, assisted the poor, cared for the sick and educated the next generation.”

This led Warren to create his P.E.A.C.E. plan, which explains what ordinary people should do regularly to “do good.”

“I don’t care if you do good for political, economical, personal or religious reasons, as long as you do good; there is no ethical or moral aspect in that,” he said. “I serve a savior named Jesus Christ who said, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ and that’s why I do what I do.”

He also spoke to the tradition the church has for doing good and illustrated how the already existing faith networking can serve the purposes of education, healthcare and fighting poverty. His focus was on examples from his travels around the world, especially in a western province of Rwanda, where two of the three hospitals are faith-based, and 16 of 18 clinics (sometimes nothing more than a bottle of aspirin on a shelf, Warren said) are faith-based. The region is home to 650,000 inhabitants. In the province, there are currently 728 Protestant and Catholic churches in which Warren would like to station health clinics.

“[Organized religion] is bigger … than India and China together. It is the most widespread network in the world and the first truly global organization with the largest pool of volunteers,” Warren said.

The speech was the second in the “Improving the Human Condition Lecture Series,” which features speakers who offer thoughts and perspectives on issues related to human development. It is sponsored by the Office of the President and the Mortara Center for International Studies.