Understand The Times, International

Comment from Understand the Times:

Rick Warren has a plan to plant more churches to establish the "kingdom of God" here on earth. His plan to plant churches may surprise those who look deeper into his plan. In order to be a pastor, you can be of any religion, as long as you are willing to work together with those of other religions to do good. It is called the P.E.A.C.E. Plan.

According to the Bible, the only One who has ever done good, is Jesus Christ. To work together with all religions is called ecumenism and it is not from God. It is from Satan.

June 14 - Seek God's vision of people, pastors urged

Article: Emerging Church

Hearing passionate pleas to view the people of the world as God sees them, attendees of the 2011 Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference were challenged to take action. Following the conference's theme of "Aspire: Yearning to join God's Kingdom Activity," speakers on Monday afternoon and evening, June 13, said now is the time to reach the nations with the Gospel of Christ and not keep the Good News to themselves.

Addressing the conference were:

RICK WARREN

Rick Warren, lead pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., ended the Pastors' Conference with a plea for church planting and a challenge to reach the world's 3,800 remaining unengaged people groups with the Gospel in the next decade. Warren called for pastors to either plant a church or have their church be a parent church for a new church plant in America and one among an unreached people group.

"For the Southern Baptist Convention to turn around, we're going to have to change the way we keep score," Warren said. "For the last 30 years, we have rewarded attendance. If you have big attendance, you get invited to speak. Friends, I have more respect for a church of 100 that's planting churches than a church of 1,000 that hasn't planted any. What we need to reward is not attendance but reproduction ... not size, but sending capacity."

Warren said it takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people, and all kinds of people to plant all kinds of churches. The defining mark of a mature church, he said, is whether it reproduces.

"All of the doomsday predictions of the SBC would turn around if everybody would start having babies," Warren told Baptist Press in an interview. "God blesses the unselfish church that thinks about more than its own church."

During his Pastors' Conference message, Warren described the PEACE Plan, an outreach strategy based on Jesus' ministry that nearly 15,000 Saddleback members have implemented to plant churches in all 195 nations around the world. PEACE stands for: Plant churches, Equip leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick and Educate the next generation.

At the end of the session, scores of pastors laid response cards on the main stage, committing to be part of planting churches in America and reaching the world's 3,800 unengaged people groups, in sync with initiatives of the North American and International Mission boards. Cards will be shared with the two boards for follow-up and strategic planning.

Saddleback, which has planted churches every year since its inception in 1980, has committed to provide training and will be launching a church planting academy this fall. The academy will take 100 church planting interns, provide housing and training for one year, and then send the interns back to their home churches to be sent out as church planters in the United States and around the world. Saddleback also will provide curriculum for churches that want to become church planting academies.