Replies

“Did you see Rick Warren going to, I think it was Africa with Obama to conquer birth control and promote abortion? I didn’t see Bush or McPain doing trips like that.”

From a TV interview, and I believe this to all be true, or there being no evidence to the contrary;

MR. GREGORY: ...are you having on fighting some of the most difficult problems around the world, including your work on the continent of Africa?

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm. Well, David, in, in 2002 when I wrote “Purpose Driven Life,” and then it became a, a big best-seller and sold a lot of copies, it, it honestly brought in tens of millions of dollars. When you write the best-selling hardback in American history and the most translated book in the world except for the Bible, it’s tens of millions of dollars. And frankly, when this money started coming in, I—it scared me. I thought, I’m a pastor, I live a pretty simple lifestyle and I don’t need money, and so what am I supposed to do with this? And when you write a book and the first sentence says, “It’s not about you,” then you figure the money’s not for you, too.

So we made five decisions.

The first one was we’re not going to change our lifestyle one bit. I still live in the same house I’ve lived in 16 years. I drive a 10-year-old Ford truck, bought my watch at Walmart. You know, to me if you’ve got a good pair of jeans and a comfortable T-shirt, you don’t have a whole lot of needs. So we didn’t change it.

Second thing is I stopped taking a salary from Saddleback Church now seven years ago.

The third thing is I added up all the church had paid me in the first 25 years and I gave it all back. And I did that because I didn’t want anybody thinking that I do what I do for money. I do this because I love Jesus Christ and I love God, and it’s, it’s out of my motivation—and I love people that do this.

We set up some charities.

We have one called Acts of Mercy which my wife leads that helps people infected and affected with AIDS, and another one called Equipping Leaders, and we pay for leadership training all around the world. We set up a program called the PEACE Plan, P-E-A-C-E, which stands for Promote reconciliation, equip servant leaders—ethical leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, educate the next generation.

By the end of December next year, we will have—we will have, the PEACE Plan, have been to every single country in the world. There’s 195 countries, 193 in the U.N.—North Korea and Bosnia aren’t in the U.N. We will have been in every country doing these humanitarian works.