A couple of weeks ago I posted a story about my trip to Rwanda with Pastor Rick Warren and his wife Kay. My story was supposed to air on "Nightline," but got bumped. The story finally aired this week. Rick Warren, of course, has been very much in the news after hosting both presidential candidates at Saddleback Church in California, a church he and Kay started from scratch almost 30 years ago. Membership now tops 20,000. I was there for the forum and also filed a piece for "Nightline" about that. I came away deeply impressed with the way Rick Warren conducted the sessions. He asked interested and important questions, was respectful to both candidates and brought out important and fresh information about each of the candidates world views. But Rick Warren’s interests extend far beyond presidential politics. He and Kay are working hard to launch an "army of compassion" around the world to help deal with some of the most troubling and enduring of problems: poverty, health care and education. Invited to Rwanda by that country’s President Paul Kagame in the wake of his bestselling book, The Purpose Driven® Life (now topping 30 million copies in sales making it the bestselling hard-covered adult book of all time — excepting the Bible), President Kagame asked Warren to come and help him turn Rwanda into a "purpose-driven nation." Warren and his wife and their colleagues have launched their program — dubbed the PEACE plan — in Rwanda and plan to spread it to other countries around the world. Sixty-seven other countries have already signed up.

Needless to say, Warren made a fortune from the sale of his book. By the way, sales of the book, which was published in 2002, skyrocketed after the forum on Saturday. Well, the Warrens decided to live on ten percent of the money and give 90 percent of it back to the church. A reverse tithe. In Rwanda they have pledged a quarter of a million dollars of their personal funds to help build a new hospital in the country’s desperately poor Western province. The current hospital has no running water. During last Sunday’s church service he said the reason the book became a bestseller was "God knew he could trust me with the money."

Warren is not without critics, some of whom say he has taken Christian doctrine and turned it into a self-help easy-access plan. Such complaints have done nothing it seems to dull his self-confidence or his sense of humor. I hope you’ll watch the story at the link below and let me know your thoughts.

Click here to read the story on "Nightline."