Global PEACE Church Gathering

At this month’s Global PEACE Church Gathering, historic steps were taken toward meeting our Daring Faith goal of helping take the Good News to the last 3,000 unreached tribes. This final frontier project of our global PEACE Plan brought together 100 Global PEACE Churches from 30 countries for strategic discussions and global commissioning by Pastor Rick.

Held at the Saddleback Ranch Training Center on May 10–12, this event was filled with vision, planning, and action steps to help churches fulfill the Great Commandments and Great Commission.

According to Mike Constantz, Pastor of The PEACE Plan, there’s never been a better time to host the gathering than now. “It’s based on 30 years of experience in training leaders on church health,” says Mike. “A year ago, we made the decision to invite Global PEACE Churches to the event and to have them commit to training other churches. This truly was a historic moment in commissioning the first 100 Global Churches.”

In order to be a Global PEACE Church (GPC), pastors must commit to modeling a healthy Purpose Driven church, agree to mentoring 100 other churches, and pledge to mobilizing 10 other churches to become GPCs. The gathering helped formalize their commitment for exponential growth going forward.

In commissioning the leaders, Pastor Rick prayed over the entire congregation, asking that God would guide them in their calling to reach the unreached. In unison, everyone repeated the prayer of commission, many speaking out in their own language after hearing the words translated into their native tongue.

Empowering these 100 churches to equip 100 other churches is taking us one step closer to meeting our Daring Faith goal. By the year 2025, that would result in 10,000 GPCs influencing 100 million lives. This nationwide movement is building healthy churches, transforming communities, and planting churches where none exist.

To identify potential GPCs, Saddleback PEACE pastors spent the past year traveling the globe, instilling the Purpose Driven and PEACE training strategies into like-minded leaders. In the process, they discovered a deep hunger among pastors to develop healthy disciple-making churches. The fruit of their efforts led to many leaders earning the prestigious Church Health Award, setting them apart as models for other churches.

“Every movement needs a model, and a healthy model can catalyze a movement,” says Mike. “A model becomes a movement when others are inspired by the vision and begin to replicate its results. Only then can real change happen.”

Early signs of that movement were evident in Rwanda, a nation impacted by the PEACE Plan 10 years ago. Over one million people have been lifted out of poverty, orphanages have been emptied through adoption, and tens of thousands have come to know Christ. The PEACE Plan's success in Rwanda has sparked international interest by other countries desiring the same training and national strategy. Now with more healthy churches in place, pastors are positioned to steward the next generation of GPCs.

“It’s exciting to see the enthusiasm of churches around the world,” says Mike. “They want to be training churches and part of the vision. For them, it’s not just about being healthy churches, but also about training others. Thirty countries have already said ‘count us in’. Now, it’s about coming together globally to help develop the PEACE plan and train other churches.”

Represented at the GPC gathering were churches from Latin America, Asia,  Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. During the event, Purpose Driven strategies were discussed, as well as  coaching methods and resources related to PEACE. A highlight was Pastor Rick’s insight on the big vision, staying focused, and coaching others.

In the midst of this historic launch, several challenges are on the horizon which require prayer and planning. Moving from 100 churches with 30 languages, to eventually 1,000 churches will require a great need for translation of materials. Additionally, many of the rural communities have a high illiteracy rate meaning that training materials must be converted into audio versions.

Despite these obstacles, we see that God is guiding his people to reach the remaining 3,000 tribes where there is no believer, no Bible, and no body of Christ. According to Mike, the way to reach this Daring Faith goal is to have churches around the world commission others. “We can’t just do it from Southern California,” he says, “but rather have thousands of other churches fulfill that task. It’s about mobilizing and equipping them to plant churches where none exist. In that way, we will reach the Daring Faith goal sooner.”