Rwanda "the first purpose-driven nation."

Already established as perhaps the most important voice in contemporary American Evangelical Christianity, Rick Warren last week pressed the button that he hopes will take his "brand" to the ends of the earth. Almost offhandedly at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of 1,700 pastors that Warren later told TIME was "the most important conference of my life," the author of the Purpose Driven Life threw open participation in his PEACE coalition to the wider Evangelical community. It was the Evangelical equivalent of a long-awaited IPO of a tech start-up whose brand the cognoscenti have predicted will become a global juggernaut: The PEACE coalition is a plan of epic ambition, to turn at least half of the world's tens of millions of Christian churches into a giant "network of networks" dedicated to relieving the poverty and misery of the developing world.

Over the last four years, Warren has "beta-tested" his plan by sending almost 8,000 members of his own 22,000-member Saddleback Church congregation, and an undetermined number from 12 other congregations, to work in 68 nations. The flagship project has been in Rwanda, whose President, Paul Kagame, has declared his intention to make his country the world's first "Purpose-Driven Nation."

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