Does Rick Warren Deserve Benefit of the Doubt?

Rick Warren has influenced millions. His megaselling book "The Purpose Driven Life" has sold millions of copies and remains at the number 2 spot of the CBA hardcover bestseller list. Purpose Driven Church Conferences have trained well over 300,000 pastors and countless churches of all sizes and denominations have worked their way through the six week, 40 Days of Purpose study course. Recently, the focus of Warren's ministry has shifted. Warren's Purpose Driven Organization has been greatly scaled back laying off 30 staff members and allowing another 24 positions to be phased out by attrition. Warren is now focusing on preaching across Africa and Asia. He believes his purpose driven philosophy can be applied to the devastating problems in Rowanda where desparation on the part of government leaders has opened the door for Warren's message. Warren has also thrown his philosophical hat in the politically charged arena of global warming. He, along wiht over 70 other Evangelical leaders signed a statement urging churches to recognize global warming as a serious problem and do whatever they can to help combat the problem. This has proven to be a very controversial move since many evangelicals (including me) have criticized the whole global warming movement as little more than science being driven by ideology. The United Nations has clearly stated that global warming is one of the issues it plans to use to unite all the countries of the world under some form of global government. When you add the fact that radical environmental groups around the world use global warming as their mantra for land grabs through the court system you have the reason so many eyebrows are being raised over Rick Warrens new direction for ministry.