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Should local churches have saving souls as "job  1"?

I don't believe that. I believe saving souls is one of five jobs that the church has. That's the whole idea of the Purpose Driven paradigm, that balance is what creates a healthy church. God has not called us to do one thing. He's called us to do five things. He's called us to worship, he's called us to fellowship, he's called us to disciple, he's called us to serve, and he's called us to reach out and share the gospel. Now we can't say, we're only going to do two of these, because we're tired. Or I think we're only going to do two of these because we're over-committed. They're all important. Para-churches are allowed to specialize; the church has to do them all.

In what ways has your focus on fighting HIV and global poverty changed you?

I cannot care just about my community anymore. For too long I did, and I really believe that in my heart God has called me to care about the whole world. When Wesley said the world was his parish, something in that resonates with me. Once you go overseas, you see how much the church is doing with so little and yet how much more they could do if they were just given some encouragement, or some training, or some love, or some funding. In terms of my own personal life, my heart gets more and more broken. The more I see, the more I am overwhelmed by two things. First is the enormous size of the task. Second is the enormous potential of ordinary people filled with God's spirit and letting God use them.

I genuinely believe that it is possible to take the gospel to every person. The timing? I have no idea. I've already told my staff that when I die, I want four words on my tombstone: At Least He Tried. We may not reach all the goals that we're setting out for, but that is irrelevant. The issue is: Do we love enough to even make the effort? Do we love enough to care? When people say to me: "Who do you think you are?" My response is, "That's the wrong question. The right question is: Who do you think God is?" Let your vision of God, your perception of God determine your vision, and what's possible. Look at God, and all of a sudden a whole lot gets easier when we think of the enormous number of people that are doing nothing and the enormous potential of ordinary people empowered by God, making a difference together. That's what the PEACE plan is all about.

I'm not in a hurry. I may be one of the most patient people. The biggest problem, I think, with many leaders today in the area of faith is we set goals too low and we try to accomplish them too quickly. What we need to do instead is the exact opposite. We need to let God expand our vision, our dreams and we need to take longer to do that, give our lives to do it.

When you heard for the very first time about the whole Ted Haggard scandal, how did you react?

First was grief for that family. I can't imagine what it was like for the children and the wife of Ted Haggard to be put under all of that pressure. One thing that put fear into me to maintain my own integrity was to think about, what the look of my children would be, or the look of my wife, that pain. To imagine that in my mind was almost unbearable, to think of how that would hurt my kids and hurt my wife. Second, I love Jesus Christ and [I wondered] how would that hurt Jesus? Third, I love the church, and how would that hurt the church?

Nothing surprises me anymore. I have been around long enough to know that given the right situation, I or you or anybody is capable of any sin. The moment you don't think that, you're already in trouble. The moment you say, "Oh that could never happen to me," you've already taken a step down that slippery path toward immorality. Since I was ordained to ministry, which was in 1975, 31 years ago, I have kept in my file cabinet a file called "the warnings file." Every time I read an article about somebody in ministry who has messed up it is either with their finances or with their ego or with their sex life, I cut it out and put it in that file. About every 6 months, I open up that file, and I just read through the wreckage that Satan has wreaked and the havoc of lies, just to put the fear of God back in me. That file is now more than two inches thick.

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December (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50