The stories that follow touch on conference highlights, including new ways to minister to people affected by HIV/AIDS and the challenge presented for churches and Christians to find their places in responding to the crisis. Please contact media@purposedriven.com with any questions.

Saddleback hosts historic church-based
HIV/AIDS conference
By Shannon Baker

"If you are going to join this battle against HIV/AIDS, it has to start in the heart – you have to care. One day you are going to be judged by how you treated other people. You may not be able to change the world, but you can change the world for somebody." Rick Warren

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) –  Last week nearly 1,700 people from 37 states and 17 countries joined forces to repent, pray, teach, and show God their commitment to fight the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In what Kay Warren, wife of Saddleback Church Senior Pastor Rick Warren, called “a wake-up call and a kick in the butt” for the Church, the Disturbing Voices HIV/AIDS Conference at Saddleback Church sought to help the Church break the stigma of AIDS and set the pace for the HIV testing and treatment.

With 54 speakers in plenary sessions and workshops on Nov. 29 and 30, the conference is the first local church-based gathering designed to mobilize congregations all over the world to address HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. The conference was co-sponsored by Saddleback and Willow Creek Community Church located in the Chicago suburbs. READ MORE ... | CONFERENCE PHOTOS

HIV/AIDS conference shifts focus
from education to action
By Whitney Kelley

Appreciation for courage Conference attendees greet and hug the HIV/AIDS sufferers that courageously stood before the crowd of almost 1,700 at the close of Saddleback Church's first HIV/AIDS conference Nov. 30. (PD) Photo by Allison Cox

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) — During the second day of the Disturbing Voices International HIV/AIDS Conference, Rick and Kay Warren focused the nearly 1,700 participants on the practical and pragmatic ways of combating the disease.

“Yesterday was the problem side,” Rick Warren said as he opened the session at Saddleback Church. “Today is the solution side. Statistically you have someone in your church who has HIV/AIDS. So, how do we address it locally? And how do we do it locally?”

A tag-team line-up of pastors answered the question by using the acrostic C.H.U.R.C.H. to outline the response being put forth in this conference. READ MORE ... 

Repentance, acceptance enable loving
ministry, Kay Warren says
By Kelli Cottrell

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) — The world is not looking for good talkers, but good lovers, Kay Warren told an audience of close to 1,700 at the Disturbing Voices HIV/AIDS Conference at Saddleback Church on Nov. 30.

Warren relayed four things it takes to become better lovers of our neighbors as prescribed by Jesus as the second greatest commandment: repentance, acceptance, presence, and endurance.

After traveling to Africa and visiting with AIDS patients, Warren confessed she needed to repent of her sin of prejudice. READ MORE ...

Attack on AIDS part of global
P.E.A.C.E. strategy, Rick Warren says
By Shannon Baker

“It is my goal to move the American Church from self-centeredness to selfless service, from consumerism to contribution, … from an audience to an army, and spectators to participators.” Rick Warren

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) — Rick Warren’s desire to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic is just one part of a comprehensive strategy to mobilize millions of local churches and their members to attack the world’s greatest problems.

“The greatest need in the 21st century to release the pent-up, latent power in the average people in the local churches in the world,” asserted Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

Having been confronted with the overwhelming AIDS crisis while visiting in Africa, he found himself on the ground surrounded by the African landscape, asking God, “What else am I missing? What other problems are in the world?” READ MORE ...

Rick Warren tests negative for HIV,
but positive for determination
By Whitney Kelley

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) — Dr. Rick Warren voluntarily submitted to a free HIV screening in front of media and staffers at a World AIDS Day press briefing.

“I am taking this test publicly so we can start the process of reducing the stigma related to just being tested,” Warren said on the closing day of the Disturbing Voices HIV/AIDS Conference held at Saddleback Church. “Silence is deadly, and so is ignorance. Until you know your status, you are in denial.”

Paul Cimoch, director of the Center for Special Immunology in Fountain Valley, Calif., performed the test on Warren using the OraQuick Advance mouth swab. The test screens for both HIV1 and HIV2, and uses the tissue fluid between the cheek and gum. READ MORE ...

Churches must be local hero ministering
to people with HIV/AIDS
By Kelli Cottrell

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) — Five leaders on the cutting edge of caring for those with HIV/AIDS explained six ways a church can minister to those with the deadly disease at the Disturbing Voices HIV/AIDS Conference at Saddleback Church Nov. 30.

“Now we’re going to kick into high gear and show you how to be the church to people suffering with AIDS,” said Pastor Rick Warren on the second day of the first HIV/AIDS conference sponsored by his church and Lynne and Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Church. “The church must be involved.” READ MORE ...

Rwandan minister of state
welcomes Church in AIDS fight
By Shannon Baker

KIGALI, Rwanda (PD) — Dr. Innocent Nyaruhirira is concerned about his country.

As his homeland, Rwanda, is still being reconstructed after a 100-day civil war in 1994 claimed more than one million lives, he sees another genocide at hand – the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

In an interview at the recent church-based Disturbing Voices HIV/AIDS Conference held at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Nyaruhirira, minister of state in the Ministry of Health in charge of HIV/AIDS and other epidemics in Rwanda, explained his country’s devastating situation. READ MORE ...

Love homosexuals as Jesus
would, ex-gays exhort
By Janna Barber

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) — Chad Thompson began by telling his story.

“I remember sitting on my bed when I was in the fourth grade. I hadn’t even hit puberty yet, but I knew I was different,” said Thompson, author of Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would and a featured workshop speaker at the recent Disturbing Voices HIV/AIDS Conference at Saddleback Church.

“I knew that my feelings toward males were different from the other boys I knew,” Thompson said, explaining that he understood where homosexuals are coming from when they say they’ve always felt different, or they can’t remember ever not being attracted to someone of the same gender as themselves. READ MORE ...

Former condom advocate shares evidence
for fidelity and abstinence success
By Shannon Baker

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) — Edward Green, a senior research scientist with the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, used to advocate the use of condoms and clean needles to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Now, after evaluating the ABC model of AIDS prevention championed in Uganda, he now sees promoting the values of fidelity and abstinence is far more effective than just promoting correct condom use.

Green, an anthropologist now on leave from the Harvard School of Public Health, shared his insights during a “Rethinking AIDS Prevention” portion of the Disturbing Voices HIV/AIDS Conference held at Saddleback on Nov. 30. READ MORE ...

‘Put your hearts and backs into it,’ presidential adviser
tells AIDS conference attendees
By Kelli Cottrell

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD) — Ticking time bombs sit in our congregations, and it is time for the Church to get involved, Claude Allen, chief assistant to the president for domestic policy, told more than 1,500 participants at the first Disturbing Voices HIV/AIDS Conference at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Nov. 29.

“The Christian community has been silent far too long,” said Allen, who met with Kay Warren a couple of years ago and prayed with her in his Washington D.C. office about the AIDS pandemic.

Allen encouraged churches to begin addressing the AIDS crisis by “getting the bride ready for the groom’s coming.”

“The Church has a unique role to play and an equally important role responding to the call,” said Allen, who has traveled to all 15 nations identified by President Bush’s emergency AIDS plan as strategic targets in the fight against AIDS. READ MORE ...

Ambushed by Africa: How Lynne and Bill Hybels
joined the effort to combat the AIDS pandemic
By Kelli Cottrell

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD)–Even for the pastor of one of America’s largest and most influential churches in America, eradicating AIDS seemed daunting and hopeless.

Lynne and Bill Hybels, who co-hosted the HIV/AIDS conference with Pastor Rick and Kay Warren Nov. 29-Dec.1 at Saddleback, recalled the first time they encountered the staggering statistics of a disease that is killing millions each year across the world.

“We had gotten an e-mail from some person named Bono, and I thought it was a joke,” said Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Church near Chicago.  “After I read it, I called the number, and we met with Bono at a café in Dublin, Ireland. He told us about what was going on.” READ MORE ...

'God waiting on the Church,’ AIDS expert says
By Shannon Baker

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD)–A noted virology expert from the University of Maryland in Baltimore believes that God is waiting on the Church to provide the solution to AIDS, the greatest health crisis in history.

Prevention and treatment of the disease, which has killed more than 25 million people, has had to wait until the Church was willing to get off the sidelines to make an active impact in the disease, said Robert Redfield, the cofounder of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland.

“I believe it’s time for the church to seize the opportunity to begin the long – and it will be long – hard – and it will be hard – road to where global health equity exists.” READ MORE ...

Kay Warren: The Church must be
‘seriously disturbed’ about HIV/AIDS
By Shannon Baker

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (PD)–Kay Warren is “seriously disturbed” about the AIDS pandemic in Africa, and she thinks it’s high time all Christians got disturbed too.

Warren, the wife of Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., was the first speaker Nov. 29 during “Disturbing Voices,” an HIV/AIDS conference held at Saddleback.

With 54 speakers in plenary sessions and workshops, the conference is the first local church-based gathering designed to mobilize congregations all over the world to address HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. The conference is cosponsored by Saddleback and Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago suburbs.

Warren said her own journey into AIDS awareness began with a magazine article that shocked her with statistics and photographs. More than 25 million people have died from the aggressive disease, which has ravaged Africa, India, and China and is growing in the United States, Warren explained. Worldwide, 40 million people have HIV/AIDS. READ MORE ...