When Warren led a delegation of about 50 Saddleback members and other supporters to Rwanda in July, he was treated like visiting royalty. He dined at the ranch of President Paul Kagame, met with business leaders, and borrowed the President's helicopter to tour church projects. Visiting a town near Rwanda's famed gorilla reserve, Warren was met by a dance troupe and a band of drummers—a welcome that most dignitaries would have acknowledged with a smile or a wave. Not Warren. He joined the dancers, his shirt flapping in the wind, then grabbed a pair of drumsticks and whacked away until the local Anglican bishop pulled him away to a briefing.

This man is going to defeat poverty, illiteracy, and disease in Africa? The notion that anyone, let alone a white, middle-class minister from Orange County, can parachute in and figure out how to address problems that for decades have resisted the efforts of Western governments, aid groups, and Africans themselves—well, it brings the word "hubris" to mind. Selling books is one thing, stopping malaria quite another.

Warren is a latecomer to the cause of social justice, as he confessed to about 500 church leaders in a hotel in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. "I have been so busy building my church that I have not cared about the poor," Warren said. "I have sinned, and I am sorry." He says much the same thing about AIDS. "I felt like anyone who was HIV-positive probably deserved to be ill," he said.

It was Kay who changed his mind, after she read a magazine story that said Africa was home to 12 million orphans. The number haunted her. She consulted with experts and then visited Mozambique. "AIDS became personal," she says. Soon AIDS became Rick's cause too.

PEACE stands for Partner with or Plant churches, Equip servant leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, and Educate the next generation. "We don't know how to do this," he told the pastors in Kigali, "but together we can figure it out. I'm going to get the best minds I can to help me." About all he knows for sure is that the project will be driven by local pastors who will get help from churches in the developed world. "The church has a distribution point in every community," he says, "and we have a massive army of volunteers that neither business nor government has." On the contentious issue of whether to support the distribution of condoms to help prevent AIDS, Warren has yet to take a public stance. He told FORTUNE he was studying the question, but an aide says he will likely adopt the successful ABC public awareness campaign in Uganda; that stands for abstinence, be faithful, and when all else fails, use condoms.

Some businesspeople have bought into the PEACE plan. Murdoch gave $2 million. Saddleback members like John Kang, a tech-industry CEO, are lending expertise. So is Ritchie, the former Chicago options trader; he is so impressed with the quality of Rwanda's leadership, particularly Kagame, that he has recruited other CEOs to help stimulate entrepreneurial efforts there.

Warren would like to make Rwanda the world's first "purpose-driven nation." The tiny, mountainous land, which suffered a genocide in 1994, is quietly regenerating itself. Speaking to a rally in Kigali, Warren said, "In the Old Testament, God took a small nation and He blessed the world with it.... Just as God used Israel to bring the Good News to the world, I believe that God wants to use Rwanda, this nation, in the 21st century."

Skeptics abound. An International Monetary Fund study released in June found that $1 trillion in foreign assistance had been spent in Africa in the past 50 years without much to show for it. "I do not believe that Rick Warren has a bad bone in his body," Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, has written. "But I do believe that his remarkable enthusiasm is fueled by considerable naiveté."

 
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