Moses

Moses was as no-nonsense as the above photo exudes. We had all had a goofy afternoon and evening, singing silly songs in the long car-ride to Kirongi, watching steam blow out from underneath the front passenger seat, joking around with the locals as we fixed our car alongside the hilly, Rwandan countryside, boating with the man from monkey island and swimming with the tsi-tsi eels. By the time we rolled around to dinner that evening, we were a laughing, silly bunch.

But we snapped to attention when Moses stood up to begin his presentation. He was serious and professional, with a laptop and power point cued up and ready to go. He spoke to us about Rick Warren's peace plan in Rwanda, explaining to us the many tiers and prongs that comprise it. P.E.A.C.E., he explained, stands for "Promote reconciliation - Equip servant leaders - Assist the poor - Care for the sick - Educate the next generation."

As I sat there quietly chomping my samosa, I thought this plan seemed a bit grandiose. Moses told us about the origins of the peace plan, and what Rick Warren initially identified as "the five global goliaths:" 1) Spiritual Emptiness, 2) Egocentric Leadership, 3) Extreme Poverty, 4) Pandemic Diseases, and 5) Illiteracy and Lack of Education. Again I thought, that's a wide swath of issues to be confronting.

Then Moses mentioned Peter Drucker. He definitely had my attention. Drucker, a former mentor of Warren, knows a thing or two about executing large scale projects. Moses talked to us about the influence of Drucker's "3 Legged Stool" concept in executing the peace plan. Drucker argued that the only way to affect change in society was to engage the public, private, and social sectors together in accomplishing a common mission. Those three legs must be:

• a public sector of effective governments
• a private sector of effective businesses
• a social sector of effective community organizations, including faith-based organizations.

Now I was starting to see. The peace plan Moses was describing for us was broad and all-encompassing on purpose. Moses was basically arguing that disjointed, narrow causes in Africa weren't effective because they were only engaging one nub of one leg of the stool. In order to keep the stool from toppling, cohesion was needed.

I sat there thinking to myself that it was a little ironic that I was hearing about this enormous project that seemed almost comical due to its scale from a man named Moses. I wonder what the Israelites thought about Moses' big plan to just walk out of Egypt, leave everything behind, cross the Red Sea, and start a whole new life. If I recall from my Bible history, they thought he was a little nuts. I think their particular criticism was the scale of the endeavor. Uproot an entire people that had been living there for generations. Walk away from a tyrant. Do the impossible.

Remembering the story of Moses of the Bible caused me to think twice about my incredulosity towards this Rwandan Moses and his vision for a new Rwanda. I reminded myself that there are no limits to what God can do for His people. I think it's no accident that God has a determined man named Moses as the face of the P.E.A.C.E. plan, hell-bent on freeing his people from the vicious cycles of poverty and violence.