Megachurch pastor Rick Warren may cause occasional controversy when he enters an inaugural podium or gets interviewed on television, but Time magazine decided he is worthy of their 2009 list of 100 most influential people in the world.

Writer Nancy Gibbs said his simultaneous fights against poverty and AIDS and declarations that abortion, euthanasia and stem-cell research are “nonnegotiable” make him worthy of the list’s category of “Heroes & Icons.”

“This ideological evanescence ensured that the left would be furious when Barack Obama asked Warren to offer the invocation at his inauguration _ and that the right would be furious when Warren accepted,” she wrote. “But in the middle are thousands of pastors whom Warren trains and millions of seekers who follow his every word. Which means he is right where he wants to be.”