John Burke – Leading in New Cultural Realities
Lead Pastor – Gateway Church
No Perfect People Allowed
Soul Revolution
1 Corinthians 3:6-9
Flower beds – a lot of work to help the soil – it’s messy and hard.
Does the soil you’re creating allow room for struggles and mess?
We have to be willing to get our hands dirty
Matthew 9:11 – 13
We should be here for messy, broken people.
What does this mean if we our christian leaders and our hands aren’t dirty with the messy soil around us?
Am I leading more like Jesus or am I leading more like the pharisees?
1. We have to cultivate the soil with grace – giving acceptance.
- Law says you must prove yourself to be morally acceptable, grace says come as you are.
- Many people don’t experience grace – giving acceptance from christians
- When we lead people to see the masterpiece in people first, they will accept and offer grace to them
- We have to cultivate environments that remove barriers between those far from God and grace
- Acts 15:10-11, 19
- Determine – what are those potential barriers to grace? Gotta get your hands dirty.
- How do we answer peoples questions to remove barriers to grace?
2. We have to cultivate the soil with authentic confessing community.
- James 5:16
- Stop pretending we are better than we are, be real and don’t hide your true self.
- Our job is not fixing, changing, or growing people. We can’t, only God can.
- Romans 8:4-5
This is the most difficult thing to do because our self-centeredness often overtakes our desire to be God – centered.
Challenge people – 60 days to stay in constant communication and be in constant responsiveness to his spirit.
A nice pitch for Gateway Church . . .
Efrem Smith
Lead Pastor – Sanctuary Covenant Church
We wanna be a sneak preview of heaven
We live in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, mult-racial, global, technological culture.
The question is are we going to lead in it? Will we be change agents?
30 years ago – 1 in 100 mixed races
2000 – 1 – 19 born in mixed race – 1 in 10 in some places.
We must lead, be prophetic, and lift up a promise in this world.
1 John 4:7 – We must become a beloved leader.
MLK – the beloved community
You become a beloved leader when you allow a force of God to come on you and flow through you in a multi-cultural world.
To love and be loved at the same time.
When Jesus comes back it’s ultimate justice, but until then – it’s just us.
If you can’t love across race or class you can’t lead today.
You must be an abiding leader – vs. 12
We have to abide in something beyond us.
We don’t lead in multi-culturally because we feel unqualified – but God’s into that – and you have to be leaning into someone who’s bigger.
In order for the church to be socially innovative – race can’t be an issue.
Tribalism is still a deep evil force courageous leaders must take on.
We need to reach the people that the church has forgotten.
This is no time for empires – we need a sacrificial force of the children of God who will go to (abide in) the places where the hurting people are.
We have to start dreaming about buildings and dream about transformation
You must be confessing leaders to lead a diverse polarized world - vs. 15.
Storms erupt in our world come when the high pressure of what God wants hits the low pressure of what we want to do.
There is no institution in America where you can discriminate – except the church
What if we changed the ethos so we can be racially diverse socially innovative churches?
vs 17. – and a perfecting leader -
we must take an organic approach – pot luck dinners
must take a programmatic approach – helping with child programs