Lead pastor at Gateway Community Church, John Burke and his congregation are dedicated to helping unchurched people become a unified community of growing Christ-followers, no matter what their background or past. He is the author of the book No Perfect People Allowed: Creating a Come-as-You-Are Culture and also author of the book, Soul Revolution, which will be released at the Summit. Burke is the founder and president of the Emerging Leadership Initiative, a collaboration of progressive, like-minded churches partnering together to provide the foundation for a church planting movement aimed at reaching postmodern America.
Notes from this session follow.
- Making and maintaining good soil is everything when it comes to growing flowers.
- A Christian leaders job is to make and maintain good soil for spiritual growth.
- 1 Corinthians 3
- It’s God’s job to grow people, our responsibility is the soil.
- What kind of soil to the people around you need to grow into the people God intended them to be?
- Are you willing to get your hands dirty?
- How many sexually active, drunk athiests do you have in your church?
- People in messy situations don’t change overnight.
- It’s not the healthy that need a doctor but the sick.
- Am I leading more like Jesus or like the Pharasees?
How do we lead in a way the creates good soil?
- Grace
- Grace says come as you are.
- Do you see others as a masterpiece worth restoring?
- Remove barriers to people experiencing grace. Acts 15:10-11
- What are the barriers? Listening to the people around you.
- The perception of hatred of gays is a barrier to many.
- I’m asked 2 questions more than any other – what do you think about gays, what do you think about other religions.
- In every culture there are cultural barriers to grace. We must remove the barriers without compromising truth.
- Authentic confessing community
- What if we invite messy people into our churches and small groups and they never change? Then you’ll be like Jesus.
- Stay connected to God
- The one thing we most do and lead others to do is to stay connected to God.
- Grace was not only given for heaven, but so that we could be connected to God in this life.
- Spiritual leadership is the art of getting people to do this one thing.
- 60/60 experiment – For 60 days, they set their watches to beep every 60 minutes to remind them to reconnect with God.