Leadership Summit 4: John Burke – Leading in New Cultural Realities

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.