Lecture

We live in an ever-increasing multiethnic multicultural, multiracial, urbanized technological global world. This is the soil in which we as leaders must navigate, must engage, must bring about transformation and innovation. There’s no excuse. It’s the world before us, and we have to decide: Will we lead in it? Will we be change agents in it? Even though this world is multicultural, it’s multiracial, it’s multiethnic; it’s very polarizing. I mean, not just in the United States of America but all over the world it seems like the more diverse we get, the more divided we get. The more divided we are in religion, the more divided we are in the marketplace. I mean, you know, especially politically, we are so divided and we are in need of leaders who will speak, who will love, who will serve, who will navigate this multicultural world to make a difference, to bring about healing, to bring about peace, to bring about empowerment, to bring about a true biblical prosperity where those that are the have-nots, the underclass, the second class, have a sense that there is a God who brings justice, a God who brings hope, a God who brings truth, a God who brings revolution and revelation.

Newsweek Magazine in the year 2000 (the May issue) had an article entitled “Color My World.” It stated that in the United States of America about 30 years ago, one in one hundred children born in the United States of America were born of mixed race. That was 30 years ago: one in 100. It’s said in the year 2000 that by then it was one in 19. One in 19 of the children born in the United States of America are born of mixed race. In places like Texas and California and New York, it’s like one in 10. What this means, sisters and brothers, is that there’s a generation that is before us that will not live by the rigid race labels of the past. They’re not going to live under labels of black and white and red. We can’t sing the song anymore “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in . . .” I mean, it was a great kiddy song, but we’ve got to grow up now y’all. We’ve got to grow up. It was a nice little kiddy song, but we’ve got to grow up now.

We must lead. We must be prophetic. We must be professional. We must lift up a promise in this ever-increasing, multicultural, multiethnic world. And I have to be honest. I don’t stand before you believing that I’m this expert leader in this field, in this very tough field, down this lonely road. But that is not what is required of a leader in a multiethnic, multicultural world. It is to be willing to be invaded by a force that will equip and empower us to lead. All of us, all of us to some level must be willing to step out and lead multiethnically, multiracially, multiculturally. No matter where we are in the world, we must take on this challenge and step out, not as experts, not as the qualified, but the ones that actually need to be willing to have some things in us crucified that we might be able to lead in this effort.

John, in 1 John in Scripture, says this in chapter 4 verse 7, and I’m going to use some of these verses in 1 John 4 to lay out a framework of how can we lead in an ever-increasing, multiethnic, multicultural world. How do we engage culture for kingdom purposes? What I mean by kingdom is a godly kingdom, because we need now to lean on something above the government systems of the earth. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with democracy, but we need something that is more eternal, more supernatural, bigger than just democracy or capitalism or systems of the earth in order to truly engage this multicultural world that it might be transformed. And so John says in verse 7 of 1 John 4, he says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us,” let me stop here. In order to lead in this ever-increasing, multicultural world, we must become a beloved leader.

Now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a leader in the civil rights movement in our country, used a term. It was the “beloved community.” The “beloved community” was a term that cast a vision for how we could live in unity across racial lines, across ethnic lines—the beloved community—but there can be no beloved community if there aren’t beloved leaders. There has to be beloved leaders first.

Now how do you become a beloved leader? You become a beloved leader when you allow a force of God to come upon you, get rooted in you, and flow through you that you’re equipped to be a leader in a multicultural world. Now this text, there are two Greek words being used for love. One is agape love. This is the unconditional love of God, the charitable, merciful grace-filled love of God. But then I’ve got agapeo is the second Greek word and this word is to be loved and loving simultaneously. A leader in a multicultural world, a faith leader, must be one that the love of God comes upon us, is rooted in us, and flows through us that we can lead by loving the world. The same John that wrote this, wrote, “For God so loved the world . . .” God so loves the world, but guess what? He wants to love it through us. God wants to love the world. God wants to engage poverty.

You’ve been hearing these messages, if you’ve been tracking all the sessions: God wants to do something about education. God wants to do something about forced child prostitution. God wants to do something about people that feel rejected and downcast—through us. I have a pastor friend out in Colorado. He said, “When Jesus comes back, that’s ultimate justice, but until then, it’s just us.” It’s the leaders that will step out and lead. It’s just us y’all. Y’all if you’re from Texas, y’all, y’all. It’s us. But to be a leader in a multiethnic, multicultural world, it’s not about having tight sociology. It’s, are you loving, and can you be loving across race? Well I don’t know anybody that loves across race like God—to send His only begotten Son Jesus into the world that love might be expressed. You don’t even have to be a Christian to follow what I’m saying. There was a force beyond this place that came into this place that loved everybody. That loved a prostitute, that loved the tax collector, that loved the poor and the rich, that loved the religious and loved the nonreligious. I mean, a love, and a leader needs love. I mean, hey, education’s good. I’m educated. You know what I mean. Reading books is good. I read books. Get all the knowledge and the tools and the resources you can, but if you can’t love across race, you can’t lead today. If you can’t love across class, if you can’t love across urban and suburban, you’re going to have a hard time being a leader. Profit margin is not going to help you alone. You’ve got to have some love.

“What’s love got to do with it?” Tina Turner was kind of pathetic when she said that. Some of you all don’t know who Tina Turner is. It’s all right, but I mean she was off when she said, “What’s love?” I know I’m not quoting great scholars Bill Hybels. I’m sorry about that but Tina Turner, Lord, she changed my life. She changed my life.

So we must be a loving leader, but we also must be what John calls an abiding leader. He says in verse 12, “No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us.” There are people out here, they’ve never seen God. You know, we haven’t seen God. I mean we haven’t. But how do we see God? How does a leader express the justice, the mercy, the grace, the truth, the transformation that comes from a force beyond this place? What we’ve got to abide. We’ve got to be an abiding leader. That means we’ve got to abide in something beyond us. I told you, I’m not an expert. Yes, we started a multiethnic church 5 years ago, and it’s growing and it’s doing okay in the north Minneapolis area. But, I mean, I’m black. Okay, just in case some people are watching this on black and white, I’m on the black side. Okay, so I grew up in a black family in the black church. I didn’t grow up feeling qualified. See there’s some of us out here, we have not stepped out as multiethnic, multicultural engaging leaders because we don’t feel qualified. Let’s just be honest. You know, some people are like: I grew up in a rural town. I mean I didn’t see any black people until I got to college. Or I only speak one language or I, you know, I just don’t feel like, I mean, my background. I mean, you know, God called me here instead. Some people don’t step out and lead in a multicultural world because we use the excuse that we’re not qualified. First, if I had time I could tell you, God’s in the business of recruiting unqualified people, but second, it’s not about qualification. It’s about being picked up by a force beyond yourself as a leader.

I grew up in a black family in a black church, but in high school I was riding my bike. One summer I rode past I guess what you could have called a revival meeting of sorts, an outreach, a tent meeting. It was called the Soul Liberation Festival. It was at a Methodist church in south Minneapolis where I’m from, and I stopped my bike because I heard music. But what was interesting about this is it was multiracial. It was a multicultural gathering. I mean there were black gospel choirs. There were white quartet groups. There was contemporary rock-sounding music. There was a woman speaker. There was an African-American speaker. There was a Latino speaker. And as I sat there on my bike in high school, a force beyond this place hit me and said, “This is how church is supposed to be. Not segregated. It’s supposed to be like this.” And I know this sounds crazy. You know I mean usually if you’re talking to somebody and they say, “God told me,” I mean, what can you say after that? So I’m just going to say I think I heard. Okay, just to even it out, I think I heard God say, “What do you think about this?” A force beyond this place caught me up and ever since I believe that the church should be multiracial, that the church should be multiethnic, that in order for the church to be socially innovative, to be transformative in this world, it cannot be what sociologists use to prove race is still the issue.

Race is still an issue in our country. Race is an issue around the world. Class is an issue around the world. Ethnicity, tribalism, is still a deep evil force that courageous bold leaders must take on. Whether you’re in the marketplace, whether you’re in education, whether you’re in the banking system, whether you’re in the church, no matter where you are, you cannot escape disparities around the world that are based on race, class, and place. And the funny thing is we’ve been sitting in the church as if these disparities don’t exist among us. It’s easy to look out outside the church and say, “Look at those disparities.” I mean disparities by race, class, and place. But do you know that disparities exist in the church? Churches that are in the suburbs, that are upper middle class, that are predominantly white, tend to be more resourced, larger, more staffed than ones that are in the inner city and are predominantly a non-European American people group right where the most disparities are. Now isn’t that funny. Like you go to the places, and it’s not that they don’t need Jesus in the suburbs. There are deranged, crazy, out of their mind people in the suburbs. I met a few. I mean there are. And you’re going to say “Amen” to that unless it’s you, then you’re not. But the thing about it is, if the church was really about we want to transform where the pain is, we try to intentionally plant as many inner-city, multiethnic, multiracial churches as we possibly could. If we truly . . . now this is not to say abandon other church development and planting. No, we need churches everywhere and we need innovative, transforming churches everywhere. But we need intentional church. This is no time, leaders, for empire building. This is no time, leaders, for a fortress. We need a humble, sacrificial, generous force of children of God who will step out and go to the places where hurting people are.

And abiding means we get that by abiding in the force of God’s love, and we get that by abiding where the hurting people are. Abiding means stay. It means dwell. It means hang out a while. That’s how our church has grown. We not only planted our church in north Minneapolis, but we’ve decided to create dwelling places but not in a church building. Dwelling places in the Minneapolis public schools, dwelling places at a park, dwelling our offices at a recovery center for African-American men who are coming out of drug addiction. You know, sometimes to lead in this ever-increasing multicultural world, sometimes we have to stop dreaming about church buildings and we have to start having vision about transformation. It’s okay to find a dwelling place where the hurting people are at a community center, at a park, at a public school. We must find dwelling places that allow us to lead in this diverse world.

So it’s a beloved leader, it’s an abiding leader, but it’s also, and this has been helpful to me, verse 15 of 1 John 4 it says, “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” We must be confessing leaders. If we’re going to engage a divided, polarized world, we’ve got to confess where we’ve gotten it wrong. One of the best things a leader can do—and this was talked about earlier today about taking responsibility—one of the best things a leader can do is say, “My bad.” Like Jonah, you know, like there’s a story in the Bible of a guy named Jonah. God said, “Go here to these wicked people.” He said, “No, that’s all right.” He went the opposite direction and a storm arose. A storm arose, and he had to say, “Oh, the reason there’s a storm in the world is my bad.” I mean that’s kind of a hip-hop paraphrase of Scripture, but he was like “my bad, thou . . .” no he didn’t say thou.

Now I’m not a meteorologist, okay. I’m not a weather person, but I heard that how storms erupt is when high pressure meets low pressure. So when high pressure collides with low pressure, a storm erupts. Now I’m thinking maybe the reason we have racial, political, economic storms in our world is because it’s the high pressure of what God wants to do hitting the low pressure of what we’d rather do. The high pressure of what God wants to do in the world is bumping against the low pressure of what we’d rather do. Because I’ve talked to people—when I try to make my case for the multiethnic church—I’ve had some people say, “Look, I can’t endorse starting multiethnic churches. People want to go to church with people that look like them. People want to go to church with people that share the same values, that have the same story, that have the same experiences, so we’re going to develop churches like that because that’s the trend.” The trend is, the momentum is churches where people look the same. Now I’m, like, “The church is the only place that can use that argument. Like restaurants can’t say, ‘Hey, what you doing here, Marybeth, this is a black restaurant? Hey, black people like eating together. I mean, they’ve got the same food story. Can’t you see the black tables and the black silverware? Well that’s why we call it blackware. We don’t even call it silverware. It’s black. Now you can go on down there to Walleye Paradise. That’s where y’all eat.’ ” That’s crazy. You can’t do that. That’s crazy. The department store, there is no institution in the United States of America or beyond, probably that, can make the case, well, we only cater to people that are like each other but, like, the church can make that case. That’s low pressure. That’s the low pressure of what’s comfortable going against the high pressure of what Jesus died for.

Now, so we’ve got the beloved leader, the abiding leader, the confessing leader. The confessing leader is one that says, “Look, I’m confessing that I don’t know what to do.” I don’t think that there are people here, people that are watching that would speak against leaders engaging a multicultural, multiracial world that the church should be multiracial, that companies, that organizations should engage a multicultural world. I mean nobody would argue that. Most people are like, “Look, I’ve been to seminars on diversity. I’m been to workshops on race. And I come away just feeling guilty.” So wherever you are, confess that: “I want to do it but I mean we’re in an all-black inner city. What are we supposed to do? Well, I’m in an all-white suburb. What are we supposed to do? You know I feel like I go to these trainings and people make me feel guilty and I get offended, so then I don’t do nothing. I like the black church. I want to stay in it and I—we’re staying black, and how about that?” I mean, wherever you are, just confess that. You know what I’m saying. I understand the reasons for ethnic-specific churches, but what if we actually did something about the system and the ethos that created the black church, the Latino church, the all-Asian church, so that we could, wherever we can, have churches that are sneak previews of heaven that can be socially innovative. What if we actually looked at what caused the problem in the first place; and what if we saw ourselves beyond black and white, red and brown and yellow? What if we came to the conclusion that race labels aren’t really who we are?

The last point I want to make here, it’s where (verse 17) it says, “By this, love is perfected in us, that we may have confidence.” God wants to perfect something, and perfecting comes through pruning sometimes. Sometimes for God to do what God wants to do through us as leaders, some things have to be pruned. Some things have to die. Some things have to be rearranged. Now there is still a good case and reason all around the world for ethnic-specific churches. There is. You can make a case. You can make a case for why, if you can walk 10 blocks and all you see is African-American people, why there shouldn’t be an African-American church there. If you’re in a community where there is a large population of Southeast Asians and they’re first-generation immigrants, you need entities; you need places where they can have support. Where they can grow and develop and make the onramps that they need into the broader society. So I’m not saying that we should abandon ethnic-specific churches. There’s many reasons around the world for it, but we still cannot deny all of these communities around the world that are urban, multiracial, multicultural, hip-hop, and we have to engage them. We have to engage for change. I can’t endorse everything in hip-hop. I mean there’s just some things in hip-hop don’t make no sense; and I’m tired of grown men having little before their first name: Little Wayne, Little Wessey. You’re a grown man. Stop going with little. Take that little boy tank top off and put on some... See I don’t care. They got mad at Obama. I’m not running for president. We need to raise our kids. I ain’t running for president. I can say it. And it ain’t this inner-city black ones. I’m saying, look, crazy, deranged kids come in all colors and sizes and places, all over the world. We do not need any more grown men with little before their name. No more. I need a moment because I’m really messed up about this.

We’ve only got a few more minutes here, so check this out. What we have found is when a leader is willing to be a beloved leader, an abiding leader, a confessing leader, and a perfecting leader in this multicultural world, then how does that work itself out in community? (1) We must take an organic approach. What I mean by this is we must be opened as leaders to create communities where people of diverse backgrounds can meet in the same space and find reconciliation and find healing and find common ground. And if you’re a leader of an existing organization, look for leaders of leading organizations and ministries and churches that are different than yours and build relationships. We must have organic gatherings. At our church, you know, sometimes that means a block party, sometimes that means a potluck meal where we say bring a meal that represents your upbringing. I mean one time when we were first starting as a church we had these potluck meals where we had like the enchiladas next to the fried rice next to the collard greens. It was all together. I mean, in Minnesota. Yeah, you betcha, for sure. Minnesota, yeah. We did this. If this can happen in Minnesota, I mean, surely like Bangladesh, Johannesburg, Tokyo. If it can happen in Minnesota, you can have a multiethnic potluck in Minnesota. Yeah, you can do this. And so sometimes it’s got to be organic. Sometimes it has to be problematic. For us that meant we had to create a hip-hop worship experience in order to reach the urban subculture known as hip-hop. We had to start a community development corporation and offer programs in the area of youth development and economic development, leadership in this multicultural, multiethnic world to address disparities. Sometimes it’s systemic, but people don’t know that unless they’re educated. So we started a class where we bring people together of various backgrounds from different churches and we talk about city issues, race, class. Just talking about these issues. All of a sudden you can just take a breath and go, “Okay, the more understanding I get, the more community I have, the more relationship I build. I sense that God is equipping me to be a leader in this world.”

Now I want to close with this. Now I told you I was black at the beginning of this, so I hope that’s been firmly established. But a few years ago, I went to my family reunion. It was in Birmingham, Alabama, and I know everybody here has been to black family reunion before, so I won’t take the time to break it down. So at my family reunion—my family is from the south. My mom’s side from Alabama; my dad’s side from Louisiana. I don’t know why the majority of African-American family reunions are in the south in July. Oh, my Lord Jesus in heaven on high. It’s so hot, and there’s always a picnic on Saturday; and it’s like it’s 117 ½ degrees. And well, anyway, on Sunday everybody went to church; and at church I have a cousin who’s a genealogist, and so she was talking about our family tree. And so when she was talking about our family tree and background, I found out my great-great-grandfather was full-blooded Irish. I said “Say what?” Then I found out he married a woman that was half Cherokee Indian, half African-American, and she can trace her roots back to a slave girl named Esther. So she was a slave but she was named after a queen. My Lord. So I left this family reunion and I said to myself, I’m Irish. I mean if Bill Hybels can be Dutch, surely I can be Irish. So I’m Irish. I mean I get into it now. I eat Lucky Charms for breakfast. I mean I’m... Top of the day to you, laddie, I’m Irish.

When I left there, it helped fuel the call on my life. See, I can allow the world to limit me by saying I’m just black, but I’m more than that. I’m African-American. I’m Irish. I’m Native American. But I’m a son of God, but I’ve got a force from on high and I want to release you. This is where you can say, “Amen,” if you want to. I want to release you from the trap that you’re in. You’re more than white guy. You’re more than black woman. You’re more than white girl. You are a leader equipped all around the world by a force that is beyond you to bring about change, and you need to claim who you are. You need to claim who you are. I’m a child of God. I’m connected to the King. I’m multicultural and multiracial and supernatural. It’s in me. It’s who I am. I like what God is doing to me. I like the leader I’m becoming. I’m not where I am yet but I’m on the way to what I’m going to be. I’m not what my momma called me. I’m not what my daddy called me. I’m not what my coach called me. I’m on the way to being the leader that’s going to invade your world. I’m feeling this pain right now. Right now you need to stand up and claim who you are.