John Perkins

I went to hear John Perkins with my wife and some friends the other night. Here are some of the notes from that talk. He’s amazing.

7 helping principles for those involved in social justice:

1. Family: Create and establish family among your people
2. Truth: bring truth back through faith the bible
3. Purpose: it is purpose/vision which keeps us from getting addicted to ourselves
4. Courage: because fear paralyzes. He says that courage is to live out your convictions in the face of fear.
5. Identity: you have to know yourself & your limitations real or imagined. Eliminating the imagined limitations, such overcome race as a limiting issue is imperative. You have to know yourself as precious in God’s sight.
6. Suffering: which he has done a lot of, must be seen not as an ill one must endure, but suffering is a discipline. Suffering has great value for us, it forms us into the likeness of Christ.
7. Faithfulness: never give up.

My favorite part of his talk was in the section on identity. He used the words to the Children’s Sunday School song “Jesus loves the little children…brown and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” He said how important of a song that it for him. He said “I’m not gonna let my blackness stand in the way. And I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to push your whiteness out of the way.” I don’t know why it struck me, but I might never forget he said that.