![\"dream-with-me\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/644\/2017\/08\/dream-with-me.jpg\")
<\/a>I was honored to be asked to write the foreword for John Perkin\u2019s new book\u00a0Dream With Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win<\/a><\/em>, released a few months ago.\u00a0Dream With Me<\/em>\u00a0is wonderful. I read, loved, and highly recommend it. The book speaks for itself, but far more if you know the man behind it. So it\u2019s John Perkins and how he\u2019s influenced me that I want to talk about. Mine is only one story. Thousands, if given the chance, would gladly tell their stories about John\u2014and one day, at great banquets with Christ at the head of the table, they will.<\/p>\nThere are people who I can honestly say changed my life. John Perkins is one of them.<\/p>\n
In 1976, I read\u00a0Let Justice Roll Down<\/a><\/em>. It stunned me. In the book I learned that in 1946, when John was sixteen, his brother Clyde was shot and killed by a deputy sheriff while waiting for a theater to open. Twenty years later, John spoke out for voter registration and took on segregation when he enrolled his son Spencer in an all-white high school. After organizing a boycott, he was arrested. His beloved wife, Vera Mae, and his children, who were outside the Mississippi jail, heard him beaten and tortured.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not easily impressed, but after two hours I knew John Perkins was the real deal. Jesus came \u201cfull of grace and truth\u201d (John 1:14 NKJV<\/a>). Christ\u2019s fingerprints were all over John. He could have been angry and bitter; instead, he embodied gospel grace. He was incredibly kind to me, a thirty-four-year-old white suburban pastor trying to understand the world. Jesus flipped a switch in me that day, as he has with countless others who\u2019ve hung out with John.<\/p>\n A year later, not coincidentally, I became involved in peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience, modeled after the civil rights movement. This resulted in multiple arrests, brief jail stays, the loss of my job, and decidedly unpopular news coverage. The cause was different (defending the rights of unborn children), but as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, \u201cInjustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n I attended a Christian Community Development Association National Conference where John Perkins spoke. That afternoon as he walked me down the streets of Jackson, stories overflowed from his heart and mind. He took me into a thrift shop where he found an old hat that was tagged for twenty-five cents. He tried it on and asked for my verdict. I told him it looked snazzy. I\u2019ll never forget his delight at that treasure he\u2019d found!<\/p>\n The girl at the counter recognized John as the founder of the ministry that owned the thrift shop and said, \u201cDr. Perkins, you shouldn\u2019t pay for that!\u201d He insisted and then handed her the quarter and proudly put on his hat. I smiled every time I looked at him the rest of the day. What great happiness this man found in something so small\u2014he saw life crowded with God\u2019s kindnesses, which helped me see the same.<\/p>\n My favorite character in my novels is Obadiah Abernathy, who played baseball in the old Negro leagues. He modeled dignity, grace, wisdom, and humor. My sports inspiration for Obadiah was Buck O\u2019Neil of the Kansas City Monarchs, but my spiritual inspiration was John Perkins. Whenever I wrote dialogue for Obadiah, I asked myself,\u00a0What would John say?<\/em><\/p>\n There\u2019s so much good in\u00a0Dream With Me<\/a><\/em>, because it flows straight out of John\u2019s heart. It\u2019s honest, humble, prophetic, and Christ-honoring. We need to hear it.<\/p>\n![\"let-justice-roll-down\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/644\/2017\/08\/let-justice-roll-down.jpg\")
<\/a>I knew all this from reading that powerful book. But in 1988, I met John when both of us were speaking at a writers\u2019 conference. I took him to lunch and asked him questions. He told me he had dropped out of school in the third grade, but our coffee cups weren\u2019t half empty before I realized he was one of the wisest men I\u2019d ever met. John smiled a lot and then shed a tear. When he crossed his legs, his raised pant leg revealed a sizable scar. I don\u2019t know whether that scar was old or new, temporary or permanent, from an accident or surgery or torture\u2014but to me it symbolized what he\u2019d endured and gave power to his words about forgiveness.<\/p>\n![\"johnandveramae-perkins\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/644\/2017\/08\/johnandveramae-perkins-300x243.jpg\")
When arrests and lawsuits kept me from continuing as a pastor, I started Eternal Perspective Ministries, which continues to give away all my book royalties to kingdom causes. Besides missions, pro-life work, and helping the poor, some of my other central concerns were racial justice and reconciliation. This came about because of John\u2019s influence, and I\u2019ve been honored to support the\u00a0John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation<\/a>\u00a0for Reconciliation, Justice, and Christian Community Development.<\/p>\n![\"more-than-equals\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/644\/2017\/08\/more-than-equals.jpg\")
<\/a>When writing my novel\u00a0Dominion<\/a><\/em>\u00a0in 1995, I made my main character a black journalist who grew up in Mississippi. I immersed myself in black history and interviewed many African Americans (including Reggie White, who was then playing for the Green Bay Packers). I contacted John\u2019s son Spencer, who lived in Jackson with the family of Chris Rice, a white brother. Chris and Spencer had coauthored\u00a0More Than Equals<\/a><\/em>, a book on racial reconciliation that I really appreciated. I asked if I could meet with them and ended up in their home with their families.<\/p>\n![\"RA_wiith_John_Perkins\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/644\/2017\/08\/RA_wiith_John_Perkins.jpg\")
In 2008, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association honored John Perkins with the Jordon Lifetime Achievement Award. I canceled whatever was on my schedule to attend the event at which he was presented with the award. After John spoke, I waited at a distance. Though ten years had passed since we\u2019d last seen each other, his face lit up when he saw me, and he called me by name. A photographer snapped a picture of John greeting me, his hand on my shoulder, which appeared on the front page of a newspaper the next day. I still treasure that photo.<\/p>\n