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If your vision is for a year, plant wheat.
If your vision is for ten years, plant trees.
If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.
CHINESE PROVERB

That proverb pumps me up, I’m committed to planting people. But what color of people?

Today, on America’s Black Forum, one of the guests said to Julian Bond and other black leaders that they were fired! That he was giving them a pink slip for not having mentored young black leaders over the last 25 years. That it was their fault they knew little of Dr. King, didn’t volunteer, weren’t in church, etc. Ouch.

I am currently mentoring anywhere between 10-15 young leaders in different areas at different levels. How many of these Young Leaders are Latino or African American, Asian, etc? 2 Latinos, 1 African American, 3 Asian Americans. This is a great start, but more has to be done. How many Latino, African American, Asian leaders go to my church or am I in relationship with? The ratios are about right.

Would I get a pink slip too?

I don’t want to get a pink slip for not having mentored young Latino men and women as well as other minority leaders. The problem is that most of the people in my church are White. So the percentages are about right for my context.

So should I say, “I want to mentor Latino leaders at my church”? That may come across as narrow to my mostly White church. And here’s the rub, most of the young non-White leaders in my church, see themselves as, should I say it, White. Most of our non-White young leaders are seeking to fit in, to assimilate to the majority White culture, not the other way around.

I recently spoke to a young Latino leader, an educator, professional musician, leader, ambitious, but lacking in male role models. He doesn’t see himself as a young Latino leader, just simply as a young professional.

My opinion, is that this is part of the ‘coming out’ process I went through.

Stage 1: Assimilate totally to the majority culture
Stage 2: Assimilate partially to the majority culture
Stage 3: Identify with my own culture
Stage 4: Bring my culture into the majority culture and make the world a better place

I read a version of these stages in a book a while back.

Now some would say, in Christ there is no Black nor White, which I never get. I don’t even know that Heaven is void of culture, there’s a lot of tribe, tongue, culture, nations language in Revelation. But here on earth, culture is real, and it is something to share and learn to deal with. Otherwise we’ll just Crash into each other as the movie claims and end up making really bad choices.

So back to mentoring minority leaders, I need to put myself in contexts where these young men and women are. Whether at my church, or at the church plants of some of my pastor friends. And I hope they want this connection.

So what wisdom do you guys have? How do I bring culture into the conversation with non-White leaders? I can think of a few friends that connect with their culture, but realistically, most of them leave our church after a while. They don’t feel they fit in. That’s part of why I’m there.

Maybe today’s church visit inspired me. Today my wife, children and I went to the Dream Center with Matthew Barnett in downtown Los Angeles at Angelus Temple. Large, amazing, diverse. Pastor, as they call Matthew Barnett their senior pastor, taught on kindness from Eph. 4:32, very convicting.

The band was large, concert level, like Leno, Letterman, Hillsongs, Lakewood, an incredible remodel of that old building. They were amazing. Somewhat me-centered worship, help me, love me, I give you me, etc. not enough You are Good, You are Holy, You are Faithful. But if I was to do downtown Long Beach, that’s a great model of gospel, worship, “Hope for the Homeless”, “Adopt a Block”, entrepreneural vibe, new this, new that, new cafe business opening up this week. And what touched me the most was the diversity of people, poor and rich, actors and homeless.

The sad thing is that some in my context would say, don’t develop young leaders around culture, just develop leaders. I’m doing that, but I’m not seeing non-White leaders developed. I am seeing leaders developed, but I hurt for the lack of mentorship among my Latino, African American, Asian and other friends. Something has to change. After all, I don’t want to get that pink slip.

Into the future,

davidT