Washington Briefing - High Impact Leadership Council Breakfast

The Washington Briefing had a lot more than the Presidential candidates going on. The High Impact Leadership Coalition, headed by my friend Bishop Harry Jackson, was on Friday morning.

Early morning…. early early … so early I was shocked I was on time and in a suit no less. But that has nothing to do with this post …

Here are my notes from the breakfast …

Bishop Jackson started off with a quote from Ezekiel 13:1-7

1 The word of the LORD came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the LORD! 3 This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! 4 Your prophets, O Israel, are like jackals among ruins. 5 You have not gone up to the breaks in the wall to repair it for the house of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the LORD. 6 Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. They say, “The LORD declares,” when the LORD has not sent them; yet they expect their words to be fulfilled. 7 Have you not seen false visions and uttered lying divinations when you say, “The LORD declares,” though I have not spoken?

He says that we have lost our ability to speak out socially. We suffer from a case of social laryngitis. If we don’t have God’s backing we will have no impact. In Ezekiel, God was judging the prophets for not going into the “gap” and declaring the true weaknesses Israel faced.

Bishop said we needed to do five things:

Live Right - “Tell the truth and shame the devil.” We need to live right our selves and not be hypocrites. It starts with us.

Do Right - we must have outreach to touch people where ever our sphere of influence allows us too. We must make a difference.

Move Right - We have to debug the myths against the church. We need to unify more than ever before.

Pray Right - We need to deal with God on a transactional and transformational level. He then points to me and mentions Exodus. Let God deal with us in prayer. We also must pray right to have spiritual authority.

Speak Right - We need vision. We have unified around negatives not positives. Ezekiel was also told to be clothed with humility. God resists the proud.

We also need to apologize to God for …

Black, White, Hispanic sin of racism that has separated the church for 400 years.

Apologize to the culture for not being objective.

Apologize to the Nation for not being objective about rhetoric without reality.

Appearing to be more concerned with truth and not with them with love.

Apologize for lack of vigilance for particular groups. He mentioned the high rate of abortion in the black community and the very very rare number of Christian Pregnancy Counseling centers specifically centered on helping with that community.

He gave another example of the power of apologizing with honesty and humility. The example he gave was when the SBC apologized to the Black community for their institutional racism of the past in 1995. He said that since then, approximately 750,000 new black members have joined the SBC.

Bishop Jackson’s presentation was a very good balance. Most often when you hear people talking the talk of “T”ruth … they aren’t humble about it. Bishop showed that he didn’t pull any punches but also took the time to set the tone of humility. He even ended on that note in this speech. I find that honorable.

Technorati Tags: Bishop Harry Jackson, High Impact Leadership Coalition, Ezekiel 13, The Washington Briefing, Culture War