John and his team from Fellowship Monrovia led a racial reconciliation workshop for Life Pacific students, faculty, and staff bringing together every culture represented on our San Dimas campus – Black, White, Latin Americans, Mexicans, Asians, and more. His goal was to find common ground for each person and to encourage new conversations from a shared sense of responsibility and grace.

“During the discussion, we lament the difficulty of reconciliation,” John says. From the days of the Old Testament God’s people often complained to Him about how hard life can be, how messy it can be to understand others, and the challenge of seeing things from different perspectives.

“God isn’t bothered by our lament,” John adds as he encourages people of all races and cultures to share in this common ground. “This kind of honesty allows us to put down our arsenal, to set aside our position papers, and lament together that this is going to be hard.”
Since 1986 as a young native of New Jersey with an eye on becoming a missionary to Africa, John asked God to prepare him to bring people together. “God has a way of using relationships in our lives to change the trajectory of our ministries,” he says. One such relationship brought John from the east coast to Pasadena and an internship with American minister, author, and civil rights activist Dr. John Perkins.

The influence of Dr. Perkins was part of the reason John remained in California after the internship to complete his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and law school at USC. “Since high school, I had considered becoming a lawyer to help create change and influence racial reconciliation,” he says. “Becoming a lawyer developed the critical thinking skills I would need to bring about the kind of dialog and unity that God had in mind for people.”