Pastor Leo Barbee, Jr. has been a faithful expositor of God’s Word for 63 years, serving for decades at Victory Bible Church in Lawrence, KS, and investing in countless young leaders. This week, Michael Morgan chatted with Pastor Barbee about how to raise up leaders with a priority of grace and compassion. Pastor Barbee isn’t a political activist, he is primarily a shepherd, and an extraordinary disciple-maker. As he likes to say, “I am a gospel preacher who just happens to be born black.”
First of all, I'd like to say that I am so thankful to God for your role in my life. You have been my pastor, my friend, the best man in my wedding, and a mentor to me for 24 years. When I first started attending Victory, I'd never been part of a multi-cultural church before. You were a respected senior pastor who'd been a leader in ministry for 40 years already; I was young, I was naïve, and you clearly had a lot on your plate. It would have been really easy not to invest in me. Why have you spent so much time over the years investing in cross-cultural discipleship?
Well, I believe in investing in what really matters—the Word of God and people. Our mission statement says L.E.A.D.: love all people; equip God’s people; advance God’s Kingdom; and defend the oppressed, all to the glory of God. “Each one, reach one, teach one.” That’s what we’ve sought to practice. We try to live that way, to see people as people. And when people come, we don’t make a distinction between white, black or hispanic. If they’ve been born of the Spirit of God, then we’re brothers and sisters in Christ. When we organized Victory, it was for equipping the saints, doing the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. Not building a large church—I’m not against huge churches or anything—but it was about building up the Kingdom. That’s still my concern. Whoever the Lord brings into our lives, there’s an opportunity to invest in the lives of people.
You've been very active in so many ways in ministry over the years—pastoring a church, working with the football team at the university, speaking up on community issues, etc. You’ve also developed deep and lasting friendships with people from all walks. How do you view friendship as part of the answer to the tensions we see today, and working towards racial reconciliation?
I believe you don’t demand a right to be heard, but you earn a right to be heard. And you earn a right to be heard by spending time with people through relationships. In many of our communities across this country there is not a real sense of relationship. I understand the different ethnicities—the black church, the white church, the hispanic church—but we need to look at it from the standpoint of the biblical church. There’s only one church.
I was attending a prayer group in Kansas City, oh, many years ago, and they were going to have a city-wide revival. And at the meeting, all of them, except maybe one, were white. And one of the gentlemen came up afterwards and said, “Pastor Barbee, we’re trying to get some of the leading black voices in the community, but they won’t come." And I said, well, let me tell you why. You’ve already got your organization set up—you want some black voices from the community, but you don’t have a relationship with them. You just want them to come as figureheads, and not listen to what they have. It’s a matter of building healthy relationships, and it costs. It costs in time, in talent, in prayer.
We’ve been having a prayer meeting at our church every Wednesday morning for almost ten years. I used to be the only black pastor because the other black pastors couldn’t attend—they had work; they were bivocational. And I shared some things from my heart. When the schools were being closed on the east side, where a lot of the blacks are, I went to the school board, and said to them, it’s putting some of the black people, some of the poor people, at a disadvantage. And it was. So when we had our prayer meeting, I said to some of our white pastors, “not one of you were at that school board meeting. And let me tell you why. You live on the west side of town.” But we need to be concerned with the total community. It’s a sacrifice.
We don’t have as many whites attending our prayer meeting now; I don’t know if it’s because they got offended or what. Every now and then I’ll see a pastor and he’ll say, “Y’all still praying on Wednesdays?” and I’ll say, “Yeah. Every Wednesday from 9-10, and you’re welcome.” It just has to be consistency. It is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
You’ve walked through several key moments of turmoil in our nation. Looking back, what do you think the church could or should have done differently, and what do you see as the most important steps for Christ-followers moving forward?
I was one of the leaders of the demonstrations in Kansas City, Missouri, when Martin Luther King and others were demonstrating. I was one of the boy preachers as it were, and there were a lot of older pastors involved. There was a sense that something needed to be done, and Martin Luther King was a man for our time that God used. It seemed like the country was somewhat ready for that particular time.
But there is a blind spot there that many may not be aware of. Let me give you a situation. In ’75, the Southern Baptist Convention had a revival in Anchorage, Alaska. I was one of the two black pastors. So, the first meeting, the person who was over it said to me, “Pastor, I want you to preach the first message.” I said I’d be more than glad to do it, to preach the Word of God. And afterward, this gentleman came up to me and said, “If I had known that you had so much to say, I’d have had you preach last and not first.”
Now let me tell you what he was really saying: “Well, we got two black pastors here, and the rest are whites. We got to have one of the two blacks to preach, so we need to get him up there, to get him out of the way, before the white pastors really get with it.” And in the back of his mind, “Well, most black pastors don’t say a lot, they whoop and they holler, they jump around.” So he said, “If I’d known you had that much to say, you’d have been last.”
There’s a blind spot. I believe that what’s happening now, Mike, is really exposing the deep-seated racism in our country, and not only that, across the world. I think it has come, not full-circle, but it’s been hidden, it’s been subtle. Many African-Americans are leaving evangelical churches because of the hypocrisy that they have seen. It’s a sad commentary on the body of Christ, it really is.
We need to come to the realization that sin is sin, and that there are no superior or inferior races or people: for those of us who are believers in Christ, we all have been saved by the same Jesus. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
For the future, there is a real challenge for the church to stand up and be the church. We recognize the fact that this world is under the control of Satan. Satan has "blinded the mind of unbelievers.” We know that people are lost. We know that there’s spiritual wickedness in high places. We understand that. But we as believers need to stand up and speak the truth regardless of the consequences.
Where is the church? Where is the black church and the white church? Where are they in these demonstrations? Speaking truth to the situation, being salt, being light—not angry, but standing up and speaking out with one voice—calling sin what it is, calling racism what it is… Where is the church?
As you know, one of my passions is to equip joyful, passionate disciples of Jesus Christ. We want to see churches that exemplify love and unity, and we want to be part of raising up a new generation of leaders who exude grace, humility, and a heart for justice and compassion. What do you think we need to do to be effective in that?
It begins in prayer, and asking the Lord to lead us and guide us and show us how we can be the church that he’s calling for in these last days.
I’ve always preached the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and people—all people—are welcome. It’s been my passion, to see people come to know Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. It doesn’t matter who they are. I didn’t set out to organize an inter-racial church, I said, “Lord, I want to preach in a gospel church and lift up the name of Jesus.” I think people can tell when you’re genuine, or when you’re just trying to accommodate folk. So I would suggest as you go to God in prayer, you say, “Lord, help us just to love people.” Some people want to target black folk, or hispanics, or white folks—no, just target people.
People will come in to Victory—and I give God all the glory—but people will come in and say, “We feel welcome here.” And I say, “You are welcome here.”
We’re not a perfect church, I’m not a perfect pastor. All churches have difficulties. When Paul talks to churches in the Bible, they have people problems, they have theological problems, relationship problems—there are no perfect churches, only a perfect Savior.
How would you encourage someone who is passionate about racial reconciliation but feels powerless to help, or feels like they are alone in the fight?
I would encourage them to pray and to say to God, “Lord, I’m available. However you want to lead me, use me, for your glory and your honor, to proclaim the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I ask you, Lord, to bring into my life a black brother, a hispanic brother, that we can love and encourage one another.” God will honor that, because he looks at your heart, he looks at your motives. I’ve prayed my whole life, “Lord, I don’t want to do anything that points to me as Leo Barbee, Jr..” I am who I am because God’s grace and God’s mercy and God’s sovereignty have brought me here, and God has been gracious to us.
I would suggest to pray, “Lord, help me to love people like you do; make me available to whoever you bring across my pathway,” rather than targeting people. Just be who God made you to be.
That’s so freeing. It’s so good, and so biblical. I know how you’re going to answer this next question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. What gives you the most hope for healing in our nation?
I’m going to go back to a very, very familiar passage of Scripture—and if I start crying, I’m not going to ask you to forgive me, because I’m just so passionate about this. We all know it, and we’ve been quoting it whether we’ve lived it or not. When God says, “If my people,” and he’s talking to believers, not those in the world—“If my people, who are called by name, will humble themselves” in other words, admit where we are—Lord, forgive us, forgive us for our sins! Just call it what it is, and not dance around, call sin, sin! “…will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways…” We’re not talking to the world. The world doesn’t have the answer. Jesus is still the answer. “…then I will hear from heaven, I will forgive their sins, I will heal their land.” I’m convinced, Mike, beyond a shadow of a doubt: if the Body of Christ will simply cry out to God and repent from our sins, I believe that we will see healing. We need to ask God to forgive us individually, and to forgive us corporately, and I think we will see an outpouring of God’s Spirit like we’ve never seen before. I’ve said this before: God’s work, done God’s way, will get God’s results.
What could I do to be your friend and be an encouragement to you today, Pastor Barbee?
Continue to pray for us. And this may sound kind of trite, but keep doing what you’ve been doing in our friendship down through the years. I want to encourage you not to get weary in what you’re doing. I know sometimes you wonder if it’s making any difference, but we don’t walk by sight, we walk by faith. Don’t get discouraged. Just be consistent where you are, in your friendship; continue praying for us. Nothing different, no programs or anything, just keep being yourself, and we’ll keep praying for one another, encouraging one another, and keep doing what we’ve been doing over the years.
I’m really thankful for your investment in my life. I love you, Pastor.
I love you, too, son.