Laura Hanes/The Falcon John Perkins gives his annual lecture during Chapel, Tuesday morning in First Free Methodist.

To live out the Gospel story in wholeness is to live a life of reconciliation, John Perkins told Chapel attendees yesterday morning.

"The resurrected life is the life that we carry on and live," Perkins said. "Without the resurrection, there is no life or importance in life."

Reconciliation, Perkins said, requires people to look at others and acknowledge that they too are made in the image of God. This eliminates the negative names and stereotypes people attach to others and enables people to see that others deserve love and respect too, he said.

Perkins's teaching started the third day of the annual Perkins Lecture Series at SPU. Perkins is the founder of the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development located in Jackson, Miss. In 2004, SPU opened the John Perkins Center for Racial Reconciliation on campus, and Perkins has been coming to campus annually to give the Perkins Lecture Series since. This year marked the 30th anniversary of the first time Perkins spoke at SPU in April of 1978.

"The very fact that I was asked to speak [at SPU] told me that this was a good school," he said in an interview on Monday.

Perkins said he started his message at SPU in 1978 by first bringing a holistic concept of reaching people and combating injustice in the church. Perkins carried the same message of reaching people holistically with the gospel in his chapel message using John 12 as the center of his teaching.

Part of the way people practice living out the gospel holistically is through the practice of giving up what is dear to them, Perkins said. In John 12:24, Jesus told his disciples, "...unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies it produces much grain." Perkins explained to the attendees how he had to apply this concept to his own life through telling of the death of his oldest son, Spencer.

On the night of his son's death, Perkins said, "I got up and said, 'God, I'm mad at you. I love you, but I'm mad at you.'"

Perkins said he looked at his son's death as God taking him away. However, as he thought more about the fact that his son had entered into eternal life, Perkins said a new perspective came to his mind.

"I asked God, 'can I give him to you?' And then I gave him to God as a gift of reconciliation," Perkins said. "I wanted his life to be a seed of reconciliation."

Perkins said his son's life was dedicated to reconciliation, and though he died of a heart attack, Perkins believes that his son's death was partially due to a broken heart.

"He began to doubt that the church could live this out," he said.

Perkins decided that he too needed to be a seed of reconciliation and said he has been working towards educating people on reconciliation ever since.

Though Perkins said in an interview that SPU is on the cutting edge of reconciliation, he said that more work needs to be done.

"We need to lift people out of poverty," he said. "Tangible ways [for students to participate in reconciliation] would be to become involved with young people: mentoring, tutoring, visiting youth prisons, or being a brother or sister to neglected children of any minority."

The spread of Perkins's message could be seen in the "Reconciled" concert that filled Seattle First Presbyterian Church to the brim on Sunday night. The connection with reconciliation could also be found in student response to Perkins's message on Tuesday.

"I get really excited about reconciliation," said Ellen Pew, a junior, because "division is incredibly painful."

Erik Hauan agreed, saying, "the U.S. is struggling, and it's good for us to unite under something."