Kraig Burleson—Contagious Healing

Kraig Burleson
CEO, Inner City Health Center
Pastor, Loving Saints Christian Fellowship

I’d love for you to meet my longtime friend Kraig Burleson. (You’ll get a chance at next Tuesday’s Peacemaker Awards Breakfast! Hope to see you there; details below.)

Every time I’m with Kraig it feels like… how can I put it? A sigh.

Not a shaking-my-head sigh or discouragement sigh or frustration sigh, which seem awfully contagious in these contentious times. Rather, a peaceful, reassured, encouraged sigh.

That sort of sigh is contagious too—and quite remarkable, given Kraig’s fire. He speaks intensely about “showing something better in the world”: a way of peace that presses for justice, equity and healing. Kraig’s fire warms and renews rather than burns. Relentlessly.

“So, with such a gentle spirit, how does Kraig manage to lead so dynamically?” Friends were talking this week. (Sorry Kraig, but a lot of nice things are said behind your back). Jeff Johnsen and I laughed about Kraig’s intensity on the basketball court over the years (“the ageless wonder”), and it led us to reflect on different kinds of leadership and power. We all just wanted to play harder with him, whether he happened to be on our team or not that day, knowing that with Kraig the game is always good.

“The peacemaker role is the call of Christ,” Kraig says. “It’s a wondrous blessing, but I didn’t see it right away. I didn’t start out trying to be a peacemaker. I had to look at what was in front of me, and trust. I had to say ‘Kraig, get out of your own way.’”

Kraig credits his wife Autherine for planting the seed in his heart many years ago that he was a peacemaker in his spirit and character. At key moments, she encouraged Kraig to step out in trust with that calling. When he received an invitation to work at Inner City Health Center in 1994, Kraig was between jobs. The position was part time with small pay, and there were other attractive offers in his field of finance. “I had never trusted God like that. But my wife encouraged me to trust, and I took the job.” In 2001, Kraig became CEO of this comprehensive health organization that now provides over 22,000 patient visits a year, serves its community with over 2,000 nonclinical encounters, and is expanding to other communities.

“Speaking from an African-American perspective, I think of Clara Brown

[an early Denver pioneer, business leader, and philanthropist who had been born into slavery]. She took in the sick and the ailing in her communities, at her own expense. I think of my grandparents and parents. The world I have access to now was inconceivable to them. Given the sacrifices they made, how can I not contribute and give back, when my generation is the answer to their prayers?

We’ll be honoring Kraig next Tuesday morning with the Clara Brown Peacemaker award, for his lifetime as a pastor, nonprofit leader, friend, and community healer. I’ll be thinking of the times Kraig offered spiritual and practical solace to a family member or loved one of mine in our neighborhood. I may get choked up, but for certain I’ll… sigh.

“Clara Brown was a bridger of gaps, a healer of communities,” says Kraig. How can I not be humbled to receive an award that bears her name?”

With Kraig, the healing is contagious.

Blessed are you, Kraig, a true Denver Peacemaker!

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Loren and Adele, among other awardees, will receive the Clara Brown Legacy Award at our Peacemaker Awards Breakfast Tuesday, October 29, 2019. We’ll be so pleased if you can join us for a taste of this kind of peacemaking community by sharing breakfast and stories together with friends! It’s not a fundraiser this year… simply a celebration of peace.