LEADERSHIP

Making a Difference

I'm a Theopoetic Liberationist and believe, as did the late Dr. James H. Cone, that "God is on the side of the oppressed." Therefore, theology for me centers on Christ the Liberator. I see no difference between the cross, the lynching tree, Jim Crow, and modern-day police brutality. As a Theopoetic Liberationist, the gospel is the essence of our identity in Christ. As a practicing theologian, my task is to aid in setting the captives free from death, sin, and the grave through godly admonition, teaching, preaching, and as a living example. We can find as a people that God is indeed our liberator in mind, body, and soul when we fully engage with God through Christ as faithful disciples.

Let's Reimagine Zion

Let's live up to our legacy, "The Freedom Church"

About the candidate

I have served in the Mother Conference of Zion Methodism my entire ministry. While some may see this as a limited default, I see it as a humble privilege to be amongst the few who get to set the tone for the entirety of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. I like to think that "Mother" is where leaders are born. I firmly believe that I have been spiritually consigned from birth to be a leader, Pastor, and Bishop in the A.M.E. Zion Church. While I'm not your typical leader, my past accomplishments in Corporate America, Business, and Church have established me as a confident, consistent, strategic, and capable leader.

I cut my teeth on the sacred pews of the New York Annual Conference, serving as Pastor in all three Districts. My first appointment as Pastor of St. Mary A.M.E. Zion church grew from as few as fifty members to over five hundred active members. The emergent growth of St. Mary comprised families who helped to shape an entire community into a better place to live by engaging in local politics, business, the local school system, and the general quality of life for all its neighboring residents. My influence and leadership have positively impacted many of the people I have served, evident by their continued updated testimonies.

While my pastorate at St. Paul A.M.E Zion church was brief, we realized many practical accomplishments. Our involvement with the local school board presented a much-needed and powerful voice for the many families who were being taken advantage of by members serving on the school board who lived outside of the community and sent their children to private schools, taking away valuable resources allocated towards educating and developing our children. Getting involved in public housing was another critical and necessary need for me as a leader. Many of our members did not own homes and needed an advocate to teach them how to become homeowners and business owners and get loans and resources to improve their lives.

I currently serve as Pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, one of Zion's most influential pulpits with staggering claims and a historical edifice in constant need of maintenance and repair. But no challenge has hindered First Church from living up to its legacy, name, and denominational expectations. The Bedford Stuyvesant area of First Church has been gentrified, with many indigenous citizens moving or dying out. However, First Church is thriving, vital, and relevant under my leadership. We have partnered with several entities that use our facilities to accomplish their missions that align with ours. Sharing resources with the same constituents has helped us facilitate our mission, maintain our building, and grow our Church.

Everything about my past opportunities as a Pastor, Entrepreneur, and Senior Manager serving in corporations has prepared me to operate in the highest office in our Church. I have used my educational training and gained experience to become an effective leader with consistent abilities to foster growth, changes, and congregational preparedness. I know I will be a practical Bishop in the A.M.E. Zion church because I am ready, willing, and able to lead in that capacity. Aside from my God-given abilities, my life learning, and gained skills, I love the Lord and the people of God and am willing to serve God and His people with the best of my abilities, passion, faith, and love.

Education

2006-2007

MBA
Dowling College

The Master of Business Administration has helped me to gain a holistic fundamental understanding of marketing, accounting, and finance. The MBA is a sort-after degree for ambitious professionals. I have used the acquired knowledge and experience to serve better the Church and the congregations I have been assigned to pastor. Of course, Church is not a business. It must, however, engage in business functions, budget its finances appropriately, and forecast its future with sound and deliberate planning.

2007-2010

Doctor of Education and Public Policy
Dowling College

This is the highest degree that can be earned in most fields. I achieved this terminal degree not because I was an educator but because I wanted to explore leadership theories in the context of legislation, policies, and practices related to educational norms, mainly how education plays a role in shaping the minds of young people or discouraging innate talents, gifts, or strengths into surrendering to the deliberate hindrances, imbued within the American Public-School systems. My research in this area continues and bleeds into the church as we are often guilty of supporting some of the same methods that are detrimental to the health of our overall community. Preaching and Teaching give us the opportunities to encourage and educate our church, and I pray we use every opportunity God offers us to educate our church. I believe those who have met with success in our denomination should build the legacy of writing what they have done and how they did it so that future generations will not have to waste precious time figuring it out.

2017-2019

Masters of Divinty
Princeton Theological Seminary

The Master of Divinity Degree has sharpened my intellectual work in spiritual formation within black liberation theology. My work/studies at Princeton were engaging but solidified my aspiration to draw more answers from the sacred text and other reliable resources. I now find it necessary to deconstruct the many mendacities imparted to our people by those who do not mean us well. I hope to add to the body of knowledge surfacing within the black theological diaspora to empower and inform our people.

My Vision For Zion:
L.E.A.D.

My Vision For Zion

Let's Reimagine Zion

And of the children of Issachar, men who understood the times, to know what Israel ought to do. 1 Chronicle 12:32

As believers, how well do we understand the world around us? It's very easy to get discouraged. However, we must walk by faith, not by what we see. We see a world in big trouble, a people who have fallen far away from God. However, we can understand what's needed to escape our mess through God's perspective. But to obtain God's perspective, we have to seek God's perspective.

The men of Issachar understood the times they lived in and acted accordingly. Rather than living with worry and fear, let us Reimagine Zion. Let us LEAD our generation out of darkness and into the promise, out of lukewarmness, and into Christian discipleship. Let us LEAD our people out of complacency and into relevancy.

My Vision for Zion is to Lead

Lead through the Legacy of the Freedom Church

We already have the Legacy. Let's own it! Let's live up to it.

By living up to our Legacy, I'm asking Zion to consider the essential underpinning of our faith and go back to it. I genuinely believe in God's power, the word of God, and the hearing of the voice of God by the sheep of God. Once I'm a consecrated Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, I will lead us to a place of reconciliation, repentance, and accountability.

Yes, we have a strong legacy, but could Legacy alone be our sustainability? I think not. We should learn from our past, particularly our founding fathers and patriarchs of old, who lit a torch and blazed a trial for us to follow and make our Church stronger than ever. We must now choose to light the torches and set the stones for many generations to come. We must hand over a more vital, reliable, relevant, and god-fearing church to the next generations.

While a Church is not a business, it has characteristics that function as a business. Therefore, we must consider how a church should or could serve in today's post-covid world. For instance, the Church had to adapt to new paradigms while and during the surge of the pandemic. We now do things many never thought we would do to function or maintain our local congregations. What we, in essence, had to do was to adapt. However, adaptation is not a sign of robust and reliable leadership, forward thinkers, or resisters to the decaying norms of society. Still, adaptation is the exact opposite of what I think God expects us to do. God expects us to lead and not be led.

My Vision for Zion is to Lead

Effective and Efficient leadership in the Freedom Church

In 2024 Zion will need to make a choice. We will need to choose new leaders. But not just any leader. We will need to be tried and tested, proven, and sure leaders: people with backbones, not popularity, but the anointing, the gifts, and experience to lead. We need a fearless leader. Leaders who are not afraid to think outside of the box. It's time we take our place on the frontlines of the fight for justice in our nation.

Our young people, people that look like you and me, are constantly mistreated, racially profiled, and marginalized. We are always asked to make more bricks by the pharos of our day, find our straw, and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We live in a rigged system, and I can't tell you how many protests, rallies, and marches I participated in during the shutdown, before and after the shutdown. Young people are being murdered in classrooms and in places they should be safe. We have witnessed our people being targeted, executed, and unjustly accused of things simply because of the color of their skin.

We have seniors gunned down in supermarkets, and young Queens gunned down in their sleep. I want to use the highest platform in our Church, the most sacred desk in Zion, to speak truth to power and hold lawmakers, politicians, law enforcement, and large corporations accountable when they injure our community. Once I'm consecrated as a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, we won't be silent on matters of injury to our community. We will use our influence and God-given authority to demand justice and a cure for harm done to us.

My Vision for Zion is to Lead

Accountability to and accountable through the freedom church

We must be accountable to our community; we got a taste or a test during COVID. We must ask ourselves whether the community missed us when we were closed, and our churches were on lockdown. I'm not talking about the members who saw the shutdown as an opportunity to make their move away from the Church. I'm talking about those who depend on us for service. They need our doors to be open.

Did they miss us? The world is ever-changing, but our Lord remains the same. The winds of change would not toss us about if we strategize, think outside the box, and use the gifts God has given to the Church to edify the body of Christ. It was unpleasant and degrading to be given orders from the world during the pandemic. Non-believers, politicians, mayors, governors, and even a president who had not our interest at heart directed us through the most horrific times in our lives.

We can't remain quiet, particularly in times of deep despair. But we must be trailblazers, tone-setters, and people equipped with the power and knowledge of the word of God. We should know what God is saying to the Church. But we need to know what God is saying, and once we know, we need to move and speak with holy boldness! If we must pray and fast, and fast and wait, then let's do that.

My Vision for Zion is to Lead

Drive and determination for the Freedom Church

We must have the Drive and determination to infiltrate the norms and lowers standards of the world with the world of God, even if it's unpopular.

We must have the Drive and determination to teach our kids. We are in an all-out war. Censorship of books, history, Legacy, and the black presence and experience in America is being whitewashed. We have several accredited institutions of higher learning. Let's partner with these institutions and educate our people, minister, and laity.

We don't want God to call us wicked because we refuse to grow, refuse to multiply, refuse to take our talents, and do bigger.

I'm a tried, tested, and proven leader. I'm not popular, but I'm real. I'm faithful, and I'm equipped for the task of leading our Church. I'm educated, I'm practical, I think big, and I live strong. I'm gifted and quiet, and I'll fight for the weak, the poor, and the strong. I love God, and I love people.

Hooks for Bishop

Not because you know me, but because you know HIM!