Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1091: What If the CHURCH Was the Solution to Gun Violence in Chicago?: Michael Allen

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Michael Allen is Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Together Chicago—an organization that exists to be a catalyst for lasting change by reducing gun violence and increasing thriving communities in Chicago. In this conversation, we talk all about the issue of gun violence and how Together Chicago has addressed this complex issue through 5 strategic areas: economic development, educational achievement, violence reduction, gospel justice, and faith-community mobilization. Michael was born in Kingston, Jamaica and immigrated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his family in 1977. In 1986 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Early in his professional career, Michael was called into ministry under the leadership of Dr. O.S. Hawkins, First Baptist Church – Ft. Lauderdale (1989). In 1997, Michael served as Assistant Pastor of Urban Outreach and Evangelism at The Moody Church in Chicago, IL . Michael also served as the Associate Pastor at Sagemont Church in Houston, TX (2002) and most recently as the Senior Pastor at Uptown Baptist Church. He also serves as Vice Chairman of the board of the Pacific Garden Mission. Michael holds a Masters in Divinity from Trinity International University, a Bachelors of Arts in Biblical Studies from Trinity College – Miami, FL and an Associates in Computer Electronics.

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Michael Allen, who is co-founder and co-CEO of Together Chicago, an awesome, awesome ministry aimed at reducing gun violence in Chicago. You're going to hear all about that ministry and the awesome work that Michael and his team are involved in. So please welcome to the show, the one and only Michael Allen, thanks so much for joining me on Theology in the Round. I'm really excited to get to know you and the ministry that you're involved in. Why don't you start off by telling us just a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where are you from?

Yeah, well, thanks, Preston, for having me on and being interested in our story. I was born in the island nation of Jamaica in the Caribbean and spent the first nine years of my life there. I have an older brother, younger sister. And during the 1970s, when our prime minister, our national government was seemingly getting really close to Cuba's Castro's redream. We, like many others in the island, were fearful that communism might be close at hand and sort of taking over our country.

And tens of thousands of people who had the means to leave the island left for hopes of a better future for their families and to avoid the potential danger of communism. You know, Cuba is 90 miles south of Key West, Florida, and then Jamaica is 90 miles south of Cuba. And so with that proximity, you know, people really felt like we should leave those who could. So our family immigrated to Fort Lauderdale in 1977. I was nine years old and we had relatives already living in Fort Lauderdale. So we got our green cards and immigrated and finished growing up in South Florida. And I remember when we first moved to Fort Lauderdale, our family was the first Black family to move into our neighborhood, a neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale called Inverary. I don't know if you remember Jackie G gleason the famous comedian but he lived in inverary and uh actually i should say we moved into lauder hill inverary was a little subdivision

within lauder hill and um and we were the first black family to move into our neighborhood of lauder hill there where we were that section and um And so I encountered at a young age the American version of racism. And what was interesting about that is that while we got some historic racism from some of our white American neighbors, we also were not easily or readily accepted by the Black, the African-American community either. Some of them didn't like us because of the way we walked and the way we talked because we didn't walk and talk like they did. And then some white folks didn't like us because of the color of our skin. So it was tough going for the first couple of years trying to figure out this new country that our parents had brought us to. And so as a bit of a

sort of a survival skill, I learned to play a lot of the sports that my white and black friends played. So I, of course, already knew soccer. That's a big sport in Jamaica. I learned to play basketball, learned to play football, learned to play baseball, and got good at it so that I can gain some respect from my new American friends, both the white ones and the black ones who were skeptical of, you know, this Jamaican family moving into the neighborhood. And so then I remember hearing about this miniseries on TV called Roots, Alex Haley's Roots. And I began watching that at night alone while my parents went to bed. And I stayed up watching that and crying myself to sleep, wondering, this is a weird country that my parents had brought me to. crying myself to sleep wondering this is a weird country that my parents had brought me to because in jamaica jamaica is much more of a melting pot a pot and much more uh ahead or advanced

in terms of um issues of race uh in jamaica we have chinese jamaicans uh black jamaicans european jamaicans middle eastern jamaicans ind Middle Eastern Jamaicans, Indian Jamaicans, and they all kind of mix and marry and live in the same communities. So there's not much racism in Jamaica, but there's more classism between rich, poor and middle class than there is racism. So this whole race issue was a big deal and troubled me greatly. And that plays into part of the story of Together Chicago, which I'll get into a little bit later. So at a young age, long before I knew anything about Dale Carnegie and his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, I kind of learned how to do that just to survive and make those friends. So I became the

kid in school that was very sensitive to being ostracized. And so I stood up for kids, the new immigrants that came after me, especially from Haiti and from Cuba during the 1980s, they were coming in droves on boats to the shores of Miami and the Keys. And we're moving into our neighborhood and into our schools. And so I'd see, you know, some new immigrant kids from Haiti or from Cuba sitting in the lunchroom by themselves. And I'd be the guy, the kid that said, Hey, you come sit with us and introducing them to our, my new friends and our old friends at our table, because I knew what it felt like to be a new immigrant and to be ostracized and, and kind of left out and,

and having to fight for respect and to be treated as an equal. So that's all part of, you know, my growing up. And so by the time I finished high school, I had Jewish friends and black friends and white friends and Italian friends and Haitian friends and Cuban friends. And because my faith that I grew up in as a Christian informed the fact that God made people. He made us all inherently worthy of love and respect. And so nobody should be mistreated simply because of the color of their skin or the language and ethnic background that they speak and have.

So that experience of growing up in that milieu gave me a sense of just love for people and, of course, an amazing love for God. And got saved at a young age, got involved in computer electronics out of high school when i was in in i think in high school is when the apple 2e computer came out and i began um learning you know basics of of coding or programming in the computer and and writing papers on computers and all that kind of stuff and i thought to myself you you know, if I think this computer stuff is going to be around for a long time. And as I was thinking about what I was going to do with my life, I thought it should be into computers. And so I had a friend of mine who was a year or two ahead of me and he went to technical school and I got a computer

degree and was making good money. And so I went to technical school, the same one he did, in Fort Lauderdale, got out, started working, fixing computers, Xerox machines in particular, worked for Xerox Corporation. And then they had a layoff and I went to work for another company fixing computers. And during that time, as a young adult servicing computers in Dade Broward in Palm Beach, I clearly sensed a call of God in my life into full-time Christian ministry. And so I resigned from my job, gave my two weeks notice, went to Bible College in Miami, Miami Christian College at the time, which later became Trinity International University, South Florida campus.

And so I went to Bible college, finished there in the mid 1990s. And a week after that, got married to my wife from Brazil, who's from Rio de Janeiro. And we started our life together and came up to Chicagoland to go to seminary at Trinity, the mother campus that had assumed and bought out my school at Miami Christian and merged with us. And so got my master's degree here in Chicagoland at Trinity. I started an internship at Moody Church, a historic Moody Church downtown with Erwin Lutzer, and became the first African-American pastor, you know, right there at Moody Church. Moody Church, when you think about it, Moody Church was founded in 1864, just before the Civil War ended. And you're looking at the guy who was the first black pastor at that church, right in the heart of the city of Chicago. And so that just, that was an amazing experience and privilege to serve under Erwin Lutzer as an assistant pastor of urban outreach and discipleship there at Moody Church.

And then I went to Houston and served there at a megachurch called the Sagemont Church. And a guy by the name of Votie Bauckham preceded me as the first black pastor there on that staff. I became the second black pastor at that church in Houston. Served there for three years as associate came back to Chicago, which would have been 2005, to pastor as senior pastor at Uptown Baptist Church, which is also an SBC church here in Chicago. About probably about 10 years ago, we had a mass shooting right outside our church where five people were gunned down during what we call our Monday night meal. I was inside the church in the back of the sanctuary. We would host a meal every Monday night for homeless people. And we had about, I don't know, 200 homeless people in the sanctuary about to go downstairs for a hot meal that our staff and volunteers prepared every Monday. And I heard, you know, and everybody kind of just stopped. Police got silent.

I looked at my watch because I felt the concussion in my chest as if I was at the front, the lakefront, watching the fireworks, you know, on Fourth of July. And I looked on my watch. I'm like, it's August 9th, way past July 4th. And that's probably not fireworks. Although it kind of felt like it and sounded like it. And I motioned to our lay minister who was sharing a devotional to keep going. And I went outside to check on what was going on outside. And five people were laying at the foot of the steps of the church bleeding.

And blood was pooling at the church steps. And I called 911 and went down to attend to them until the ambulance came. And one man who was shot in the head, 48 hours. And I called 911 and went down to attend to them until the ambulance came. And one man who was shot in the head, 48 hours. The others had flesh wounds and they survived and recovered from their injuries. But Preston, that shooting changed my life. It changed the trajectory of my ministry as well. And God just wouldn't let me get that shooting out of my head and out of my heart. And I began to ask some penetrating questions like, why is the shooting

increased? What is driving the increase in gun violence in our city and in cities across the country. And what can the church do? Could the church have, we have an answer. Could we have an impact in reducing gun violence? You know, I was like, God, well, and, and the other question I asked is who is shooting and who are the victims? As I began to look at those statistics, I realized that most of the people pulling triggers and most of the people that were being shot were Black and brown people. And I thought, after all the progress we've made in civil rights, after all that our forefathers fought for and bled for and died for, to end slavery, to end the civil disparities and social disparities that African Americans experience in this country. Now we have more freedom than we've ever had. We have more

opportunities than we ever had. We have better education than we've ever had. We have more opportunities than we ever had. We have better education than we've ever had. We have better jobs than we've ever had. And now we're shooting each other at an alarming rate more than we've ever had. And that troubled me. I began to just be really saddened at the fact that despite all the opportunities we currently have today, compared to when I first came to this country in 1977 and was being discriminated against on my block, spat upon and called the N-word. You know, after all of that, now we have integrated neighborhoods. You know, Black folks are in the boardroom and in the C-suites. And we had a Black president of the United States. And now we're killing each other. That just that just bothered me. Do you have an answer to that? That like why?

That's probably a very maybe the rest of the podcast is the answer. Yeah. a focus group of influential Christians that I knew in different spheres of society in Chicago to just kick those questions around, to try to understand what in the world is going on in our black and brown communities and what can we, the church, do about it. See, as a pastor, I felt like the church has the answer and we have to be in this. We have to minister on both sides of the gun. I wanted to figure out how to mobilize my church to be a healing, redemptive presence on both sides of the gun, both to the perpetrators and to the victims. So I knew that I needed what we call actionable information. I needed the information so that I can act, which means I needed to know

who were the people pulling triggers and why, and who were the victims, and why were they victimized? Why were they being victims of gun violence? And so those focus groups, I began to get some answers to those questions. And so it all really led back to the breakdown of the family. and probably actually goes back even a little further to the beginning of the welfare program, which happened during the Great Depression. You know, the welfare program began, as you know, as a stopgap measure during the 1920s in the Great Depression. But over the years, the welfare became such an expansive part of government programs with millions and billions of dollars being spent that people began to realize, okay, if I can actually live on these welfare payments, if I have more kids outside of marriage. And so before the Welfare Reform Act in the 90s, And so before the Welfare Reform Act in the 90s, black and brown people realized, if I have more kids and I donanned or unwed pregnancies and delivery of children without a man in the household.

And so that then led to all other kinds of social issues was, you know, if a father's not in the home and he sidesteps or marginalized or pushed out of the way, out of the family for sake of receiving more welfare payments, then he doesn't have the responsibility and need to care for those families so he can go do whatever and then go from house to house and have all these you know kids from different baby mamas and not take responsibility of them and so the government these these baby mamas became wedded to the government and and and then you had the whole crack epidemic that came about and so crack came into the black and brown communities and people got hooked on crack cocaine. And then the sentencing and penalties for those crimes became much greater than even powder cocaine.

So you had white kids who were using powder cocaine in the suburbs and they would get a slap on the wrist compared to the black and brown kids in the inner cities that were using crack because the penalties were stiffer for crack than it was for cocaine, powder cocaine. And so then you have larger, longer sentences for black and brown people going to prison. And so then you have a ton of those black men being locked up for long periods of time, which exacerbated the issues of their kids growing up without a dad in the home. which exacerbated, you know, the issues of their kids growing up without a dad in the home. And then they come back home. And who are their role models?

The role models are the gangbangers, the guys who are, you know, doing drugs, selling drugs, toting guns, selling guns, and all that kind of stuff. And then created the cycle of poverty, drug use, drug abuse, gunplay, prison, and all of that. And then kids were dropping out of school, you know, because they couldn't read and write, because their parents were strung out on drugs. And, you know, so that just created this really messy swamp of social problems. I thought the church has to get involved here. Would you say, because the issues you're talking about, I'm sure are prevalent everywhere, really. Let's just focus on America. But are they just more concentrated in Chicago? Is that why Chicago seems to be a focal point of just this really high rates of gun violence

and all the issues you're talking about? Yeah, if you look at the, depends on how you look at the numbers. So the raw numbers, because Chicago is the third, I think, third largest city in the country. Houston is fast approaching being that third largest city. So I think Houston is right behind on the heels of Chicago in terms of the number of people. So per capita, Chicago is probably maybe in the top 10 or in the top 15 of the most gun violence, highest gun violence per capita. So there's at least 8 to 12 other cities across the country that have more gun violence per capita than Chicago. But because Chicago is the third largest city and the sheer number of gun violence incidents are larger than many other cities, it then becomes a big news story. Okay.

That makes sense. And so if you look in some of the small cities in North, South Carolina, in Philadelphia, Detroit, in California, some of the, like Oakland, California, their gun violence numbers per capita exceeds Chicago. But our overall numbers, raw numbers of the number of shootings and homicides is greater here than those cities. So that kind of gives a little bit of a perspective on the issue. But yeah, these issues are all over America in cities all over our country. So the cities who somehow are able to mitigate those family issues in the black and brown communities will have a greater effect in also mitigating the gun violence. You know, so the more programs out there that are effectively dealing with the social ills in families

will have a greater reduction of violence and a greater increase in thriving. Because the family, the strength of the family is the key to the rise or fall of any nation. So the stronger the family, the better legal counsel and church, faith and family. So all of those things is how we kind of measure those metrics for thriving in any community. And so where you where those things are strong, violence is low and thriving is high. So the vision of Together Chicago is to reduce gun violence and increase thriving. And so all of our those five initiatives that we have all focus on doing just that, reducing the violence and increasing thriving, because those are the issues we think are what drives the violence.

Can you take us to the founding of Together Chicago? We kind of wandered there because it's a fairly new organization. It's only a few years old, right? And it just seems like it's doing incredible work. And it's not a small organization. Yeah. So my co-founder, who happens to be a white Christian business guy, who incidentally also grew up in an island nation. He grew up in Japan as a missionary kid. And so he came here to go to Wheaton College. A 17, 18-year-old came here to go to Wheaton College, you know, a 17, 18 year old came here to go to

Wheaton College. That was his journey to Chicago from Japan. And so as a business guy, he began to see the same thing I was seeing. And he also, God gave him the same burden that he gave me. And he actually gave him the same vision. He was asking some of the exact same questions that I was asking. And a mutual friend of ours introduced us and said, you guys are trying to do the same thing, I think, and you should meet each other. So a guy named Brian Dye, who is a church planter here in the West side of Chicago. He is a mutual friend of Dave, Dylan, and me. And he introduced us and Dave and I met in his office downtown and shared each other's story and experiences and passions about this issue. And then we were floored. We were like,

I cannot believe that you have the exact same vision and passion about this as I do. And so I said, Dave, I've got another meeting scheduled with my leadership team, my focus group. Why don't you bring your focus group to meet with my focus group and let's see what God does. So we both invited our groups to a ranch out in Delina, Illinois, owned by a buddy of mine, Mark Schlenker. And so we went to the Brickson Ivy Ranch and met for a day and a half and frayed together, talked. And it was like what the Bible says in the book of Acts, where it says, it seemed good to us in the Holy Spirit that we do this thing. And at the end of that weekend, we were like, OK, we got to do something together.

we do this thing. And at the end of that weekend, we were like, okay, we got to do something together. And people are looking around the room like, I know who you are and I know you know who I am, but we've never been in the room together to try to solve any problem together. And so we had red, yellow, black, and white, rich, poor, middle class, Baptists and Pentecostals and Methodists and Presbyterians, Democrats and Republicans in that room. And for the first time, people were like, OK, this violence is so big and it's touching all of us, no matter where we live, no matter what our denomination is, no matter what our political background is, it's touching us. And we don't like it and we don't know exactly what to do. But if you guys are called us here together to do something, we're in, we're with you. And everybody said to a person, they said, whatever you need me to do, whatever you need from me,

whatever resource I have, it's yours. You just tell us what to do. And so Dave and I had this amazing mandate from these very influential people here in Chicago, all Christians saying we've got to come together and do something about this violence. And Preston, I'll tell you this. I tell people this illustration. Most people know about the Great Chicago Fire that happened in the 1800s, late 1800s in Chicago. about the great Chicago fire that happened in the 1800s, late 1800s in Chicago. And I tell people this, imagine that you had a great fire in whatever city you're from, the great Houston fire, the great LA fire, the great Miami fire that started to spread across your city. And you're right there, you see the smoke, you see the flames, and it's coming. You call the fire department, but you realize they may not get

here before it gets to your house or to your business or to your church. Or what are you going to do? You're going to run around outside and you're going to say, you're going to see your neighbors and your colleagues and your schoolmates. And you're going to say, hey, do you see the fire? Fire's coming. Are you Democrat or Republican? Because we need all the Republicans to put out this fire. Oh, hey, the fire's coming. Do you see it? Do you see the smoke? Do you smell it? Are you Baptist or Presbyterian? Because we need all the Baptists to put out this fire. from the suburbs, because we need all the, no. When there is a crisis of this magnitude that's coming for you, those are not the questions you ask. You don't ask about your faith.

You don't ask about your politics. You don't ask about any of that because none of that matters. Because guess what? The fire doesn't care if you're Baptist or Presbyterian or Catacostal. The fire doesn't care if you're Democrat or Republican. The fire doesn't care if you're an atheist. It doesn't care about any of those labels. Only thing the fire cares about is what is in my path that I'm going to consume. So for us who are going to be consumed, we better ask the right question. What do you have to help us put out this fire? Do you have a cup of water? Do you have a squirt gun?

Do you have a fire hose, a garden hose? Because if you have something like that, that's all I need to know. Let's go, let's go put out this fire. So this gun violence is kind of like that, I tell people. If you went into anywhere in the city of Chicago and you asked somebody, do you know someone or know someone that knows someone

who's been shot, killed, or maimed by gun violence? Almost everybody's hand would go up. And so then I say, bullets don't have names. Bullets don't care about your political persuasion or your religious persuasion. Bullets only care about one thing. What's in my path that I pierce? It's that simple. So now the question is, what do you have in your hand that you can help to end gun violence or at the very least reduce gun violence? And when I tell people that, suddenly they get it, they realize, and it's like, yes. And so Together Chicago became, Dave and I got this mandate from all those people after that weekend to say, okay, let's figure out what is it that drives the

violence and then create a strategy around mitigating those issues that drive the violence. And so that led to being in the public schools because we realized that there are black and brown kids in high crime, high poverty neighborhoods have one million words less spoken to them at the time that they start school than kids that are not in those high crime, high poverty neighborhoods or out in the suburbs. So if you're getting started at school and preschool or kindergarten, and you have 1 million words less spoken to you, guess what? When you get to third grade or sixth grade, you're not going to have the same level of reading as kids that start school with a million word vocabulary greater than yours. And so we said, okay, well, let's get into public school. And so therefore those kids

who have that million word deficiency in high crime, high poverty neighborhoods, those are the kids that are prone to drop out of school, join a gang and commit a crime. And then we heard a statistic that said that people who build prisons, jails and prisons for a living, construction companies that focus on building jails and prisons, one of the ways that they figure out when and where to build another jail or prison, Preston, is how many kids in that zip code are not reading and writing at a third grade level. That's when they know it's time to build another jail or prison because those kids are going to drop out of school,

join a gang, commit a crime. See, so the social science helps us to predict a certain thing. It's kind of like AI, right? Data, big data enables us now to predict certain social behaviors and certain social patterns. So if we can predict that, why not intervene and take action and say, can we mobilize the largest volunteer army in the world to infiltrate the schools with some training and to get to those kids that are at risk of dropping out of school and joining gangs, committing crimes, and helping them to learn to read and write at a third and sixth grade level so they can stay in school, graduate, and have a chance to go off to college or trade school to have a career that's different than ending up in prison or in a grave six foot under before they're 18 years of age. So now we're in 70 public schools. We're partnering

churches with schools to tutor kids and mentor their parents because we believe we have to have an impact in the entire family, not just in the kids, right? So that's sort of a preventative strategy, trying to get to the kids before they get into the streets, join gangs and commit crimes. That's a preventative medicine, if you will. And then we have another initiative where we realize that most people involved who are what we call justice involved, they're in the justice system somewhere, some member of the family, mother, father, brother, sister, child, is in the justice system, whether juvenile justice or adult justice system, they have issues. And so those issues, once you get justice involved, it ripple effects throughout your whole family and exacerbates

other issues. And 80% of the people who have a justice problem, it's really a civil issue. But many of them don't have access to good, legal, affordable counsel, and legal aid professionals who will give pro bono time to help people solve their civil issues before they become criminal issues. Because what's happening, what we found is that people who don't have access to good affordable legal counsel, they'll oftentimes do something criminally to get around the civil issue that they have. So it might be parking tickets. It might be a tenant and landlord issue. It might be a child custody issue, but they don't have access to a good legal affordable attorney that could help them solve

those issues. So then they end up doing something criminal. And then that again, snowballed effect on their whole justice involved problems. So now we have something called the Gospel Justice Center, which has set up now 22 or 24 Gospel Justice Centers, which are legal aid clinics in churches in high crime, high poverty neighborhoods. And every justice center has at least one attorney, Christian attorney, who on a Saturday morning for three or four hours gives some time to help people in that neighborhood get access to legal counsel. So they come in with their problem and they leave with a set of steps, a printed out set of steps of how to solve that legal problem. So that's a second initiative that we're about, and we're growing those gospel justice centers all over the city right now, I think 22, 24 of them.

Third thing that we do, we realize is that every crime committed, especially gun crime, every crime committed usually has a financial string attached to it. And so we said, well, what if we could create economic development and opportunity for those who are victims or perpetrators of gun violence? As you might suspect, a lot of men in gun and violent criminal gangs, they are actually entrepreneurs, but they're just on the wrong side of the law, right? I mean, they're running a small business, usually involved in the gun and the drug trade. And sometimes prostitution is mixed in there as well. So what if we could help them find a pathway to use their entrepreneurial skills in a legal way where they don't have to be ducking bullets and the police every day, all day, but they could actually have a legitimate business that's

recognized by the government and earn as much or more money than the little money they're making, you know, to feed them, barely feed themselves and their family in the gun and drug trade. Because these days, only the big, big guys are making any money in the drug and gun trade. The small potato guys on the street corners aren't making much. And so, you know, we have now an economic development strategy to not only help guys prepare for real jobs in the real economy, but to give them hope that the economy actually works for them because they believe falsely that America doesn't work for them because they really, many of them don't even know anybody who has a real job like for 5, 10, who has a real job, like for 5, 10, 15 years or have to have a career outside of the shadow,

dark economy of the illegal gun and drug trade. So we have folks on our staff that help them get training in how to get a job and keep a job. And then if they really want to, if they have an idea that can be monetized, we help them get some entrepreneurial training on how to set up a small business. Or if they have a business established, we help them to grow that business. And so that's part of our economic development that kind of solves for that issue of the financial problem. And then there's a violence reduction space itself where we hire former gang chiefs from different tribes and train them to go back out on the streets and use their, what we call LTO, license to operate, or also known as street cred, to convince the younger guys,

hey, you don't have to keep going down this path. We can help you get into case management, get some trauma-informed counseling and care, get some food and groceries for your baby mama and your kids, and get you a job or job training or GED completion to get you a better job than you have. So that is our street outreach. And we've got about 30 guys now, four different neighborhoods working to deploy them back into the community that they used to tear down. These are guys that have spent many decades in prison and they have a lot of holes in their bodies and they put a lot of holes in other people's bodies. But they have come to us saying, you know what? We know we were part of the problem.

We were part of what of tearing down this community, but we want to be part of rebuilding it. Would you help us? And so we, we hired them and trained them to get back out there on the streets and convince the shorties that are still out there gangbanging to put the guns down and get into case management where they can find that path of peace and prosperity for themselves. And then the final initiative is mobilizing the church through prayer and action. So that's called the Chicagoland United in Prayer and our faith community mobilization piece. And we have about 170 churches that partner with us in one way or another. So we have these large prayer gatherings where the church comes to pray.

Two or three thousand people gather at one of the larger churches, either on the west side, north side, or south side. And every year we move it around. And then those folks, after praying, they say to us, well, what else can we do in addition to our prayers? And we say, I'm glad you asked. You can get involved in tutoring or mentoring. You can get involved in the Gospel Justice Center.

You can get involved in the street outreach. You know, there's so many different ways, helping with jobs, economic development. And so then we mobilize the church to get involved in one or more of those initiatives. And it's really hyperlocal because, you know, Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, there are 77 neighborhoods. Believe it or not, there are only like 15 to 20 that's responsible for 90% of the violence. And so we are trying to permeate every one of those top 15 most violent neighborhoods with our strategy so that we can have the maximum impact. Does the Bible support same-sex marriage? That's a question that many people are wrestling with today.

And there's people who hold passionately to different answers to this question. Now, most dialogues about same-sex marriage, they end with divisiveness and confusion instead of clarity and a better understanding of the other person's position and even a better understanding of your own position. This is why I wrote a book titled, Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage? 21 Conversations from a Historically Christian Perspective, which comes out in August this summer. So what I do in this book is I first talk about how Christians should even go about having a profitable conversation about contentious issues. I really want us to cultivate a better posture in how we even go about defending our points of view or trying to refute others. I then lay out a biblical theological case for the historically Christian view of marriage.

And then for the rest of the book, I take what I see as the top 21 arguments for same-sex marriage. And I respond to each one in a way that's both thoughtful and thorough. Some of these arguments are, you know, since some people are born gay, then God must allow for same-sex marriage. Or, you know, the word homosexual was only recently added to the Bible. Or the traditional view of marriage is harmful to gay and lesbian people. And many other arguments that I wrestle with in this book, does the Bible support same-sex marriage? So if you're looking for a theologically precise and nuanced approach to these arguments, one that doesn't strawman the

other view to make it look bad, then I would encourage you to please check out my book, Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage? You can order it now on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Can you give us a perspective of, for lack of better terms, what has success looked like? I mean, on your website, you have some stats. Can you maybe share some of that? Has this been effective and how do you measure that? Yeah. In the neighborhoods that we're working,

we're working in mostly west side and south side neighborhoods, although we do have some work on the north side. In Chicago, nobody talks about the east side because that's where the fish live in Lake Michigan. Okay. But on the south side, west side, and the north side. In Chicago, nobody talks about the east side because that's where the fish live in Lake Michigan. But on the south side, west side, and the north side, west side and south sides are the most violent of the city, areas of the city. On the north side, there are two neighborhoods that has the most violence. That's Rogers Park, I live and Uptown where our church is, Uptown Baptist Church. And so one of the things that we've seen is where we are working in four specific neighborhoods where all of our initiatives are at work, we're seeing double

digits reduction in both violence in terms of murders and shootings. So 10% to 15% reductions we're seeing. But this work is hard and it's complex, and sometimes it's two steps forward and one step back. And that's a hard reality, and sometimes it's hard to take. So, for example, this week, this weekend, in one of our neighborhoods, West Haven Park, we have, there's an annual Father's Day cookout picnic. And historically, there have been some shootings at that picnic.

But not since we started praying there. We would go and we have some staff that go out there and and just pray up that place and um and so but this year before our team could get there to pray there was a shooting on saturday night um one tribe against another or one gang against another and then on father's day just before we got there to pray up um the one gang that another. And then on Father's Day, just before we got there to pray up, the one gang that had received the shooting retaliated and shot up the party. And I think one or two others were struck. Nobody, I think, is in critical condition or died, but that really put a damper on the Father's Day festivities that we, you know, we're planning and participating.

So that sometimes, you know, discourages us, but we're not discouraged to the point of giving up because we can see that our efforts are paying off. So we've got more kids graduating from middle school and high school. We have more kids that are because of the tutoring and the mentoring of the kids and their parents. So that's one measure of success. More kids graduating. We have more kids also going off to college and trade school. We have more families in stable housing and livable wage jobs. We have more families in stable housing and livable wage jobs. We have more businesses starting up and getting and growing through our initiative with economic development and our partnership with Rush Hospital.

And so Rush Hospital basically has a half a billion dollars of supply chain spending. And they've contracted with us to help redirect some of that spending to local black and brown entrepreneurs. And so we've been successful in connecting a lot of black and brown entrepreneurs to provide goods and services to one of the largest hospital systems in Chicago. Michael, one of the things that initially drew me to your ministry was seeing how the violence in Chicago was just, it's constantly politicized, you know, you know, I'll listen to Democrat or left wing commentators, you know, looking at, you know, Chicago, South Chicago, West Chicago is like, see, we need, you know, stricter gun laws, you know, and then the right, the conservatives will, you know, use Chicago saying, look, even if we take away everybody's semi, you know, like AR-15s, look at all the handgun violence, you know, going on in Chicago. And it just goes back and forth, back and forth.

And I was like, what can the church do here? Is really, is the way to solve this really just the right winning, you know, their argument or whatever with, you know, looser gun laws or the left winning it with stricter gun laws? Is that really going to solve it? And then, you know, coming across your ministry, not, I mean, the ministry you help lead and found, saying here's the church actually doing something, not relying on somebody to win the kind of political war. I guess my question is like, do you see any value in kind of those political wars? Like it would, would stricter gun laws really do something? Or do you feel like the politicalization is really just a lot of loud noise? It's more of a

distraction or is that, I'm not even sure exactly what my question is, but. No, I think I, I think I understand your, your question and the heart behind it. So Preston, here's what I would say. Number one, I believe politics and politicians do have a role to play. They are both part of the problem and part of the solution here in Chicago. So for example, we have had a state's attorney who has been more lenient than previous state's attorney's office here in Chicago. And that's been unfortunate. She's been more lenient on gun violence. And then as a result, the police loses morale because when they arrest somebody for a gun case and charge them, the prosecutors are saying, the state's prosecutors are saying, well, we don't think you have enough evidence, so of somebody pulling the trigger, they are reluctant to prosecute those cases. And the police are getting frustrated and they're like, what are we what are we busting our tail and risking our lives trying to arrest these gangbangers when the prosecutors aren't doing their job and prosecuting the cases? So as a result, and then you have community trust breaks down.

So now when the police detectives are trying to do their jobs and get somebody arrested, they need people to talk and to say, I saw this, or I know this about this person or this group or that. They're not talking to the police. So then they lack the evidence that they need to present, you know, an ear-tied case to bring before the prosecutors. So it's a vicious cycle that results basically in impunity. cycle that results basically in impunity. Preston, look at it this way. If you knew that there was a 90% chance that you could rob a bank and become a millionaire

and do that once a month, and there was only a 10% chance you could get caught, and you did it one time and like i'm a millionaire now yeah and he's i might try this again so you do it again wow suddenly you you're emboldened because you have a if you're i mean who goes to who goes to to Las Vegas with a 90 percent chance of winning the lottery? In Vegas, right? So that's what it is. So we have a and that's the reality in Chicago.

The closure rate. Of gun violence. Is like eight to 10 percent, which means 90 to 92 percent of the cases of gun violence every time a gun is discharged 98 of the time nobody is arrested for that discharging of a weapon gun and so would you say part of this maybe yeah part of the solution is like stricter penalties for crime? Is that what you're saying? No, not stricter penalties, but being able to prosecute, the willingness to work closer together between the prosecutors and the police department to actually prosecute cases and put people behind bars. put people behind bars because again if crime is not punished then people feel like they can get away with it so that then then they're more emboldened to commit more crimes right like any kid growing up in any home if your parents don't punish you when you do something wrong you're

gonna get this the message that mom and dad don't really care. And I could keep doing this and get away with it. And then you raise a monster, you know? And so that's part of the problem. And, you know, I don't want to put labels on people and saying the people that are killing out here are monsters because they're not. They're human beings. But they're human beings who get the message from the larger society that not only is it okay for me to go out here and shoot and kill whether it's to defend myself or my tribe or to get even with somebody else but the police don't seem to be able to to get me the the prosecutors. I'm not being hauled in front of the judge to be prosecuted before

a jury of my peers. So I'm going to keep doing what I think I need to do to live and survive and protect myself and guard my honor and score points for my team. What I'm hearing you say is, you know, like when it gets politicized, it becomes kind of a one or two issue kind of solution. Some people might say, yeah, so let's do a better job prosecuting these cases. Maybe some people would say stricter penalties. And then they might even add in like, and we need to fix the single parent household situation. Boom, do that, and then we're good we're good. But it's, it's, there's layers of complexity there that you can address.

And maybe on the other side, it's like, you know, they might, you know, stricter gun laws or whatever, and then this will solve it. It's like, well, that, that might play a role, but that alone, you can't rest a solution on just one cog in the wheel as the. That's right. And so, again, that's one reason why cities like New York and L.A. have been able to drive down their gun violence numbers as large cities. Them combined are doing better than Chicago in terms of the violence for big cities because they've figured out the prosecutorial and police working hand in hand to tamp down the violence. They figured that out. But here in Chicago, it's actually got the relationship between prosecutors and police have gotten worse. And the politicization of those two groups two groups you know have deteriorated and that's not been good

for the neighborhoods you know so we therefore just do what we can do um and you know there that's got to be somebody else's battle somebody else's um burden to know, fix those things between politicians and the justice system. Because that definitely needs to be fixed. And it would help a great deal, the work that we're doing, if they were to fix those things politically. Tell me about the role that faith plays in the organization. I mean, it seems explicitly, you know, Christian, but you're willing to work with other leaders in the city who are not Christian. But yeah, is the Christian faith kind of really front and center explicit or is it kind of a little bit behind the scenes or what yeah what role does yeah the good news is that we we often hear as

christians if you're paying attention to uh these these larger cultural issues we often hear of the aclu sort of being the bad guy in terms of against christians in the public square and and are trying to get rid of all vestige of christianity from you know the public square whether are trying to get rid of all vestige of Christianity from, you know, the public square, whether it's displaying a cross in a municipal, you know, building or outside a municipal building or prayers in the schools or Bibles in the schools or, you know, that kind of thing. But the good news here is that this issue of violence, again, is touching everyone. And it is such at a pandemic level that the ACLU has nothing to say

when it comes to Christians involved in the space of reducing violence and increasing thriving. So we've not had any issues. We've been welcomed with open arms by the mayor, even an openly gay mayor that we just had in Lori Lightfoot, who just lost an election. The new mayor declares himself to be a devout Christian and is a member of a church, one of our cooperating churches. And he's already had some preliminary meetings with us and supports the work that we do and our other partners. We are an official partner with the Chicago police. So we have six districts of the 22 districts that they call on us to go visit with the commander, the guys who are pulling triggers. And that's another one of our strategies under violence reduction that I didn't really talk about. But so we're an official partner with the Chicago

police and they love us and they love the work we do together. And we pray with them. And we have found many Christians in city hall, many Christians in the police department, from the commanders to the lieutenants, to the captains, to the rank and file officers on the beat. And so they love when they realize that we're here to help come alongside them to help them do their job because they realize that they cannot really govern the city well without the church. And so our message to churches, wake up and realize that the city is asking for us to jump in both hands, both feet, and to bring our crosses with us, to bring our faith with us. They're not asking us to leave our faith at the door or to not mention Jesus' name, because they realize that is the efficacy that we believe is real

and is important not only to us, but to those that we serve. So our faith component is very front and center of who we are, but we do work with anyone who is willing to work with us that has something to offer that we think is good medicine to get to what ails us here in this space of violence. The people that are on the, as you said, on the other side of the gun, the ones pulling the trigger or like, you know, the various gangs that you're having to work with and through or whatever.

Do they see you as a problem or do they actually see you as like, do they have respect for the organization or does it depend from person to person? That's a great question. And I get asked that question often. not yet having the large impact that we want to have and we hope to have that would be detrimental to their work. So therefore, we're not yet a threat to them in terms of shutting down their operation because, you know, half their people got saved and are no longer selling drugs and guns. And you know what I mean? their people got saved and are no longer selling drugs and guns and you know what i mean um but what's interesting is there are some gangs not all of them but there are some who have this very interesting ethic of looking out for certain members of their tribe who have the potential

to get out and go far like they're supportive of that if it can happen. Is that exactly. So when they, when they identify a guy in their ranks who has the opportunity, for example, he gets a basketball or football scholarship to go to college. He becomes an untouchable and then everybody knows, okay,

don't mess with him because he has a chance to get out and make something of himself and they'll protect him and make sure that that he gets his education and gets his way out of the hood out of the gang out of the you know the out of dodge so to speak yeah um so so i when i first learned that from some former gang members i was really really intrigued. And I thought, wow, that's really cool. But then I learned that that's not the way it is with every gang, but it is the culture in some of them. Interesting. I've heard that. I grew up in Southern California.

And in Fresno, actually. I was born in Southern California. I grew up in Fresno. Fresno's a huge gang populations there. in Southern California, grew up in Fresno. Fresno's a huge gang populations there, you know, and there are all the, from what I, you know, I didn't grow up in, in the areas where the, you know, heavy gang infested, but knew enough kind of from a distance, but there was always this kind of respect of like the Reverend, you know, religion and the pastor, you know, if there was like a gang where the pastor came walking on the street, he would be kind of a,

you know, like a chaplain in the middle of a you know battle scene you know like there's kind of a respect for the man of the cloth or whatever or people that have actually yeah made it out which is and again that's not a universal yeah but that what you're saying kind of makes sense let me expand on that a little bit there used to be and I say 20 years ago, there used to be a greater respect for pastors and churches in gang-infested neighborhoods. So the guys who are now my age, I'm 55, so the guys in their late 40s, 50s, 60s, who somehow survived, by God's grace, prison and bullets, those guys, when they were really running things in their younger years, when they were in their 20s and 30s and they were running the gangs, they all came out of the church. The church became irrelevant to them and boring, and the gang life became exciting is you can get your girls and gold and cars you know gold jewelry girls and cars if you're in the gang those are the three things right that

they were all after and and but they had strict rules no shooting near a school no shooting when women and children are present no shooting near near churches. That was across the board. When the feds came in and busted up those notorious gang leaders in Chicago in particular and sent them to long time in prison, some of them got life in prison. We're talking about people like Larry Hoover, and there are several other names whose escapes me right now. Jeff Ford, Larry Hoover, two notorious names. You can Google those guys who ran gangs like the gangster disciples or the black disciples or the traveling vice lords. When those guys went away, it tore up the structure. And what the feds were gambling they took a gamble they

said well let's cut off the heads of these dragons and then the body will die and just the opposite what happened was okay these guys went in and then others underneath them were like okay we have an opportunity so they started vying for power and then it splintered the groups. So now instead of one traveling vice lord with one head that was now cut off, you have five traveling vice lord, you know, splinter groups with five new heads. And then they began warring against each other

or warring, teaming up and warring against other tribes. And that happened in several of the gangs. It creates a power vacuum, right? It's what happens every time the U.S. goes to the Middle East and tries to take out. Same thing to Central or South America. In addition to that, much like in the wider culture where kids today are no longer respecting their parents or any authority, even in the church and are leaving the church in droves. We see that in almost every denomination. The church membership and loyalty is going down because this younger generation does not trust authority. They don't trust the government.

They don't trust teachers. They don't trust coaches. They don't trust police. They don't trust church leaders because of all the scandal. And every layer of leadership, whether it's government or business or sports or church or you name it, leaders are failing in terms of being a role model. So by and large, these young kids with now with internet and everybody has a phone and information technologies everywhere, they're like, they're aware of all this scandal. And they're like, these leaders are wicked and unethical.

And why should I follow them? And they're all the same. You know, that's what young kids are thinking so they may not go off into gang lifestyle but they're leaving they have a high distrust of any organized religion or any organized this or any organized that and they're just doing their own thing well that exactly that that same mentality happened with those in the gang culture so now the young guys they have very little loyalty to anybody and and and or anything and so now shootings are happening at schools at churches uh in front of the police i mean they have zero respect wow for anybody except for a few of the

older guys. They might listen to them a little bit, which is, you know, the little LTO license to operate or street cred that the older guys still have because, you know, they look up to them a little bit, but they don't really control them. They just kind of give them a passing respect and that's all they have so that that's what's happened really uh over the years and and and faith we're trying to rebuild the trust and that's why we're we're we're encouraging churches to see what has happened and to step into this this space of saying listen we've got to become more relevant to these guys. They're not in your churches. They're still in your neighborhood, but they're not in your churches because

your ministry is not ministering and meeting a need that they have. So their single mom is working two and three jobs, and you haven't lifted a finger to help alleviate their burden, even though you're a church in the community. You haven't helped to feed them or clothe them. You haven't helped to give them access to legal counsel when their kids or they get in trouble with parking tickets or landlord-tenant issues or child custody issues. So the church has become irrelevant. So now we've created these on-ramps and saying to the churches, look, you can become more relevant to your community if you partner with us. We have this plug-and-play ministry box that we have for you. Take this box, open it, use it, let your church then become, let us help you become more

relevant to your community, and you're going to have an impact and greater respect in your community now. So churches that are more justice-oriented or focused on the community around them will be much more relevant than just a church producing great worship services with no impact on the community. Right, right. And so these kids are going, you know what? The church is just about getting my money. They're up there hooping and hollering and shouting, dancing, and they take up an offering

and the pastor is in these expensive suits and riding around in Cadillacs. And meanwhile, my parents, my mom can barely feed me and clothe me. And so what good is it going to church every Sunday and watching this pastor pull up in his Cadillac, and we're walking to church, and we don't even have a car. We're on public transportation. Why should I give my money to the church? So that's the mentality. Then people see that and they're like, there's something wrong with this picture. And somehow they've read enough and heard enough of the gospel to say, this doesn't seem like the kind of church Jesus would be in. And so that's become a problem. Michael, thank you so much for your time.

This has been a fascinating conversation. And I mean, I was a fan of your ministry before this interview, and I'm even a bigger fan now. I'm sure some listeners are in the Chicagoland area. Maybe there's a few that are like, man, I would love to get involved. Can they just contact somebody through the website and say, hey, I'd love to help out? Yep, yep. You could reach out. And there's a little kind of questionnaire survey when you reach out to contact us.

And that lets us know what area you're interested in, whether it is faith community mobilization, economic development, you know, tutoring in the schools, gospel justice centers, whatever. And you let us know. And then that lead person responsible for that area will reach out to you and get you plugged in. And of course centers, whatever, and you let us know, and then that lead person responsible for that area will reach out to you and get you plugged in. And of course, you know, if you want to make a donation, you're welcome to do that online, tax deductible gifts. Every dollar I can assure you will go back out into the community to reduce gun violence and increase thriving

communities. And the website, it's in the show notes, but TogetherChicago.com. You got it. Yeah, TogetherChicago.com. You got it. TogetherChicago.com. Thank you so much, Michael. Appreciate your time. And thanks for joining me on Theology in a Row. You're welcome, Preston. God bless you and God bless all of your listeners as well.

Take care. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.