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

Theology in the Raw

Christianity, Culture, Politics, Theology, Discipleship, Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2023

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Rom. I guess today is Michael
0:03.8	Allen, who is co-founder and co-CEO of Together Chicago, an awesome, awesome ministry aimed at reducing
0:10.2	gun violence in Chicago. You're going to hear all about that ministry and the awesome work that
0:14.7	Michael and his team are involved in. So please welcome the show. They want it only, Michael Allen.
0:30.0	Michael Allen, thanks so much for joining me on Theology in the Rom. I'm really excited to
0:33.5	get to know you and the ministry that you're involved in. Why don't you start off by telling us
0:38.0	just a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where are you from?
0:40.4	Yeah, well thanks Preston for having me on and being interested in our story. I was born in the
0:46.0	island nation of Jamaica and the Caribbean and spent the first nine years of my life there. I have an
0:51.7	older brother, younger sister. And during the 1970s when our Prime Minister, our national government
1:01.2	was seemingly getting really close to Cuba's Castro's regime, we like many others in the island
1:12.0	were fearful that communism might be close at hand and sort of taking over our country and
1:19.2	tens of thousands of people who had the means to leave the island left for hopes of the better
1:27.1	future for their families and to avoid the potential danger of communism. Cuba is 90 miles south
1:36.6	of Key West Florida and then Jamaica is 90 miles south of Cuba. And so with that proximity,
1:44.8	you know, people really felt like we should leave those who could. So our family immigrated to
1:50.8	Fort Lauderdale in 1977. I was nine years old and we had relatives already living in Fort Lauderdale.
1:59.5	So we got a green cards and immigrated and finished growing up in South Florida.
2:07.7	And I remember when we first moved to Fort Lauderdale, our family was the first black family to
2:15.1	move into our neighborhood, a neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale called Inverery. I don't know if
2:22.3	you remember Jackie Gleason, the famous comedian, but he lived in Inverery. And actually I should say
2:30.0	we moved into Lauderdale. Inverery was a little subdivision within Lauderdale.
	...

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