Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's a Bill Courtney with an army of
Speaker 1: normal folks. And we continue now with part two of
Speaker 1: our conversation with Pastor Corey Brooks. Right after these brief
Speaker 1: messages from our generous sponsors, let's talk a little church business.
Speaker 1: Let's talk the back office. Absolutely, the work to church
Speaker 1: for the unchurch is a beautiful thing, and I get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I think the corporate church
Speaker 1: since the fifties and sixties in the United States and
Speaker 1: large part, has been its own worst enemy in terms
Speaker 1: of declining membership and participation because the narrative believe like
Speaker 1: me or you're going to Hell is a pretty tough
Speaker 1: for sure. And my faith is grace and forgiveness and
Speaker 1: love and compassion and service. Yes, I think in large
Speaker 1: part the church has a verse course seeing their ways
Speaker 1: and started to work hard to put the narrative of
Speaker 1: what my faith is out there. But there was a
Speaker 1: long time where that was secondary. And I think in
Speaker 1: large part the church has been some worsetent.
Speaker 2: Me.
Speaker 1: So there's a large population of the unchurched who had
Speaker 1: family members who are Christians or who had been introduced
Speaker 1: to the church that are reachable, right and guys like
Speaker 1: you plopping down in areas of need and reaching out
Speaker 1: to those folks and starting to church the unchurched is
Speaker 1: I think incredibly valuable needed. Ok But there's a business
Speaker 1: side of a church. We're not talking about Tammy Fay
Speaker 1: and jets and massive stuff, all right, that's a different world.
Speaker 1: What I'm talking about is the reality of a church
Speaker 1: is it costs some money to run it. Absolutely. You've
Speaker 1: got to keep the lights on. You've got to pay
Speaker 1: I think you have to pay you. I know you
Speaker 1: don't have to pay income, but I think you do
Speaker 1: have to pay property tax, don't you No, we don't
Speaker 1: have to pay property tanks. Okay, so you don't have
Speaker 1: but you got to keep the lights on. The men
Speaker 1: and women running the church have to have a salary.
Speaker 1: They free, and you don't want them to be paupers,
Speaker 1: so you're not going to make them bajillionaires. But they
Speaker 1: have to feed their family and take care of their children.
Speaker 1: And you know, so there's there's salaries that have to
Speaker 1: be paid, there's phone lines that have to be paid.
Speaker 1: You gotta pay for maintenance on the building. I mean
Speaker 1: it has to take money, absolutely, And the church gets
Speaker 1: its money from tithing. Yes, so many of the pastors
Speaker 1: that I've talked to over the years who have started
Speaker 1: churches for unchurched, we're afraid that commitment Sunday was one
Speaker 1: of the things that really turned off prisoners because oh,
Speaker 1: here they go, ask me for my money, Here comes
Speaker 1: the offering plate. And they walked a difficult fine line
Speaker 1: reaching to people who'd been chased out of the church
Speaker 1: to have the church fun churchdom, while still explaining that
Speaker 1: tithing was part of the deal because without the tithing,
Speaker 1: the church doesn't exist, and frankly, were called to do
Speaker 1: it right, how'd you handle that? Because and was that
Speaker 1: a thing? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, here's which I'm not just No, you're right on point.
Speaker 2: I've always handled stewardship from the standpoint of financial responsibility
Speaker 2: and accountability. So for us, teaching the tide was just
Speaker 2: part of it. So even to this day, when we
Speaker 2: teach about finances, we're teaching about budgeting. We're teaching about
Speaker 2: living below your mean, not overspending, learning how to be content.
Speaker 2: We're talking about savings. So we teach people the ten
Speaker 2: ten eighty rule, you know, stuff like that. So from
Speaker 2: the very start, we've always taught not just tithing, but
Speaker 2: we want you to be better financially. And I think
Speaker 2: that's one of the things that kind of appealed to
Speaker 2: the younger group that we were reaching, is that they understood, Look,
Speaker 2: we're not just trying to get you to tie. We
Speaker 2: want you to be financially accountable, we want.
Speaker 1: You to be literate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we want you to be in a position to
Speaker 2: take care of your family. We're not just trying to
Speaker 2: get something from you. We're trying to give something to you.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Part of that is learning how to give to God,
Speaker 2: putting him first. And when you establish that, I think
Speaker 2: people receive it a lot different. So they know at
Speaker 2: our church, they know we're not just talking about finances
Speaker 2: and money just so we can get something from you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's good stuff, but it's a big thing. You know,
Speaker 2: even even now. You know, just Sunday I was saying,
Speaker 2: and I don't look at weekly and monthly ties and
Speaker 2: offerings and things like that. Annually I'll go back and
Speaker 2: look and say okay. And so this year when they
Speaker 2: brought me to report, I was a little taken back
Speaker 2: because I looked at the tithe and Report of our
Speaker 2: leaders and the tithe and Report of some of our
Speaker 2: staff and people who work and I was like, whoa.
Speaker 2: And I was really really upset, and I was going
Speaker 2: to just write a model letter and you know, go off,
Speaker 2: but the Lord convicted me of and I you know,
Speaker 2: it was and I felt, you know what, it's really
Speaker 2: more of an indictment on my teaching and preaching. Maybe
Speaker 2: I need to be a better communicator and teaching about
Speaker 2: financial responsibility. So that's the way I started keeping my
Speaker 2: approach there. It's about financial responsibility and financial literacy.
Speaker 1: The greatest measure of the success of a leader is
Speaker 1: the actions of the followers. Absolutely, yeah. And if they
Speaker 1: ain't getting it right, you gotta look at yourself first.
Speaker 1: That's the first place, you know, So go to leaders.
Speaker 1: So go to church, that's right. Yeah, all right, So
Speaker 1: here comes the Route sixty six church and you're in
Speaker 1: Woodlawn and across the street there's a hotel. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we're in Woodline. We're the toughest area in Chicago,
Speaker 2: on the most dangerous street in Chicago twenty fourteen. The
Speaker 2: Chicago sometimes called it the most dangerous neighborhood in all
Speaker 2: of Chicago. Some think it's even the most make it
Speaker 2: in the country. Yes, something I was going to say.
Speaker 2: Some people think it's one of the most dangerous streets
Speaker 2: in the country.
Speaker 1: So here we are.
Speaker 2: We got this church and it's across the street from
Speaker 2: this motel, and this motel gangs are using it for
Speaker 2: drug sales and gun sales, and prostitution is going on.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's called the stroll, you know, where prostitutes are
Speaker 2: using it to walk in front of and sell them sells.
Speaker 2: So it was really here we are, this church and
Speaker 2: you know this this place is right across the street.
Speaker 2: So something has to be done. So we tried talking
Speaker 2: to the owner and negotiating with the owner, and none
Speaker 2: of that work. And two things happened. We want to
Speaker 2: buy it, Yeah, we wanted to buy it, and he
Speaker 2: wouldn't sell it. Now I understand why he wouldn't sell it.
Speaker 2: You know, the gangs were involved, and he was making
Speaker 2: a lot of illegal money. So and I later found
Speaker 2: out that he that these sleazy hotels were part of
Speaker 2: a lot of sleazy hotels across the America owned by
Speaker 2: a group that was participating in these type of activities.
Speaker 2: But I didn't find that out until it got later
Speaker 2: on in the in the process.
Speaker 1: But this hotel. It is a sleezy hotel, and.
Speaker 2: We're trying to you know, we want to take it on,
Speaker 2: we want to buy it, so he wouldn't sell it.
Speaker 1: Could you see? I think were your parishioners and your
Speaker 1: personal children walking out and seeing all this mess going
Speaker 1: on across.
Speaker 2: The streets, absolutely, especially a prostitution on Sunday were they
Speaker 2: were they walking the streets in front of the church.
Speaker 2: There were prostitutes walking the street. And now I know
Speaker 2: from hearing you already, you weren't condemning them. No, you
Speaker 2: probably wanted to reach out, and we were reaching out.
Speaker 2: We were reaching out. We were trying to get him
Speaker 2: in programs. We were trying you know, we never would
Speaker 2: condemn them. We never would still, yeah, but it was
Speaker 2: it was they were there and one Sunday you said, so, yeah,
Speaker 2: One Sunday, the gang somebody beat this guy up so
Speaker 2: bad and he ran into our congregate. Our church was
Speaker 2: jam packed. He ran in the lobby, but naked, bleeding
Speaker 2: he had gotten on Sunday mornings stripped him. We were like, okay,
Speaker 2: we got to do something. So from that point we
Speaker 2: were like, this is it Monday, I'm going over to
Speaker 2: talk to this guy who's gonna have to sell this hotel.
Speaker 2: So I can remember going over and having this big
Speaker 2: discussion with him, and I remember saying to me, look,
Speaker 2: there's a church over there, and he pointed at this
Speaker 2: church that was not too far from us, and then
Speaker 2: he said, there's a church on that corner down there,
Speaker 2: and they were there before you got here. And then
Speaker 2: he said to me, and what makes you think you're
Speaker 2: gonna do something different? And right there is when I
Speaker 2: feel like, okay, he's throwing down the gatlin. So the
Speaker 2: next Sunday, I told our church, we're gonna be protesting
Speaker 2: out in front of their every Friday and Saturday night.
Speaker 2: We're going to act like we're filming people going in
Speaker 2: doing illegal stuff, and we're going to try to shut
Speaker 2: it down. And so for a whole summer we cut
Speaker 2: his business off.
Speaker 1: And hang on what the gang members not too happy
Speaker 1: with that, Well, you're not worried about a little shooting.
Speaker 1: It was It.
Speaker 2: Was it was confrontations, it was confroation. The good thing
Speaker 2: is that we had been in the neighborhood and so
Speaker 2: people will started joining our church from the neighborhood. So
Speaker 2: some of these same gang guys were related to people
Speaker 2: who were in our church, so our members, our members
Speaker 2: were able to quiet stuff down on a lot, right.
Speaker 2: So we hadn't had that connection, it probably in the
Speaker 2: words of our neighborhood, it would have went up for sure. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: so you're protesting. So we're protesting all summer. We're cutting
Speaker 2: this drying his business up. He's he's hurting. So we
Speaker 2: got him on the you know, on the ropes. So
Speaker 2: the name of Jesus, you've grinding them up. Jesus real bad.
Speaker 2: So uh, I tell people we were gangstering for God.
Speaker 2: So we're so so new. So the end of the
Speaker 2: summer comes, the fall comes. He's, you know, in a
Speaker 2: tough situation. And in November, a young boy in our
Speaker 2: church gets shot and killed. And that's when things went
Speaker 2: to a whole other level. We had the funeral at
Speaker 2: the church. It was a it was a warm day
Speaker 2: on a Saturday. The kids were walking into the neighborhood
Speaker 2: from five six blocks away, a very large funeral. And
Speaker 2: I'm up in the office getting ready, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, I hear semi automatic gunfire and my heart
Speaker 2: sank because just like she said, she was worried exactly happened.
Speaker 2: The kids from the block that our churches on started
Speaker 2: shooting at those kids, and thankfully no one got shot
Speaker 2: and killed, and it was chaotic. We were still able
Speaker 2: to have the funeral. After the police came, we debated
Speaker 2: should we even have it, but I decided, you know,
Speaker 2: look this many young people here. Something positive needs to
Speaker 2: be said about the Lord. So the police stayed, they
Speaker 2: were everywhere, and we finally were able to have this funeral.
Speaker 2: And that's when things kind of like I made a
Speaker 2: commitment to God.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm all in.
Speaker 2: I thought I had been all in, but something has
Speaker 2: to be done about the violence in this name.
Speaker 1: To say about a society that has to have a
Speaker 1: massive police presence or a child can be buried, Man,
Speaker 1: it's very sad. It's nothing like it.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Broken.
Speaker 2: I can remember thinking and even while the worship service
Speaker 2: was going on, it's going to take a miracle to
Speaker 2: change this neighborhood. And I was thinking, even why the
Speaker 2: funeral's going on, Man, I should just lead this neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Why am I here? I shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I started to doubt, and I started I was
Speaker 2: really internally wrestling about the whole situation. But at the
Speaker 2: end of that funeral, something happened that had never happened
Speaker 2: to me. Ever, I really believe that Lord still speaks
Speaker 2: and urges you by the Holy Spirit. I believe that,
Speaker 2: and I really believe that the Holy Spirit was just
Speaker 2: functioning me to say something to those boys who had
Speaker 2: brought illegal guns into the church. And so I said,
Speaker 2: at the end of the funeral, I stopped the process.
Speaker 2: I stopped everybody and told everybody to sit down, and
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I'm not trying to scare anybody.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to be spooky. I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: be prophetic. But I do believe when God speaks to me,
Speaker 2: gives me a certain function. And I said, there's some
Speaker 2: young brothers in here who brought guns in here illegally.
Speaker 2: And this is what I said, God wants you to
Speaker 2: turn those guns in today, because if you diss Him
Speaker 2: by going out these doors with those guns, He's gonna
Speaker 2: diss you. So I'm gonna say a prayer, and at
Speaker 2: the end of this prayer, we're gonna have a gun
Speaker 2: turn in. And I got the police to agree that
Speaker 2: I could do it. They wouldn't rest anybody. We could
Speaker 2: do a gun turn in and I said a prayer,
Speaker 2: and I thought it was gonna be I don't know
Speaker 2: if you're familiar with Billy Graham, but I thought it
Speaker 2: was gonna be like one of them Billy Graham crusades,
Speaker 2: you know what he prays, and then everybody comes down
Speaker 2: and everybody's crying. Everybody's so I thought it was gonna
Speaker 2: be like that. But I said amen, and it was
Speaker 2: so quiet, nobody moved. I thought, oh my god, I
Speaker 2: made a big mistake. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: after about a minute of quiet, this young brother with
Speaker 2: a T shirt on, saggy pants locks, pulls up his pants.
Speaker 2: He's got a nine milimeter clock, holds it up in
Speaker 2: the air, turns it in. Another person turns in the gun.
Speaker 2: Another person turns in the gun, and I said, God
Speaker 2: that this is a miracle. Whatever you want me to
Speaker 2: do from this point, I'm all in. So as we're
Speaker 2: walking out at the end of the funeral, the sergeant
Speaker 2: of police stops me and she's crying and she says,
Speaker 2: passor thank you so much. She said, underneath the seat,
Speaker 2: we found this gun and it was another nine milimeter
Speaker 2: but it had an extended clip and so I just
Speaker 2: recommitted again the same thing I just committed.
Speaker 1: God, I'm all in whatever I got to do this violence,
Speaker 1: I'm all in.
Speaker 2: And little did I know I would walk from the
Speaker 2: back of our church to the front door of our
Speaker 2: church and they're that motel is the first thing I
Speaker 2: put my eyes on, and the same unction I had
Speaker 2: in the funeral, I got that same unction again. This
Speaker 2: time it was more like, go on top of the
Speaker 2: roof for that motel and stay there until you raise
Speaker 2: enough money to purchase it and tear it down and
Speaker 2: start building a community center.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now we're gonna get to this part of
Speaker 1: the story, which is phenomenal.
Speaker 3: But brother, are you crazy? Because here I think I was,
Speaker 3: because I think you gotta have a little crazy. How
Speaker 3: you gonna go up on a roof and buy a hotel?
Speaker 3: I mean, here's the truth. You go on the roof
Speaker 3: of this building right now. But that don't mean you're
Speaker 3: gonna buy nothing. Which is is are you gonna find
Speaker 3: enough quarters on the room you're gonna be able to buy?
Speaker 1: How are you gonna buy a hotel by going on
Speaker 1: the roof. That doesn't even make sense. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense.
Speaker 2: At all, and I tell people I know it now
Speaker 2: looking back, it made no sense and I didn't even
Speaker 2: think it. I wasn't even thinking it through. I just
Speaker 2: really believed in my heart and mind I'm hearing from God.
Speaker 2: I was believing that because I was in that gun
Speaker 2: turned in kind of like just messing me up and
Speaker 2: have me. Man, you got brothers turning in guns. I'll
Speaker 2: believe it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. One of the reasons why at
Speaker 1: the beginning of our conversation, I really wanted to establish
Speaker 1: your pedigree, your educational pedigree political science and Dallas and
Speaker 1: got into law school. I'll tell you another quick story.
Speaker 1: I've done more stories on this. The Rain Hotel over
Speaker 1: here on Mulberry Streets where Martin Luther King was shot
Speaker 1: and killed in Memphis. And Memphis was a major manufacturing
Speaker 1: area prior to nineteen April fourth, nineteen sixty eight, and
Speaker 1: there were riots and riots and riots, and a lot
Speaker 1: of companies Caterpillar International Harvester, Firestone, Firestone had a plant
Speaker 1: over here that was seven hundred acres, couldn't deal with
Speaker 1: it and pulled up stakes. And it's set back this
Speaker 1: city thirty years, not only culturally and racially, but economical
Speaker 1: Memphis is still dealing with it. I mean, Memphis at
Speaker 1: one time was one of the top ten largest cities
Speaker 1: in the country. And the crossing of the river, I
Speaker 1: mean the Memphis has struggled and it's coming back. And
Speaker 1: there are great corporations still here, like International Paper and
Speaker 1: AutoZone and FedEx and others. But that incident, and I
Speaker 1: don't need to mean to downplay the social impact of
Speaker 1: that incident, which is most important, but it had a
Speaker 1: devastating economic impact on the city. As a result, the
Speaker 1: area around the Roman Hotel went to hell, right, And
Speaker 1: so in eighty seven, nineteen eighty seven, I'm at Olmsson College,
Speaker 1: mine of my own business. Well not really, but that's
Speaker 1: where I am, and this TV the news comes over,
Speaker 1: and the city and county and a private public partnership
Speaker 1: of raised enough money to buy their own hotel, do
Speaker 1: millions of dollars with the renovations and make it the
Speaker 1: National Civil Rights Museum and honor doctor King and make
Speaker 1: it a museum that's DC New York quality, which stands today. Great,
Speaker 1: great deal. But the woman who was running that motel's
Speaker 1: name was Jacqueline Smith, not the Charlie's Angel Jacqueline Smith,
Speaker 1: an African American woman named Jackie Smith who was using
Speaker 1: the hotel to house beaten, battered, abused children and mothers
Speaker 1: and people are on the streets caring for the very
Speaker 1: people that your heart cares. And her argument was, museums
Speaker 1: and monuments don't perpetuate the memory of doctor King actions
Speaker 1: to and if we're going to spend twenty five million
Speaker 1: dollars on this place, why don't we rehabit to a
Speaker 1: center for the people that need it the most. Well,
Speaker 1: nobody understood that all the news showed was this black
Speaker 1: woman having all her stuff thrown on the curb and
Speaker 1: being dragged out by her feet and hands down the stairway,
Speaker 1: hollering loud. And you know what she looked like. She
Speaker 1: looked like a crazy street woman, right, crazy black woman,
Speaker 1: angry black woman, crazy angry black woman, just raising hell.
Speaker 1: And then they drop her on the curb with all
Speaker 1: her stuff and put a tarp over it. It's twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four and that woman is still there, Wow, tonight
Speaker 1: because she believes so desperately in her heart that actions,
Speaker 1: not monuments, better support and perpetuate the memory the works
Speaker 1: of a man like doctor King. Now you can argue
Speaker 1: whether or not the Civil Rights Museum as an educational
Speaker 1: tool and as a monument to the greatest civil rights
Speaker 1: leader of our time is appropriate or not. I personally
Speaker 1: think it probably is, But I also understand her. So
Speaker 1: I drove up there, and now this was not a
Speaker 1: place in the city that many folks went, and certainly
Speaker 1: not redheaded, fat white dudes, right, And I ended up
Speaker 1: spending two nights on the sidewalk with her, and Wow,
Speaker 1: heard her story, wrote it down, and wrote an article
Speaker 1: that ended up getting published and like readers, dijust and
Speaker 1: time and all that. So it was my first full
Speaker 1: way into storytelling, frankly. But what I learned about Jackie
Speaker 1: Smith is she had a degree from the University of
Speaker 1: Southern Mississippi and was a lead soprano in the Chicago
Speaker 1: metch Boldern Opera at one time, and she left all
Speaker 1: that to come back home to serve the most disadvantaged
Speaker 1: in community. And her protest was righteous. I'm telling the
Speaker 1: story for this reason. When I first heard the story
Speaker 1: of a black man camping out on somebody's roof in Chicago,
Speaker 1: I thought you were just a crazy, angry.
Speaker 2: Black man yeah, you know, and I can understand that,
Speaker 2: and I think that's not just was your thought. I
Speaker 2: think that's probably what a lot of people thought. Even
Speaker 2: people on my staff thought. Passed, this is crazy, don't
Speaker 2: you know. They were trying to talk to me out
Speaker 2: of doing it. But I was so convinced and still
Speaker 2: am to this day that that's what God wanted me
Speaker 2: to do that I was not gonna No one.
Speaker 1: Could have changed my mind. Tell us what you did.
Speaker 2: So on November the twentieth, twenty eleven, about four am
Speaker 2: in the morning, Rafa, who is our church maintenance engineer,
Speaker 2: we snuck up on the roof and we put a
Speaker 2: tent up there and I just refused to come down,
Speaker 2: and I said I wasn't gonna come down until we
Speaker 2: raised enough money.
Speaker 1: How tall is this fielding?
Speaker 2: It's about three stories, So your three stories up there,
Speaker 2: three stories up in the air.
Speaker 1: People lobbing your cans of beans? How you eating?
Speaker 2: And so at first I was fast, and so so
Speaker 2: I was on the twenty one day fast because I
Speaker 2: was thinking this is what I really just think. I
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, I go up here on this roof
Speaker 2: and people are here about it. It's crazy. Black preacher
Speaker 2: on the roof attend not eating seven days, I'll be down.
Speaker 2: I really thought that's what's going to happen, but it
Speaker 2: did not happen like that. I'm thankful to a lady
Speaker 2: by the name of Hermeane Hartman, who was really close
Speaker 2: to Reverend Jesse Jackson, and she's you know, she's really
Speaker 2: historic in Chicago as far as media is concerned, on
Speaker 2: black radio, and she knows everybody. She just happened to
Speaker 2: hear that I was on the roof, and she did
Speaker 2: not believe it. And so she came by there on
Speaker 2: the second day in her car, her and her friend,
Speaker 2: and she was hollering up and so I come over
Speaker 2: to the side of the roof.
Speaker 1: She said, I didn't I did not believe you were
Speaker 1: up here.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go and tell everybody, And sure enough she started, Yeah,
Speaker 2: she started spreading the word. I started getting attention. The
Speaker 2: mayor called and we got into a big argument. Man,
Speaker 2: Rommy Manuel on the third.
Speaker 1: Supposed to be a big progressive Democrats support the people
Speaker 1: kind of guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I tell people, I didn't know he could cuss.
Speaker 2: I didn't know you could cuss preachers out like that.
Speaker 1: He cussed me.
Speaker 2: Out real good cause you know, he's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: get after off and have people on the roofs all
Speaker 2: across the city if he allows it to go.
Speaker 1: And that, yeah, he was gonna start. I'm starting something,
Speaker 1: starting something everybody gonna do. And I control off the
Speaker 1: roof off and you told the mayor, no way, you
Speaker 1: have to come and get me. Let me buy this
Speaker 1: hotel exactly, And he was.
Speaker 2: Like, I can't help you buy the motel, and you're
Speaker 2: gonna come off that roof. Matter of fact, if you
Speaker 2: don't come off by three o'clock, we're gonna come and
Speaker 2: get you. And I tell everyone he should have he
Speaker 2: made a big mistake. He told me the time. When
Speaker 2: he told me the time, I called every gang banger.
Speaker 1: I knew every grandmother, everybody, the whole the block was packed.
Speaker 2: It was so many people that the police and the
Speaker 2: fire department couldn't come up to get me off the roof.
Speaker 2: What it looked like the press was there. The press
Speaker 2: was there. So he called back and he's like, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let you stay on the roof, but you
Speaker 2: gotta let us inspect it and make sure it's safe.
Speaker 2: So by that time, we had got a lift, that
Speaker 2: rented a lift, so they come all the way up there.
Speaker 2: So the fire chief gets on and here the fire
Speaker 2: and the chief of the fire department in Chicago coming
Speaker 2: up on the roof. So he comes up there and
Speaker 2: he's he's really laughing because he knows that, you know,
Speaker 2: he's laughing about rom them trying to make me get off.
Speaker 2: So he's like, listen, man, I just do this, do this.
Speaker 2: And all the things he told me to do were
Speaker 2: safety things. And I'm glad he did because on the
Speaker 2: third day, once we got everything up, that night a
Speaker 2: snow It was the only snowstorm that hit while I
Speaker 2: was up there. This is the winter, yes, November, the twentieth.
Speaker 1: Wind's blowing. Yet Wins.
Speaker 2: The wind is blowing, I'm freezing. I'm really not prepared
Speaker 2: for a snowstorm.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: But when that snowstorm hit, we had sealed the inside
Speaker 2: of the tent down with two by fours and drilled
Speaker 2: it to the roof so it wouldn't blow away. And
Speaker 2: so I was glad. He's going crazy. The bank's going crazy.
Speaker 2: So we're fighting with the bank. We're fighting with them,
Speaker 2: but they couldn't. They couldn't get me off because the
Speaker 2: neighborhood by that time, they were like in full support,
Speaker 2: and it was like it had become a thing of
Speaker 2: man pasting bricks is on the roof. We're gonna so
Speaker 2: everybody so the games. Instead of being mad, they started
Speaker 2: protecting me, and it was it was amazing. It was
Speaker 2: an amazing sight to behold. And it lasted ninety four days.
Speaker 2: That's over three months. Yes, I thought it was gonna
Speaker 2: they come down for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Nothing. I came down. The only time I came on Sunday,
Speaker 1: I preached and they streamed it in.
Speaker 2: So before all the streaming and stuff was going on,
Speaker 2: we had already figured out streaming. So they would they
Speaker 2: would put me on the roof. I was passing from
Speaker 2: the roof. I would preach a sermon from the roof
Speaker 2: and they'd be in there.
Speaker 3: It was about this, what about using the bathroom?
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm a country boy, so I knew
Speaker 2: it ain't got my I don't remember a lot about
Speaker 2: my childhood, but I do remember being six and seven
Speaker 2: and we had an outhouse in Kenton, Tennessee, So going
Speaker 2: and using it outside was no big deal to me.
Speaker 2: So we I got this camping little thing it's used
Speaker 2: for camping that you use it to a porter pot
Speaker 2: with powder. Yeah, the powder, and you bought like a
Speaker 2: little it's like a little trash bag. You use it
Speaker 2: and in the pot. You tied it up and throw
Speaker 2: it out. So by that time I was did you
Speaker 2: have I was I was a ported pot expert.
Speaker 1: Did you have any electricity?
Speaker 2: We we finally got some electricity up there, because after
Speaker 2: that third day I almost froze to death. I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be able to make it. So
Speaker 2: we we hijacked the electricity from across the street at
Speaker 2: the church, wired it all the way across the electric
Speaker 2: poles without the city knowing. Yeah, we we We used
Speaker 2: some some ghetto tricks and.
Speaker 1: We So, man, just sitting across from you, you got.
Speaker 4: This warm smile and this warm presence, right, yeah, I
Speaker 4: appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I gotta believe though you were tight lift and you
Speaker 1: weren't showing that warmth from the top of that roof.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, you know I have a warm side
Speaker 2: the form the nice, fuzzy, cuddly warm side, but I
Speaker 2: also have that side that you know, I'm an edgy,
Speaker 2: and I think I have to be that way because
Speaker 2: I don't think you can passor in our neighborhood without
Speaker 2: without being a man's man.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you're a Peter Disciple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, that would be me. I'm always learning
Speaker 2: to turn the other cheek, and you know, I'm always
Speaker 2: learning how to be humble. But the guys laugh a
Speaker 2: lot with me because you know, I've gotten into some
Speaker 2: major confrontations with guys who from the neighborhood. So but
Speaker 2: I try to be as golly and as golly example
Speaker 2: as I can.
Speaker 1: But I'm just not gonna let you bully me. So
Speaker 1: you up there for ninety three days, and at this point,
Speaker 1: I don't know how that's going to help you to
Speaker 1: buy the building. It may bring attention to the flight.
Speaker 2: So I was bringing it. So I tell people I'm
Speaker 2: on this roof for two reasons. One to bring attention
Speaker 2: and awareness to the violence in the Woodline, Chicago area
Speaker 2: that is out of hand.
Speaker 1: It's too much.
Speaker 2: No one should have to deal with as much violence
Speaker 2: in any neighborhood. Children should be able to walk to
Speaker 2: the store without being shot. They should be able to
Speaker 2: go to the playgrounds, and play without being shot at.
Speaker 2: They should be able to go to school safely. So
Speaker 2: that's I was trying to bring as much attention to
Speaker 2: that I could to the to the violence. And that's
Speaker 2: what I did. And so even while I was on
Speaker 2: the roof. The one time I did come down, it
Speaker 2: was for a young boy who had gotten shot at
Speaker 2: a Lee's Chicken and New York Times came and did
Speaker 2: a story on it. But that was the only time
Speaker 2: I came down to do that funeral of that young boy.
Speaker 2: But I was committed toward, you know, toward that effort
Speaker 2: and bringing attention and awareness. And then number two, I
Speaker 2: would tell people, well, I'm raising money to purchase this
Speaker 2: motel to turn into a community center. Now, I'll be honest,
Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons why it took so long.
Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons why it took so
Speaker 2: long is that in our community, people are used to
Speaker 2: preachers saying they're going to build something and do something,
Speaker 2: and sometimes we don't do it. So I think I
Speaker 2: had I had that uphill struggle to deal with and
Speaker 2: getting the message out to convince people that hey, I'm serious,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do it. But I think over time.
Speaker 2: Once people saw man, this man must be serious because
Speaker 2: he's not coming down. It's Christmas, it's Martin Luther King's birthday,
Speaker 2: it's Groundhog Day, it's Valentine.
Speaker 1: True, your wife get pretty angry at some point.
Speaker 2: You know what, It got tired of you being on
Speaker 2: the Only thing my wife got mad about is I
Speaker 2: kept begging her to come up there.
Speaker 5: You know, got you go past her roof pical business.
Speaker 4: She wouldn't cooperate. She used to tell me. She used
Speaker 4: to tell me, I don't want to come up there.
Speaker 4: People are gonna think we're doing it. And I'm like,
Speaker 4: that's because we're gonna be If you come up here,
Speaker 4: let me show you my let me show you the
Speaker 4: r ruth.
Speaker 1: To believe that you come up here, Lord, expect to
Speaker 1: go that way. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: I kept a diary and I wrote every day in
Speaker 2: the diary. On day ninety two, I wrote about God,
Speaker 2: I'm really expecting you to do something soon. I just
Speaker 2: feel it, And I said, I just want to thank
Speaker 2: you right now for what I believe you're going to do.
Speaker 2: I know you're going to do it, so thank you
Speaker 2: in advance. That was day ninety two. On day ninety four,
Speaker 2: I got a bunch of calls. People calling me and said
Speaker 2: they're talking about you on the radio. They're trying to
Speaker 2: get in touch with you my phone. It was so
Speaker 2: many calls. I'd never experienced this that my cell phone
Speaker 2: got locked because so many people were trying to call me.
Speaker 2: And so finally Tyler Perry got through. Cayler p Yeah.
Speaker 2: On the ninety fourth day, Tyler Perry and Tom Joyner.
Speaker 2: He was on the Tom Joyner Morning Show and somebody
Speaker 2: had told him about what I was doing, and he
Speaker 2: called me and they had me live on the radio
Speaker 2: and he said, is this the crazy Black Preacher on
Speaker 2: the roof in Chicago? And I was like, yes, it is.
Speaker 2: And he was like, hey, this is Tyler Perry. And
Speaker 2: I got a movie coming out called Good Deeds. He said,
Speaker 2: I want to give you the motorcycle from the movie
Speaker 2: be Good Deeds. And I was like, oh, man, thank you,
Speaker 2: but I'm thinking in my mind, man, I need more
Speaker 2: than a motorcycle. I'm trying to get off this roof.
Speaker 2: But I didn't want to say that on the lote. Yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you for the motorcycle, but you know, so he
Speaker 2: goes on he said I got this movie coming out
Speaker 2: called Good Deeds. I want you to attend it, I said,
Speaker 2: miss spiriy I. Man, I really would love to attend
Speaker 2: the movie, I said, but I can't because, yeah, unless
Speaker 2: I have the money to come down off the roof,
Speaker 2: you know. So I'm going into it now. Unless I
Speaker 2: have the money to come down off the roof, I can't.
Speaker 2: And then he's like, well, how much more do you need.
Speaker 2: I was like, we need one hundred thousand dollars, and
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm going to give it to you. Come
Speaker 2: on down, I said, missus Perry, I would come down,
Speaker 2: but I made a vow to God. I couldn't come
Speaker 2: down till we have it all in our possessions. So
Speaker 2: so they started laughing. He said, okay, my people gonna
Speaker 2: talk to your people. There's gonna be done by two o'clock.
Speaker 2: This is early in the morning. Sure enough, by two
Speaker 2: o'clock they had transfer the funds. I had learned a
Speaker 2: little bit about pr and all that stuff, and I
Speaker 2: knew that we're gonna need the momentum to build the center.
Speaker 2: So even though we had the money at two o'clock,
Speaker 2: I said, We're gonna wait until five o'clock, so we
Speaker 2: catch the five o'clock news and six o'clock news and
Speaker 2: all of that, and it'll make a big deal.
Speaker 1: Out of it.
Speaker 2: And we had the streets packed and the neighborhood was packed,
Speaker 2: and it was a real big thing. And so that's
Speaker 2: how I got off through Tyler Perrygate the last one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars and then.
Speaker 1: Our total of five hundred and something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, five, that made us have four hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 2: and then that's what the building costs. And then we
Speaker 2: had a gentleman by the name of Marty Ozinga from
Speaker 2: Ozinga Concrete that came. He came up there probably around
Speaker 2: about three o'clock, wanted to see me his Ozinga Concrete.
Speaker 2: There's like four generations of Thoozinga's the Osinger Concrete company.
Speaker 2: And Marty came on top of the roof. He said, hey,
Speaker 2: he hadn't heard about Tom Jonner. You know, they don't
Speaker 2: listen to Tom Joinner. So he says, me and my brothers,
Speaker 2: we want to give you something. And it was one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars. And I was like, Marty, thank you
Speaker 2: so much, I said, But in all honestly, I cannot
Speaker 2: take this because Tyler period gave us all the money
Speaker 2: that we needed, and so I have the money to
Speaker 2: purchase the building. And then he said, well, well, I
Speaker 2: don't want to take it back. I want to we
Speaker 2: want to give it to you. He said, well, how
Speaker 2: much money you got to tear it down? Right, He's
Speaker 2: got to tear this building down. I said yeah. He said,
Speaker 2: well how much is it going to cost to tear
Speaker 2: it down? I said probably about one hundred thousand. So
Speaker 2: he gave thousand This just so happens, one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars and so he gave us the money and that's
Speaker 2: how we tore it down. Then we started our journey
Speaker 2: to you know, we want to turn this into a
Speaker 2: community center.
Speaker 1: And that was a long, long journey. That is a phenology.
Speaker 1: One of the things we talk about all the time
Speaker 1: is when our discipline and our passion meet opportunities, when
Speaker 1: I'm amazing, things can happen. I believe you're passionate about
Speaker 1: this neighborhood. You had the discipline to bring notoriety to it.
Speaker 1: You saw an opportunity and for ninety four days, yeah,
Speaker 1: you filled it. So you got the thing down right.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's two thousand. So in twenty twelve the building
Speaker 2: came down. It's just vacant land, and so we put
Speaker 2: some basketball courts up there. We drew up some plans
Speaker 2: the type of center that we wanted to have. We
Speaker 2: created an organization called Project Hood while I was on
Speaker 2: the roof. Project Hood stands for helping others attain destiny.
Speaker 2: And we started looking at all the issues that we
Speaker 2: needed to deal with to get rid of the poverty
Speaker 2: and the violence in the neighborhood. And so that was
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, and so the land was there. We
Speaker 2: put some basketball courts on it. We used it as
Speaker 2: a place where kids could play. We beautified it, make
Speaker 2: it look nice, made it look nice, but we didn't
Speaker 2: have at that time. It started off being a twenty
Speaker 2: million dollar building.
Speaker 1: Then you wanted to be that. We wanted to build communities,
Speaker 1: a community center. Now is this a community center for
Speaker 1: the church or like a private community center for the
Speaker 1: just the community.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a community center for the community. It's a
Speaker 2: place where we teach where we're going to be teaching
Speaker 2: the trades. We have a culinary art school, construction, automotive, electrical, plumbing.
Speaker 2: We have a theater, two gyms, a golf simulator, an
Speaker 2: Olympic sized swimming pool, three restaurants.
Speaker 1: This is all on the plant, This is all in
Speaker 1: the plans. What I like though, is it's a place
Speaker 1: for kids to come and everything else. But it's also
Speaker 1: a place people can learn the hard skills. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: a place to learn skills.
Speaker 2: It's about it's a place about for transformation for young people.
Speaker 2: It's about them having safe spaces and places to go
Speaker 2: because in our community, unfortunately, so many times young people
Speaker 2: just didn't don't have safe places. The YMCA is about
Speaker 2: a mile and a half and kids in our neighborhood
Speaker 2: they can't There's no way possible they can walk to
Speaker 2: that YMCA because they have to walk out across so
Speaker 2: many gang turns to do it.
Speaker 1: So I didn't understand that. I bet you know. R
Speaker 1: Shae Cooper. Yes, Archae was a guest and he said
Speaker 1: from He's also from not this neighborhood, but that side
Speaker 1: of the city, south side right, I mean west side, right,
Speaker 1: So he said. One of his dreams as an eight
Speaker 1: year old, he could see the top of Sears Tower
Speaker 1: from the top of his apartment building. And one of
Speaker 1: his big dreams was just to go one day be
Speaker 1: able to see the serious town. And that means one
Speaker 1: of the kid's biggest dreams was just to be able
Speaker 1: to drive ten miles across his city. Yes, or ride
Speaker 1: on a bus. Yes. And I said, well, why didn't
Speaker 1: you just go there and see it? He said, I'd
Speaker 1: have been killed, yep, because I had to cross four
Speaker 1: or five or six different neighborhoods with different gangs, and
Speaker 1: I had never there and back. You never ventured off
Speaker 1: your block never. You know.
Speaker 2: There's a guy who's a kid, who he lives with us.
Speaker 2: His name is Da Marius. He's my son's best friend.
Speaker 2: And I can remember when he was sixteen years old.
Speaker 2: I was taking all of them to open up an
Speaker 2: account at Chase Bank, and the Marius Chase Bank from
Speaker 2: our church, from their neighborhood is exactly nine blocks away.
Speaker 2: It's on We're on Keen Drive there on Stony Island,
Speaker 2: and I can remember as we're going across like four
Speaker 2: or five blocks, he's looking around. I'm like, I notice
Speaker 2: he's kind of anxious, nervous, and I find it's like,
Speaker 2: what's going on?
Speaker 1: What's wrong? All right? He's like, I have never been
Speaker 1: over here. I was, like, never been over with five blocks?
Speaker 1: He said, my mom would not allow us to cross Vernon.
Speaker 1: Vernon is only two blocks. And I thought, man, this
Speaker 1: is crazy showing people say I don't get it about
Speaker 1: these people. Yeah, quote these people. We got free education.
Speaker 1: You go, get you a breakfast and a lunch, you
Speaker 1: can study up and learn. We give away food stamps,
Speaker 1: government assistant housing. I mean, as a country, we literally
Speaker 1: provide free education, free meals, all of this stuff. All
Speaker 1: people got to do is take advantage of the opportunities,
Speaker 1: pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go to work.
Speaker 1: How are you ever going to grow as a child
Speaker 1: when you can't even go beyond two blocks? And what
Speaker 1: does it say about a part of our culture. They're
Speaker 1: not dreaming to be doctors, they're not dreaming to be accountants,
Speaker 1: they're not dreaming to go to college. Their dream is
Speaker 1: to be able to go eight miles to downtown Chicago
Speaker 1: to see a tower. Yeah. If that is the apex
Speaker 1: of your ability to dream, what are you ever going
Speaker 1: to achieve? Yeah? Exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know, the lack of exposure with a lot
Speaker 2: of the kids in Chicago is tremendous. You know, people
Speaker 2: would be really amazed that there are young people in
Speaker 2: Chicago who have never ever been downtown. They would be
Speaker 2: amazed that there are kids who never seen, never been
Speaker 2: to the beach at Lake Michigan. And that's you know,
Speaker 2: a mile away, a straight shot. It's not like they
Speaker 2: have to go zipping around corners a straight shot and
Speaker 2: they've never been to the lake.
Speaker 1: Because they're too afraid to walk outside. Absolutely, Now, how
Speaker 1: you're gonna learn, how you gonna dream, how you gonna achieve,
Speaker 1: how you gonna be anything? Yeah? Absolutely. You know.
Speaker 2: One day, I remember, probably about a year and a
Speaker 2: half ago, it was some gunshots that rang out near
Speaker 2: the school ground and all the kids new to hit
Speaker 2: the ground. They taught they teach the kids shooting drills
Speaker 2: on how to hit the ground on the playground. And
Speaker 2: when you're in environments like that where kids don't feel safe,
Speaker 2: they don't want to go outside their environments, it's hard
Speaker 2: to get them exposed. It's hard to get them to dream,
Speaker 2: it's hard to get them to think that they can
Speaker 2: be something. It's hard to think get them to believe
Speaker 2: that they can achieve anything that they you know that
Speaker 2: people tell them they can achieve. It's just it's just
Speaker 2: a hard, hard sell.
Speaker 1: We have all kinds of organizations that are dealing with
Speaker 1: are greater and greater understanding over the last decade and
Speaker 1: a half about our service people coming back around the
Speaker 1: rock wherever they serve, in their PTSD and the trauma
Speaker 1: and the anxiousness and the triggers associated with violence. They're
Speaker 1: involved in defending our country and for a living. When
Speaker 1: our children know more about how to respond to gunfire
Speaker 1: than they do about curious George, what is the trauma
Speaker 1: in their lives? What is their PTSD? And how do
Speaker 1: you expect those people to learn? Second point is man,
Speaker 1: the first time I ever heard the term white privilege,
Speaker 1: it pissed me. Also bad Cory. It made me so angry.
Speaker 1: My mama did her best, but we didn't have much
Speaker 1: of nothing. I went to school on a scholarship. I
Speaker 1: worked three jobs, and you know it wasn't no white privilege.
Speaker 1: I worked hard, and I'm gonna tell you something. I've
Speaker 1: got a nice business and all, but to this day
Speaker 1: I owe the bank a bunch of money. And if
Speaker 1: I don't make my notes, they're coming to get my house.
Speaker 1: In my wife's car and it's a lot of stress.
Speaker 1: But I can tell you this, I wasn't dreaming about
Speaker 1: walking across the block. That was no big deal. And
Speaker 1: the truth is, despite how hard I've worked to do
Speaker 1: everything else, by comparison, the kids are growing up in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood you're serving, I was quite privileged, and you've
Speaker 1: got to understand, white privilege is not a knock on
Speaker 1: white people who've done well. It's just trying to open
Speaker 1: eyes to there's a segment of our urban populations that
Speaker 1: is largely African American that children don't even have the
Speaker 1: chance to go to blocks from their homes safely. And
Speaker 1: the fact that I never experienced that is a privilege
Speaker 1: That does not mean it makes me bad or discredits
Speaker 1: any of the hard work I've put in. In fact,
Speaker 1: most people celebrate it, and that's great, but we also
Speaker 1: have to remove ourselves and our ego from that and
Speaker 1: try to start understanding the desperation these children are growing
Speaker 1: up in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I may not agree with the term
Speaker 2: white privilege, but I'll say this that I think all
Speaker 2: of us have different situations and circumstances that make us privileged.
Speaker 2: Even I would call myself when as it relates to
Speaker 2: those kids, I was privileged. I wasn't in an environment
Speaker 2: even though I was my stepfather was abusive and crazy
Speaker 2: and deranged. I wasn't in an environment where I couldn't
Speaker 2: walk to school. I can remember walking to school safely.
Speaker 2: I can remember going to the playground, not having to
Speaker 2: worry about was gunfire going to break out. I can
Speaker 2: remember having friends, not having to worry about was another
Speaker 2: gang gonna jump us and we're gonna get a fight.
Speaker 2: Those were environments shot and killed as as a kid,
Speaker 2: just one one. Yeah, the kids you're pastoring, according to
Speaker 2: what you just told me, they've all had at least
Speaker 2: twenty five exactly. My son, my youngest son, Kobe, deals
Speaker 2: with a lot of trauma, and at first it was
Speaker 2: hard for me to understand, but then I realized how
Speaker 2: many friends he had that were actually shot and killed
Speaker 2: or in prison because we never sheltered them from the
Speaker 2: neighborhood we grew up. They grew up in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Those kids, their their friends, their brothers, their sisters, and
Speaker 2: so he's had to deal with a lot of traumatic experiences.
Speaker 2: You know, of people that he's been close with to
Speaker 2: be shot and killed, and I really didn't understand it
Speaker 2: at first, but when I started looking at it, I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: he's even though he has a mother and a father
Speaker 2: that love him and siblings, he still has a traumatic
Speaker 2: experience because he's in this environment with all these young
Speaker 2: people who have been killed.
Speaker 1: Did you ever worry about him getting brought into the
Speaker 1: life by his friends that mak good. You had to
Speaker 1: keep them close?
Speaker 2: Oh, for sure, you know, we definitely, we definitely had
Speaker 2: to keep an eye on. Are the two youngest ones,
Speaker 2: my daughter Danielle and Kobe. They were our hardest cases.
Speaker 2: But thankfully they're turning out to be some great kids.
Speaker 2: But Kobe definitely, you know, because those boys, the group
Speaker 2: that he was with that was that's a tough little
Speaker 2: group rounders. Huh yeah, definitely a tough little group.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. So you're not just being nice
Speaker 1: to build to try to build this community center. It's
Speaker 1: a need. It erases some of the lack of privilege.
Speaker 1: You can go across the street, you can get exposed
Speaker 1: to trades, you can get exposed to ideas. This thing
Speaker 1: is is a way for children to eradicate themselves with
Speaker 1: the trauma of what is their daily lives in your
Speaker 1: church's block. Absolutely block is called Oh Block.
Speaker 2: And the reason why it's called Old Block is because
Speaker 2: it's named after a young man named Ode Perry who
Speaker 2: was shot and killed and the games picked up the
Speaker 2: O in his name and they started calling it Oh Block.
Speaker 2: If you Google it or up, you know it's gonna
Speaker 2: talk about. Old Block is mentioned in all kinds of
Speaker 2: rap lyrics, all kinds of things is being said about
Speaker 2: Old Block. Well, we decided, you know, okay, cool, We're
Speaker 2: gonna keep the O, but we're gonna turn into Opportunity Block.
Speaker 1: We're gonna, we're gonna, we're.
Speaker 2: Gonna transform it, and we're gonna take this and make
Speaker 2: it a place where people's lives can be totally changed
Speaker 2: and not are destroyed. And so this center is a
Speaker 2: beacon of hope of what can be done when you
Speaker 2: work hard to transform a community, not just so you
Speaker 2: can have a big community center, but when you work
Speaker 2: hard to transform something to help change people's lives. And
Speaker 2: so that's what it's really all about. So we're we're
Speaker 2: really adamant about how it looks, We're adamant about the
Speaker 2: excellence that it's going to have. We're adamant about the
Speaker 2: programs that it's going to have because we wanted to
Speaker 2: be a model for what can be done, even in
Speaker 2: places like Memphis where they're having situations with gangs. You know,
Speaker 2: they just had some big murders here two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty four last year exactly, So we need to be
Speaker 2: in places like Memphis showing a different way Saint Louis,
Speaker 2: New Orleans. So we're creating a model for something that
Speaker 2: we know works and we can change oh block, we
Speaker 2: can change any block in America. And you've been thinking
Speaker 2: about this since you tore that building in twenty twelve
Speaker 2: every single day. So now you're on a twelve year
Speaker 2: mission and you hadn't broke ground yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so no, we broke ground so.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah recently there, Yeah, we recently broke ground.
Speaker 1: So how much money does this thing cost?
Speaker 2: So now it's up to thirty eight million dollars thirty
Speaker 2: eight thirty eight road.
Speaker 1: You had to stay on a roof for ninety three
Speaker 1: days to get four fifty and Tyler Perio to bail
Speaker 1: you out. How you gonna get thirty eight million?
Speaker 2: So a the tenth year anniversary of when I was
Speaker 2: on Ruth. The first time my son and Brian came
Speaker 2: to me. They were like, listen, either you got to
Speaker 2: build this center or you got to change your vision.
Speaker 2: Because you've been talking about this center for ten years.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do? So I said, okay, you
Speaker 2: got much did you have? That's what I asked him.
Speaker 2: I said, go and see, you know, look and see
Speaker 2: what we got what we can work with. They came back,
Speaker 2: they said, man, we don't have any money. We got
Speaker 2: zero to work with. Yeah, we got zero to work with.
Speaker 2: And so I said, okay, I'm going to pray and
Speaker 2: figure it out. And so I came back to him
Speaker 2: and said, I want to get eight train containers.
Speaker 1: I want to put them together.
Speaker 2: I'm going to build a deck on that property, on
Speaker 2: the train containers, and I'm going to go up there
Speaker 2: and stay and raise the money. And everybody was like,
Speaker 2: oh no, not again this. We don't want to go
Speaker 2: through this ordeal. It is not gonna work. You've already
Speaker 2: done that. Some of the people on my board. One
Speaker 2: of my one of my mentors, Patrick Milligan, this old
Speaker 2: Irish guy, he's about seventy seven. He's like, oh, you
Speaker 2: already did that. Let's not do that again. So everybody
Speaker 2: was against it not but again I just felt that
Speaker 2: unction that I think this is gonna work, and I
Speaker 2: think the Lord is gonna gonna do it. So I
Speaker 2: went up there on the roof again, and this time
Speaker 2: I thought, okay.
Speaker 1: At least do it in the summer.
Speaker 2: This time, well part of the summer. But I went
Speaker 2: up on the November the twentieth again, on the exact
Speaker 2: anniversary date, and I thought, Okay, this time, maybe it'll
Speaker 2: take one hundred days, because you know, we raised five
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty in ninety four days, and so I
Speaker 2: think we can raise enough money in one hundred days.
Speaker 2: Back then, we didn't have any of the social media stuff,
Speaker 2: or we didn't have any of the now yeah, we
Speaker 2: got social media, we got a little movement people know
Speaker 2: about us. Twenty twenty two, this would have been so yeah,
Speaker 2: this would have been twenty twenty one. So I thought
Speaker 2: one hundred days at least, And so I committed to
Speaker 2: hundred days.
Speaker 1: And you think you're gonna weigh thirty something million dollars
Speaker 1: an under that, Yeah, I'm thinking I'm gonna raise this
Speaker 1: twenty five because at that time they become twenty five
Speaker 1: million dollars.
Speaker 2: That's how much it was gonna cost. So it went
Speaker 2: from twenty million to twenty five million because we changed
Speaker 2: some stuff in prices had gone up. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna raise this money. I just believed it. I
Speaker 2: didn't know how.
Speaker 1: I just believed it.
Speaker 2: And so we started getting the word out and people
Speaker 2: started giving, and somewhere around.
Speaker 1: Like day.
Speaker 2: Sixty five, Fox called me and asked me, hey, can
Speaker 2: you do a story about what's going on in Chicago
Speaker 2: from the rooftop? And I was like sure. Now, I said, like,
Speaker 2: what's the parameters? So they said here and here are
Speaker 2: the parameters. You can do the story anyway you want
Speaker 2: to do it. We won't edit it, just stay within
Speaker 2: our parameters. And I was like okay. So I did
Speaker 2: the story and it ended up being one of their
Speaker 2: top stories on their website and they were I think
Speaker 2: they were little surprise too. I didn't tell them, but
Speaker 2: it was also the top money day as far as
Speaker 2: people donating to our costs.
Speaker 1: And so they called me again.
Speaker 2: They said, hey, that story, what was was really good
Speaker 2: and really well, can you do another one? And I
Speaker 2: was like sure, So I did another one, and again
Speaker 2: we had a great response, and so then they came back,
Speaker 2: they said, hey, why don't you do something until you
Speaker 2: come down. I was like every day, every day, and
Speaker 2: so they let.
Speaker 1: Me do this.
Speaker 2: That's they're giving you a national commercial. It was that
Speaker 2: about five minutes. It's about I wrote a story.
Speaker 1: Five minutes of national airs.
Speaker 2: I wrote a story for every every everything. We called
Speaker 2: them rooftop revelations, and so so I wrote a story
Speaker 2: and I would tackle issues that people were concerned about
Speaker 2: around America.
Speaker 1: We were talking.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't just talk about the violence in Chicago, but
Speaker 2: we would talking about just a lot of views that
Speaker 2: that people were concerned and race, school choice, You kept music, yes,
Speaker 2: woke uh DEI everything I talked about it, Yes, And
Speaker 2: people loved it and responded well. And as a consequence,
Speaker 2: I ended up being on the roof for three hundred
Speaker 2: and forty three days a year, yes, almost.
Speaker 1: A year, and didn't come down.
Speaker 2: The only time I came down was for my mom's funeral.
Speaker 2: My mom's funeral.
Speaker 1: And you your mind, bro, Yeah yeah? Vote After that,
Speaker 1: did you still have the extension cord and everything?
Speaker 2: I did it at this time, I had it right
Speaker 2: though we had the extension cord still and we set
Speaker 2: up three tenths. This time, we sat, we had my tent.
Speaker 2: Then we had a guest tent where we invited CEOs
Speaker 2: from around the country and people would influence to stay
Speaker 2: all night and people would come and stay all night.
Speaker 2: And then we had a middle that we called the
Speaker 2: Ten of Meeting and Ten of Prayer that we would
Speaker 2: have meetings and things like that.
Speaker 1: So we had figured it.
Speaker 2: We kind of figured it out a little bit, and
Speaker 2: we really used social media. Fox was so gracious to
Speaker 2: let us, you know, do the platform, the stories on
Speaker 2: their platform. We went from about having one hundred national
Speaker 2: donors to having over twenty one thousand new donors from
Speaker 2: across America, and we raised about twenty five million dollars.
Speaker 2: After it was all said and done, we had two
Speaker 2: really big gifts from a one eight million dollar gift
Speaker 2: from a foundation and another five million dollar gift from
Speaker 2: Ken Griffin who moved from Chicago to Miami. Ken Griffin
Speaker 2: from Citadel. That movie if you ever seen the movie
Speaker 2: Dumb Money, where that Yeah, that Ken Griffin is one
Speaker 2: of the financial guys in that movie. Yeah, So he
Speaker 2: gave us five million dollars and then all the rest
Speaker 2: of it from all over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and now across the country, a twelve year
Speaker 1: vision and you have broken ground. We've broken ground. The
Speaker 1: building is being built.
Speaker 2: If you go to our website projectthood dot org, you
Speaker 2: can see a wonderful facility being built there.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: This week we reached the milestone because they're pouring concrete
Speaker 2: on the second floor now. So the second floor is
Speaker 2: being poured and it's an exciting time in our neighborhood
Speaker 2: the building because it's taking it so long. The cost
Speaker 2: is now thirty eight million dollars. We raised thirty one
Speaker 2: million dollars, so our goal is to raise another ten
Speaker 2: million so we can pay for We want to pay
Speaker 2: for debt free, so we don't have debt, and we
Speaker 2: want to make sure that we have some some money
Speaker 2: in our endowment so that something ever happens to me
Speaker 2: or that the center can go on and continue to
Speaker 2: do all the wonderful programs, because that's what's really important.
Speaker 1: I mean, this, this thing's the money you're talking about. Besides,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the sin's got to be able to
Speaker 1: survey a.
Speaker 2: Lot of people, yes, a lot of people, and we're
Speaker 2: not charging for memberships, so We're not like the YMCA
Speaker 2: where they charge you for a membership, or we're not
Speaker 2: charging like a school that charges you to take the
Speaker 2: construction classes. We just recently, you know, the need is
Speaker 2: so great in our neighborhood that we have these cohorts
Speaker 2: construction cohorts where we teach construction. And our cohort's getting
Speaker 2: ready to come up this month. There's only thirty slots.
Speaker 2: Thirty people can get in. We had a three hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty sign up, but only thirty can get in.
Speaker 2: But when we open the center, we'll be able to
Speaker 2: take on hundreds. So we're really excited about that.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. I'm so encouraged to hear you
Speaker 1: talk about carpentry courses and all of that, you know,
Speaker 1: learning the skills like we talked about. I just want
Speaker 1: to kind of go down a list of stuff I've
Speaker 1: read and then just have you comment on this thing.
Speaker 1: Because Project Hood is phenomenal. You've got Chicago Adventure Therapy,
Speaker 1: which I love that especially for kids who are afraid
Speaker 1: to go more than two blocks from their house. Re
Speaker 1: Entry services to prevent recidivism, which is huge because I imagine
Speaker 1: a lot of people returning to your neighborhood are returning
Speaker 1: from prison and trying to get it right. And we
Speaker 1: know that if we don't have intervention for returning citizens
Speaker 1: from prison, that eighty five percent of them will be
Speaker 1: back in jail within three years. Absolutely, so you're working
Speaker 1: on cutting that off. For project hood, You've got entrepreneurship courses,
Speaker 1: you've got coworking, office space, camp refuge, you've got the
Speaker 1: world's largest baby shower hoops, You've got violence predict prevention.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean this is more than a Saint No YMCA. No,
Speaker 2: it's not an YMCA. We tell people it's more like
Speaker 2: a YMCA church trade school on steroids all mixed together.
Speaker 1: Talk about a few of those things that project to
Speaker 1: it is I love the Chicago Adventure therapy after hearing
Speaker 1: what the kids and then maybe the re entry.
Speaker 2: Proctice us about the Chicago Adventures is about when we
Speaker 2: discovered that kids were not being exposed even to the
Speaker 2: city of Chicago. We start taking excursions, taking trips downtown
Speaker 2: so they can see certain sites, taking trips to museums,
Speaker 2: taking them to the beach, taking them to sporting activities.
Speaker 2: We even take them camping, which is phenomenal. You know,
Speaker 2: we're even now trying to find land where we'll take
Speaker 2: kids camping.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about har Shane Cooper. He told me the
Speaker 1: first time they put him in a boat. Right, this
Speaker 1: is a kid, right, I've never been swimming. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: he had a gang banging one of the toughest guys
Speaker 1: he knows, sitting behind him on a lake right and
Speaker 1: right off Lake Michigan. But just like one of them
Speaker 1: those downtown before they ever put a powder on the water,
Speaker 1: was crying like a baby, scared to death. I believe swim.
Speaker 1: Never been in a boat. You can go back. And
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna say it, but what Arche said
Speaker 1: about his friends talking about black folks in a boat,
Speaker 1: you could imagine a lot of kids don't know how
Speaker 1: to swim.
Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons why we're that's that's a big,
Speaker 2: big reason why we haven't a limp about.
Speaker 1: Taking kids from the hood and putting in a tent
Speaker 1: in the woods. Oh yeah, you know that's.
Speaker 2: There was one of the kids we took them camping.
Speaker 2: Brian was with this group and he said they were
Speaker 2: trying to get this kid to go to sleep in
Speaker 2: the tent, but he wanted to stay outside, and they
Speaker 2: kept asking.
Speaker 1: What what's the big deal?
Speaker 2: Yea, And all he kept doing was looking up in
Speaker 2: the stars and he said he had never seen so
Speaker 2: many stars in all of his life, and he was
Speaker 2: just amazed to see the stars. So taking these kids camping,
Speaker 2: exposing them is really important because they get to see
Speaker 2: a lot of things that they don't get to see.
Speaker 2: Even now, we're planning our first trip out of the country.
Speaker 2: We're trying to take thirty kids off the block. It's
Speaker 2: called oh Block goes off the Block, and we're trying
Speaker 2: to take them to Africa. So we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna.
Speaker 1: Take them to you.
Speaker 2: I think it's Uganda and South Africa, and our goal
Speaker 2: is for them to it's either Zambia or South Africa
Speaker 2: or I can't even remember which one is near South Africa.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately I'm not good in geography. But we're going to
Speaker 2: We're going to those two countries in Africa and taking
Speaker 2: those kids, and we're gonna take some adults with us.
Speaker 2: But the goal is to expose them that Listen, I
Speaker 2: know you're on old block and you're in a tough area,
Speaker 2: but we're going to show you there's some tougher areas
Speaker 2: and some areas in the world where people are really
Speaker 2: poor and to poverished and impoverished, and we're going to
Speaker 2: teach them how to serve people who are in a
Speaker 2: worse off condition than them. And so we're really hoping
Speaker 2: that that's going to turn into an annual trip to
Speaker 2: take kids. So that's what that's what the Chicago Adventure
Speaker 2: is all about.
Speaker 1: What about the returning Yes.
Speaker 2: So we have a big recidivism program. It's going to
Speaker 2: be it's featured on the news in Chicago coming up
Speaker 2: in the next week or so. But we get brothers
Speaker 2: and sisters who are coming back home from prison and
Speaker 2: we try to make sure we remove every obstacle that
Speaker 2: would keep them from that would keep them from going back.
Speaker 2: So we help them deal with the trauma of family counseling,
Speaker 2: we help them find jobs, we help them do training,
Speaker 2: we help them get housing, IDs, licensing, anything that would
Speaker 2: make sure that we help them stay on the track.
Speaker 1: Learned is huge. Yeah, after doing this show now our
Speaker 1: year and talking to a lot of people that work
Speaker 1: in that space, just getting an idea of license the
Speaker 1: BA basics just and you like, what's the big deal? Well,
Speaker 1: if you ain't got tramp station and you don't have
Speaker 1: forty five dollars and you don't know how to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're intimidated by the system. That's it.
Speaker 2: You're intimidated having to go and wait in the line
Speaker 2: and never have done that before and not really knowing
Speaker 2: about the test. That's it's challenging. So we help prepare
Speaker 2: them to face those challenges so they can make sure
Speaker 2: that they get back on track. So that's one of
Speaker 2: our better programs. And then our violence prevention program is
Speaker 2: made up of which is our top program to stop violence.
Speaker 2: In our neighborhood in Chicago, violence was going up and
Speaker 2: we were featured on CBS because we had fifty two
Speaker 2: reducts fifty two percent reduction in violence in what they
Speaker 2: call the worst neighborhood in the city, and that was
Speaker 2: because of our violence prevention program. We have fourteen full
Speaker 2: time employees all made up of the different gangs in
Speaker 2: our neighborhood, where we teach them about conflict resolution, We
Speaker 2: send them to trauma counseling, We get them to recruit
Speaker 2: for us for our construction classes for our other programs,
Speaker 2: and their goal is to mediate conflicts and so those
Speaker 2: individuals help us to curb violence a big deal in
Speaker 2: our neighborhood. And then they help to oversee forty part
Speaker 2: time workers from the different gangs who are part of
Speaker 2: our BOLEESCE prevention team as well. So those programs are
Speaker 2: some of the things that are helping us to make
Speaker 2: a major transformation of the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this community center ain't basketball courts and a few
Speaker 1: bouncers hand them with no sir, no sir. Now, this
Speaker 1: is a revitalization of entire neighborhood project based around the
Speaker 1: community center type model.
Speaker 2: Right, we call it a leadership and economic opportunity center.
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah, you're not only shepherding and pastoring
Speaker 1: to this community. You are now literally providing work force training. Yes,
Speaker 1: financial literacy.
Speaker 2: Yes, we have a bank right now in our church lobby,
Speaker 2: win Trust Bank. They're going to be in the center,
Speaker 2: but they decided, which is unheard of, hey let's get
Speaker 2: a jump start and can we have a portion of
Speaker 2: your lobby. So they came and put a bank, Southside
Speaker 2: Community Bank in our lobby until we get the center open.
Speaker 2: So we have a full full bank with tellers and everything.
Speaker 1: You're turning this neighborhood on tire exactly. That's what that's
Speaker 1: the goal. You know.
Speaker 2: When Chicago sometimes wrote that article on twenty fourteen, the
Speaker 2: most dangerous block in all the Chicago everything in me
Speaker 2: from Dallas came up, you know, and I can remember
Speaker 2: being that missions week. I can remember them talking about,
Speaker 2: if a church is in a neighborhood and a neighbor
Speaker 2: and it's not making any difference in the neighborhood, what
Speaker 2: are you there for. I can remember them talking about,
Speaker 2: if you have a church in a neighborhood and your
Speaker 2: church has moved out of the neighborhood, would they know
Speaker 2: that you were ever there? And that article and the
Speaker 2: fact that our church was there made me say, listen,
Speaker 2: we have got to transform this neighborhood. And we need
Speaker 2: to do it not just for the kids on this
Speaker 2: block who are suffering and struggling and the adults who've
Speaker 2: been living in this community, but we need to do
Speaker 2: it for American cities across the country who are dealing
Speaker 2: with the same issues that we're dealing with every single day.
Speaker 2: Because if we can prove that this model works, then
Speaker 2: we can go to other neighborhoods. And that's really the
Speaker 2: ultimate goal to show them that, look, we changed the
Speaker 2: toughest block in the country. We can take this and
Speaker 2: change any block, any city if we have the resources
Speaker 2: and the manpower and the passion to do it.
Speaker 1: I believe that with all my heart. A dude from
Speaker 1: Union City learned how to go to the bathroom in
Speaker 1: an outhouse. Real foot Lake, realt Lake really calls by
Speaker 1: the earthquake, yeah eighteen something, or the Mississippi River flowed
Speaker 1: backwards two days and created the lake you grew up on.
Speaker 1: That's right to Dallas to Chicago, left started and you've
Speaker 1: turned a roller skate rink and a drugged out gang
Speaker 1: bamed prostitution pimped trafficking house into a church in a
Speaker 1: community so all to turn the worst neighborhood, the most violent,
Speaker 1: dangerous neighborhood in our country, into an oasis of hope
Speaker 1: in the middle of a lot of despair.
Speaker 2: Only God, That's all I can say. You know, a
Speaker 2: kid from ken Tennessee, Union City, Tennessee, growing up in
Speaker 2: Monthsy Indiana, I would have never, in my wildest imagination
Speaker 2: and dreams, thought that God would allow me to serve
Speaker 2: His purpose and his people to do such an awesome thing,
Speaker 2: and I realized, Man, I don't have enough sense to
Speaker 2: do it. I don't have enough wherewith y'all, I don't
Speaker 2: know enough people. And it's only through the grace of
Speaker 2: God that we've been able to accomplish what we're accomplishing.
Speaker 2: And I'm probably you know I have I have big faith,
Speaker 2: crazy faith, but I am probably the most amazed person
Speaker 2: out of all of it because I know what God
Speaker 2: is working with.
Speaker 1: You know, I got one question for you. Sure do
Speaker 1: you think if your mama would have let you build
Speaker 1: a treehouse you'd ever got up on that road? I
Speaker 1: think you just didn't grow up with a treehouse.
Speaker 2: With a treehouse, he's going to get all the rute
Speaker 2: that might be that might be no treehouses.
Speaker 1: If somebody wants to support you, which I hope people
Speaker 1: hear this, I want to support you Project Hood, the church,
Speaker 1: the community center. How do they reach you?
Speaker 2: So they can go to Project Hoood dot org, Projectthood
Speaker 2: dot org and they can learn about all the programs
Speaker 2: and everything that we're doing. Specifically the community center that
Speaker 2: we're building, or New Beginning's Church of Chicago, which is
Speaker 2: right across the street from where we're building the center,
Speaker 2: and that addresses sixty six twenty South King Drive, Chicago, Illinois,
Speaker 2: six oh six three seven And and I tell everybody
Speaker 2: this that if you really want to get in touch
Speaker 2: with me, call me on my cell phone three one
Speaker 2: two eight one three five two one one. You know,
Speaker 2: I found out a long time ago when people are
Speaker 2: trying to get in touch with you to give something
Speaker 2: to help you build a visit, they don't need to
Speaker 2: be going through secretaries and red tape. So anybody can
Speaker 2: call me at any time, and I'll be glad to answer.
Speaker 2: If I don't answer this, leave a message, I'll call
Speaker 2: you back.
Speaker 1: As a matter of a fact, I have been reached
Speaker 1: out by a number of pastors who I know listen
Speaker 1: to the show. I've been emailed by three or four.
Speaker 1: I also give my personal contact information, and weekly I
Speaker 1: get a bunch of emails. So you understand how I do.
Speaker 1: And I'm the same. I'm glad you gave your phone
Speaker 1: number because my hope is some of these pastors hear you,
Speaker 1: and if their church is not on fire for the
Speaker 1: true calling of a Christian, maybe they might want to
Speaker 1: reach out to you and talk about how to get
Speaker 1: their church alne the way church is a line, because
Speaker 1: I think ultimately, just as in the past, the corporate
Speaker 1: church may have done its own worst enemy. If we
Speaker 1: follow your illustration of discipleship, I don't know how anybody
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be involved in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love for any pastors or any churches
Speaker 2: to reach out to me. I love the church. I
Speaker 2: love the church, for the church has helped me to become.
Speaker 2: I know I wouldn't be anywhere near the person I
Speaker 2: am if we're not for the church. So I love
Speaker 2: the church, and my hatred for pastors has grown to
Speaker 2: a deep love and passion for pastors. I love pastors,
Speaker 2: and I want to help as much as I possibly can.
Speaker 2: So anything I can do to help anybody anywhere, man,
Speaker 2: I want to do that. So they can call me anytime.
Speaker 1: That'ster Corey Brooks, the founder of New Beginning's Church, the
Speaker 1: founder of Project Hood, who turns dilapidated skating rinks into
Speaker 1: sanctuaries and whorehouses into beacons of hope in the most
Speaker 1: dilapidated neighborhoods, and wants to export this idea to areas
Speaker 1: across our country. And all you have to do is
Speaker 1: email and we'll call him and I'll help you. And
Speaker 1: if you feel called to help him raise the last
Speaker 1: seven million dollars he needs to do the work he's doing,
Speaker 1: he will take your money. Corey, thanks for coming to him,
Speaker 1: for sharing your story. It has been my honor to
Speaker 1: meet you. It's been a blessing to meet you. Thank
Speaker 1: you so very much. I appreciate it, and thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us this week. Guys, if pastor Corey Brooks
Speaker 1: or any of our other guests has inspired you in general,
Speaker 1: or better yet, inspired you to take action by volunteering
Speaker 1: with Projecthood, by donating to them, by starting something like
Speaker 1: it in your own community, or something else entirely, please
Speaker 1: let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You
Speaker 1: can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us,
Speaker 1: and I promise you I will respond. You can just
Speaker 1: ask Badger. And if you enjoyed this episode, share our
Speaker 1: friends and on social subscribe to the podcast, rate and
Speaker 1: review it, become a premium member at normalfolks dot us.
Speaker 1: All these things that will help us grow an army
Speaker 1: of normal folks. Don't forget, the more people, the more impact.
Speaker 1: I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week.