Black Excellence: The Pastors — The Shepherds Behind T.D. Jakes, Tony Evans, A.R. Bernard, Jamal Bryant and Sarah Jakes Roberts

T.D. Jakes

Founder, The Potter's House; Chairman and Spiritual Overseer — Dallas, TX

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Thomas Dexter Jakes was born in South Charleston, West Virginia, the youngest of three children, and was known in his neighborhood as “the Bible boy” — even though, because of a slight lisp, he was told he would never preach.

When he was ten, his father developed kidney failure, and young Jakes helped his mother care for him until his death in 1973. In 1980, at twenty-three, he established a storefront church in Montgomery, West Virginia, with only ten members, working at Union Carbide at the same time to keep the ministry afloat.

The congregation grew from town to town, and in 1992 he first preached “Woman, Thou Art Loosed,” his landmark message to wounded women. In 1996 he brought his family and fifty church employees to Dallas and founded The Potter's House, whose first service drew more than 2,000 people and whose membership grew past 30,000.

Time and CNN named him America's Best Preacher, and he became a bestselling author and film producer — proof that a boy who nursed his dying father could build a house of healing for millions.

"I cannot afford, especially after November, to risk something happening to me and you be sheep without a shepherd."

Jakes built far beyond the pulpit: in 1998 he founded the Metroplex Economic Development Corporation and Clay Academy in Dallas's Capella Park community, and through TDJ Enterprises he publishes his books and produces his films. In November 2024 he suffered a heart attack while preaching.

In April 2025 he announced he would hand leadership of The Potter's House to his daughter Sarah Jakes Roberts and her husband Touré Roberts, who were installed in July 2025, while he remains chairman of the board and spiritual overseer — a founder deliberately making room for the next generation.

The HistoryMakers — “Bishop T.D. Jakes's Biography”
Black America Web — “T.D. Jakes Installs Daughter, Son-In-Law as Potter's House Pastors”
The Digital Journalist — “The Face of Texas Gallery: Bishop T.D. Jakes”

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  Vaughn McLaughlin  ·  Tony Evans

Tony Evans

Founder, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship; President, The Urban Alternative — Dallas, TX

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Tony Evans made history in the classroom before he made it in the pulpit: he was the first African American to earn a doctoral degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, and he later became the first African American to publish a full-Bible commentary and a study Bible bearing his name.

In 1976, instead of settling into security, he founded Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas with ten people meeting in his home. The church grew past 10,000 congregants with more than 100 ministries, and his broadcast ministry, The Urban Alternative, founded with his wife Lois, now airs on more than 1,400 outlets in over 130 countries.

He served for decades as chaplain to the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Mavericks, wrote more than 100 books, and kept preaching through grief after Lois died of cancer in 2019. His life is a study in starting with ten people and trusting disciplined, daily faithfulness to multiply it.

"While I have committed no crime, I did not use righteous judgment in my actions. In light of this, I am stepping away from my pastoral duties and am submitting to a healing and restoration process established by the elders."

Evans's giving-back has always been teaching at scale: The Urban Alternative restores hope through biblical teaching worldwide, and in 2017 he launched the Tony Evans Training Center to give seminary-style training to leaders who cannot attend seminary. In June 2024 he stepped away from pastoral duties over an undisclosed past sin, submitting to an elder-led restoration process.

In October 2025 the church announced that process was complete, that he apologized to the congregation — and that he would not return as senior pastor, with his son Jonathan Evans preaching and leading in his place.

LIFE Today — “Dr. Tony Evans” (guest directory biography)
Religion News Service — “Tony Evans will no longer lead Dallas megachurch after restoration process for 'sin'”
The Christian Post — “Pastor Tony Evans' 'sin' confession stuns Christian community”

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  T.D. Jakes  ·  A.R. Bernard

A.R. Bernard

Founder, Christian Cultural Center; NYPD Co-Chief Chaplain — Brooklyn, New York, NY

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Alfonso R. Bernard was born in Panama in 1953, the son of an Afro-Panamanian mother and a Castilian Spaniard father who disowned him. In 1957 he arrived in New York at age four and was raised by his single mother in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, pushing garment racks after school for $2 an hour to help her.

As a young man he spent time in the Black Muslim movement before becoming a born-again Christian in January 1975. He built a ten-year banking career, rising from clerk to operations specialist at Bankers Trust — then walked away from it in 1979.

With his wife Karen he started a Bible study in their kitchen, rented a small Greenpoint storefront, and in 1989 moved 625 members into a renovated abandoned supermarket.

That congregation became Christian Cultural Center: more than 37,000 members on an 11.5-acre Brooklyn campus, described as New York City's largest church — built by a disowned son who decided faith should transform culture, not hide from it.

"I believe that spiritual health and moral clarity are not luxuries for policing. They are necessities."

Bernard has long served the city beyond his campus — advising mayors, serving on civic boards, founding Brooklyn Preparatory School, and proposing an urban village at the CCC site with over 2,000 apartments, half reserved for low-income residents, plus a grocery store, trade school and performing arts center.

In 2025 he transitioned out of the senior pastor role, passing church leadership to his son Jamaal Bernard. In March 2026 he was sworn in alongside Cardinal Timothy Dolan as a co-chief chaplain of the NYPD, overseeing its chaplains unit and ministering to officers citywide.

Church Executive — “A.R. Bernard, Senior Pastor, Christian Cultural Center, Brooklyn, NY”
The Christian Post — “AR Bernard, ex-Cardinal Timothy Dolan sworn in as NYPD chaplains”
The Art of Leadership — “A Voice in the City: Sam Chand talks with NYC church planter A.R. Bernard”

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  Tony Evans  ·  Floyd H. Flake

Floyd H. Flake

Pastor Emeritus, Greater Allen Cathedral of New York; Former U.S. Congressman — Jamaica, Queens, NY

Official links: Website

Floyd Harold Flake grew up in segregated Houston as one of fifteen children in a small two-bedroom house without running water, the son of a janitor father and a homemaker mother whose strong moral beliefs steadied the family.

He became the first person in his family to graduate from college, earning his B.A. from Wilberforce University in 1967, then worked as a social worker and a Xerox marketing analyst before university leadership roles in Boston. In 1976 he was asked to lead Allen A.M.E. Church in Jamaica, Queens, a congregation of about 1,400.

Over the next four decades he and his wife Elaine grew Greater Allen Cathedral past 23,000 members — and he did something almost unheard of along the way, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 to 1997 while still pastoring, then resigning mid-term in his sixth term to return full-time to his church.

Few American lives hold a pulpit, a congressional seat and a college presidency; his held all three.

"I realize I could never be a Beltway politician,"

Flake's model was church as community developer: Greater Allen built a 750-student private school, a senior citizens center, hundreds of housing units and commercial enterprises, becoming one of Queens' largest private employers and one of the nation's most productive faith-based development institutions — the story behind his book The Way of the Bootstrapper.

He retired as senior pastor in 2020 under the AME Church's mandatory retirement at 75; his wife Elaine succeeded him, and in October 2020 Merrick Boulevard in Queens was renamed Floyd H. Flake Boulevard in his honor.

The HistoryMakers — “The Honorable Reverend Dr. Floyd Flake's Biography”
U.S. House of Representatives — “FLAKE, Floyd Harold”
York College, CUNY — “Dr. Elaine M. Flake to Deliver Keynote Address at 55th Commencement”

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  A.R. Bernard  ·  Jamal Bryant

Jamal Bryant

Senior Pastor, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church — Stonecrest, GA

Official links: Website · Instagram · X

Jamal-Harrison Bryant tells his own story without flinching: kicked out of two high schools, he failed the eleventh grade — then became, by his own account, the first person ever admitted to Morehouse College with a GED.

From there he earned a Master of Divinity from Duke University and studied at Oxford, completing a doctorate and building a ministry that refuses to separate the pulpit from the street. As the NAACP's national youth and college director for six years, he helped mobilize more than 70,000 young people in nonviolent campaigns.

In Baltimore he founded Empowerment Temple A.M.E., acclaimed as the fastest-growing church in the AME denomination's 200-year history. In December 2018 he became senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, one of America's best-known megachurches.

The GED kid the system counted out now leads one of the Black church's biggest platforms — and still preaches like an organizer.

"We're done with Target, and then our next focus will be around Dollar General."

Bryant's current work is economic and civic pressure, church-style: in 2025 he led a 40-day Lenten “fast” from Target over the retailer's rollback of programs supporting Black employees and Black-owned businesses, which grew into a sustained boycott, and he has spearheaded voter-mobilization work in Georgia, including the Project 5-5-5 initiative launched in Atlanta.

Black Enterprise has profiled him as an architect of economic and civic justice — a pastor using consumer power and the ballot as tools of ministry, three decades into a career that began in civil-rights organizing.

Black Enterprise — “Elevating Your Excellence: Pastor Jamal Bryant Fights For Economic And Civic Justice”
Spectacular Magazine — “Pastor Jamal Bryant To Deliver Livingstone College's Founder's Day Message”
Dr. Jamal Bryant (official site) — homepage biography

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  Floyd H. Flake  ·  Michael Todd

Michael Todd

Lead Pastor, Transformation Church — Tulsa, OK

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Michael Todd did not come up through seminary. Born in Tulsa in 1986 and raised in a faith-filled home, he started at Transformation Church as a musician and creative staffer, learning ministry by doing it.

In February 2015 the church's founding pastor, Bishop Gary McIntosh, entrusted the lead pastor role to Michael and his wife Natalie — a young couple with more conviction than credentials.

A year later his “Relationship Goals” sermon series went viral, reaching millions online and turning a local congregation into a global digital ministry, with over 5,000 people gathering in person and more than 20,000 online weekly.

The series became his debut book, Relationship Goals, a New York Times bestseller that spent thirteen straight weeks on the list, followed by Crazy Faith and Damaged but Not Destroyed. Todd is Exhibit A for a new kind of pulpit: self-taught, story-driven, fluent in the language of a generation that meets church first on a phone screen.

"Many times we try to meet their spiritual needs without meeting their physical needs,"

Generosity is Todd's stated foundation: when he took over in 2015, the church raised $8,300 and gave it away to other churches, and that pattern scaled as the church grew.

The Christian Post reported Transformation Church giving away $3.5 million in a house, cars and cash to people in need, including $50,000 each to a Bixby food outreach center and the local school district — in a city where the church had faced noise complaints and opposition.

His sermons have drawn over 100 million YouTube views, and the ministry keeps pairing spiritual teaching with tangible help for families.

The Christian Post — “Transformation church gives away $3.5M in house, cars, cash”
Lewis Howes — “Relationships, Marriage & Sex: Spiritual Keys with Pastor Michael Todd”
Beliefnet — “Michael Todd” (Celebrity Faith Database profile)

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  Jamal Bryant  ·  Keion Henderson

Keion Henderson

Founder & Senior Pastor, The Lighthouse Church & Ministries — Houston, TX

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X

Keion Henderson was raised in Gary, Indiana, carrying, in his own telling, the ache of fatherlessness, the weight of poverty and the collapse of his NBA dreams. He first felt the call to preach at five years old.

By twenty-one, still a college student on an athletic scholarship, he had founded his first church with just five members — and grew it to 600 within five years. Then came the season that makes the story: he moved to Houston for a pastoral role that never materialized.

With no network, no blueprint and no guarantees, he refused to quit, and in 2009 he launched The Lighthouse Church & Ministries anyway. Today his official biography calls it one of the fastest-growing churches in America, reaching millions across six continents in person and online.

The fatherless kid from Gary became a father figure to thousands — a preacher whose authority comes from having lived the losses he now teaches people to survive.

"I want my work to be the renewal of thinking, not the decoration of speech."

Henderson's faith-in-action arm is his nonprofit Take Action Now, which has provided disaster relief, hunger campaigns and community support worldwide, alongside his annual Cry Out conference. He is the author of The Shift, about navigating life's changes with courage, and a Billboard-charting songwriter, having recently co-written “Rock With Me” with KEM.

His stated ambition for his work is intellectual as much as spiritual: raising thinkers who don't flinch and doers who don't delay — ministry aimed at renewal of thinking, in the pulpit, in business and in culture.

Keion Henderson (official) — “About | Keion Henderson”
NextBiography — “Pastor Keion Henderson Biography”

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  Michael Todd  ·  Sarah Jakes Roberts

Sarah Jakes Roberts

Co-Senior Pastor, The Potter's House; Founder, Woman Evolve — Dallas, TX

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Sarah Jakes Roberts grew up in the brightest spotlight in Black church life — the daughter of Bishop T.D. Jakes — and then lived its hardest chapter in public: she became a mother at fourteen.

Sources differ on whether she became pregnant at thirteen or fourteen, but none soften what followed: shame, isolation and depression, and later a divorce in her early twenties. Instead of hiding that chapter, she built a ministry out of it.

Blogging from 2010 and preaching her first sermon in 2014, she turned her “hell and back” story into books — Lost and Found, Don't Settle for Safe, Woman Evolve and Power Moves, the last two New York Times bestsellers — and in 2017 founded Woman Evolve, her women's empowerment nonprofit.

Its conferences draw tens of thousands; the 2023 conference reportedly gathered more than 40,000 women and became the fastest-selling women's conference in Globe Life Field history. TIME named her to the TIME100 Next in 2023. The girl the scandal was supposed to finish became the woman teaching millions to evolve past theirs.

"If you would have told me five years ago that I would be in full time ministry, I would have asked if you were talking to the right person."

In 2022 her father anointed her to succeed him in his women's empowerment mission, and she and her husband Touré Roberts served as assistant pastors in Dallas from 2023 after co-pastoring the Potter's House branches in Los Angeles and Denver.

In July 2025 they were installed as co-senior pastors of The Potter's House in Dallas — a generational handover at one of America's largest churches.

She is signed with WME, hosts the Woman Evolve podcast, and has used her sermons to apologize on behalf of the church to people hurt by its messages — modeling the repair she preaches.

Wikipedia — “Sarah Jakes Roberts” (citing Los Angeles Times, USA TODAY, Variety and TIME100 Next)
Pastors Biography — “Sarah Jakes Roberts Biography 2026” (CSV proof link)
Black America Web — “T.D. Jakes Installs Daughter, Son-In-Law as Potter's House Pastors”

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  Keion Henderson  ·  Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie

Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie

President & General Secretary, National Council of Churches; 117th Bishop, AME Church — Baltimore, MD

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Vashti Murphy McKenzie comes from Baltimore publishing royalty — her great-grandfather founded the Afro-American newspaper — but her road to the bishopric ran through starting over. She worked in her family's newspaper, then in gospel radio and television, rising to program director and corporate vice president of programming, while her call to preach grew harder to ignore.

In her late thirties, a mother of three, she entered Howard University School of Divinity, earning her Master of Divinity in 1985, and was ordained in the AME Church.

In 1990 she took over Baltimore's Payne Memorial A.M.E. and, over ten years, grew it from about 330 to 1,700 members, building job training, computer classes and community outreach around it.

Then, in 2000, she did what no woman had done in the denomination's more than 200-year history: she was elected and consecrated the 117th bishop of the AME Church, and later became the first woman to preside over its Council of Bishops. A classroom return in her late thirties became a ceiling broken for every woman behind her.

"What God did for me is evidence of what God can do for you,"

As presiding prelate McKenzie led districts in Southern Africa, in Kentucky and Tennessee, and in Texas — where she chaired Paul Quinn College's board through a period of growth and renovation — pairing the pulpit with projects from welfare-to-work training to support for AIDS orphans in South Africa.

She is the author of six books, including Not Without a Struggle, and founded the Selah leadership encounter for women. After retiring from active AME service, she became President and General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, leading 37 communions representing some 100,000 churches and over 30 million people.

The HistoryMakers — “Bishop Vashti McKenzie's Biography”
Howard University Chapel — “Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie” (featured speaker biography)
Religion News Service — “NEWS FEATURE: First Woman AME Bishop Begins Her Tenure”

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  Sarah Jakes Roberts  ·  Corey Brooks

Corey Brooks

Founder & Senior Pastor, New Beginnings Church of Chicago; CEO, Project H.O.O.D. — Chicago, IL

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X

Corey Brooks pastors on Chicago's South Side, on the block once called the most dangerous in the city — and he decided the sermon had to become a building.

In November 2011 he climbed onto the roof of a crime-infested motel across from his New Beginnings Church and lived there for 94 days through a Chicago winter until the money was raised to buy it and shut it down.

Out of that vigil came Project H.O.O.D. — Helping Others Obtain Destiny — the church's development arm, offering mentoring, job training, violence prevention and economic opportunity. Ten years later, with the land still empty, he went back up: 343 days on a rooftop of shipping containers, through another winter, until more than 20,000 donors had given over $20 million.

Along the way he picked up a national platform — Fox News's “Rooftop Revelations” series — and a name the country knows him by: the Rooftop Pastor. He didn't wait for anyone to save his block; he froze on top of it until the future was funded.

"We can take responsibility for our lives. We can be overcomers. No matter where you start, you can achieve the American Dream."

That rooftop money is now rising as a 90,000-square-foot, $47 million Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center — the first major new building in his neighborhood since the 1960s — with primary care, mental-health services, education support and small-business incubation planned inside.

In fall 2025 Brooks began walking across America, from New York toward Los Angeles, aiming to raise $25 million more to finish the center, launch a classical Christian school for boys, seed an endowment and plant Project H.O.O.D.s in urban and rural communities nationwide — carrying one block's comeback story to every block in America.

Cornerstone University — “Cornerstone University Welcomes Rev. Corey Brooks as 82nd Commencement Distinguished Guest Speaker” (CSV proof link)
Philanthropy Daily — “Shout It from the Rooftop”
Grace Theological Seminary — “Grace Theological Seminary Prepared Pastor for Urban Ministry”

More from Bourgeois Society: The Pastors  ·  Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie  ·  Noel Jones