by Elise Craig/WEST BERKELEY

Down the long stretch of University Avenue from the freeway to campus, between sari shops, Pakistani restaurants, thrift stores, and gas stations, sits The Way Christian Center, a storefront Pentecostal church led by Pastor Mike McBride. In this city, whose granola reputation is dominated by the activism of the 1960s and whose city council will not say “under God” when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, Pastor Mike is packing the church to praise the Lord.xanax xr be abused! Is Xanax Safe xanax and breast feeding
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“How many of you know God is everything?” he asks his willing congregation from the altar.

Like many church services, this one starts with a hymn—but in this case Pastor Mike is the lead singer. The altar seems more like a stage as he takes to the mike, with two backup singers behind him, and members of the congregation on drums and the organ. Every person in the sanctuary is standing and clapping out a beat as he sings the lines, and they repeat them.

“I’ve got a reason to life my voice. I’ve got a reason to rejoice,” he sings.

The 33-year-old has the energy and enthusiasm of a bubble gum pop star, and he needs it.
On this Sunday, he’s encouraging his parishioners to help provide Christmas gifts to children of incarcerated parents and to cook a meal on Christmas Eve to feed those who can’t afford to eat. Tomorrow, he will head back to his job as director of student services at Berkeley Technological Academy, a public continuation school for kids who have either been kicked out of Berkeley High, come out of juvenile hall, or chosen to leave the mainstream public school. As director of the UC Berkeley Black Christian Ministry, he will help mentor African-American students who make up a mere three percent of the University population.

McBride is working to help that other Berkeley, the one that knows the city is not just an uber-liberal mecca, the one where gang violence and drug abuse are genuine problems, and where not everyone can graduate from high school.

At B-Tech, some students start their senior year 90 credits short of graduation. Some have trouble reading. And some come straight from juvenile hall.

“The notion of the school internally, externally and with the city is that this is a dumping ground. We are trying to lift an entire program outside of its historical trajectory. This is not an easy thing,” said Principle Vincent Diaz.

The school environment often forces McBride to be tough and drop his jovial manner.
“My version of discipline is not suspension-driven. I know how to talk to the kids, so that they’re like, ‘I don’t want to talk to Pastor Mike.’“

On a recent day when McBride was sitting on a bench in the school courtyard, a boy stormed out of the classroom, flinging a string of expletives back at the door he had thrown open. McBride immediately dropped his conversation and called him to the table.
The boy looked away from McBride as he explained that another student wouldn’t let him reneg on an iPod/cell phone swap. Students are not permitted to use either in class.
“Give it to me. I’m not playing with you, boy,” he said, as he confiscated the iPod.

When another student was sent to the office for misbehaving in class, McBride told the student to stop complaining. “This is not the world we live in. You are not the victim, man. That’s the problem. You got to suck it up,” he said.

So far, Diaz and McBride seem to be making big strides. In 2003, B-Tech’s dropout rate was 24 percent. By 2006 it had fallen by half to 12 percent. According to Diaz, about 70 percent of the class of 2008 received their diplomas, and they managed to send five or six students to college.

McBride’s philosophy of tough love stems from his own childhood in Hunters Point, one of San Francisco’s toughest neighborhoods. Some of the kids that he grew up with are in prison—one for life.

“I’ve been thankful for whatever reason God gave me a chance to be able to help—a lot of my friends didn’t make it out of the neighborhood,” he said.

And yet McBride is a married 33 year-old pastor who holds a BA from Bethany College in Scotts Valley, CA and an MA from the prestigious Duke University Divinity School.
He believes was able to succeed because he had strong male role models in his father, cousins, and two teachers who helped keep him out of street life.

“I honestly think that most kids want to know that you think that they’re important enough to take time to work with ‘em. A lot of the time people on the streets are willing to take time and teach them negative behavior.”

McBride has no tolerance for negative behavior, both because of the behavior itself, and because it perpetuates negative stereotypes about young men of color.

In 1999, McBride was pulled over by the San Jose Police Department and roughed up so badly that he had damage to ligaments in his shoulder and arm. When he stepped out of the car, the police officers grabbed him by the groin, and when he jumped they threw him against the car. They claimed that the 23 year-old youth pastor had been swerving in and out of his lane.

They held him for 30 minutes but didn’t arrest him. He says that they told him if they had been in the South, they would just have beaten him up and thrown him on a lawn somewhere.

Lawyers he met after the incident with told him that his best hope was to settle out of court: chances were he’d face an all-white jury. If he chose to settle, he wouldn’t be able to discuss the case publicly, but being able to talk about the case was really all that he was interested in. He didn’t care about the money.
Instead, he joined with state, local and national initiatives to fight racial profiling. The City of San Jose began voluntarily collecting data on racial profiling in 1999.

He tells the story with no trace of anger or irony, and says that he really isn’t mad anymore. He gave his anger up to God a long time ago. But it’s still a good lesson, both for his kids at B-tech, and for the students in the Black Christian Ministry he advises at Cal. Even accomplished students of color with no criminal record still face a criminal stereotype.

Felicia Nibungco, a Black Campus Ministry team leader, sees Pastor Mike as a vital role model “to young black men, who have a lot of pressure on them, especially at Cal.”

African American males make up about only 1 percent of the student population, and there are often more leadership positions than there are students to fill them, she said.
Students of both sexes see Pastor Mike as a role model.

“He’s really been the wise male figure for me since I’m far away from home, making sure I stay grounded, but letting me know it’s okay,” said Graves. “He’s a very cool pastor, but he knows we’re young. He’s always there giving me advice.”

Brittani Graves, a third-year student who has been involved with BCM leadership for two years, sees the forgiving side of Pastor Mike.

“If something goes wrong, I’ve never seen him down. It’s like, there’s a reason for that.
There’s a knowledge that everything happens for a reason,” she said.

Imari Childes describes him more succinctly: “He’s hip-hop’s answer to the Lord.”

McBride’s youth helps him relate to students. He looks far younger than his age, with a shaved head and a smile that takes over his face. He is a Lakers fan, has a profile on MySpace, and updated his Facebook status as soon as he found out his wife was pregnant. He is silly; he jokes around and openly says that he left UC Davis after his second year because he flunked out—because he played too many video games.

He shows affection for his students, and according to Diaz, he was “the first person at B-tech to use the word love. Now we say it to each other. Everyone says it to each other,” he said.

McBride uses the word love for his students at B-tech and Cal, as well as his parishioners. In his service, he has his church members tell each other “the Jesus in me loves the Jesus in you.”

“He is all about living with Christ in your life,” said his wife, Cherise, first lady of the church. “In this city, that’s hard to do. There’s a certain stigma around Christianity. It’s an inspiration to see him not change himself in different environments.”
McBride’s influence extends beyond his students and his parish—all the way to the City Council, one of the city’s most secular bodies. Several council members and at least one school board member sought his endorsement in the 2008 election.

But, frustrated with the problems that plague South and West Berkeley—the city’s lower-income areas—McBride decided to file papers to run for the City Council District Two seat against incumbent Darryl Moore only two hours before the deadline. He gathered 30 signatures, but only 18 of them qualified, and he needed 20 to be eligible to run. In the end, his quick decision to run proved complicated.

“That created some bad feelings,” he said. “They thought I had wanted to do something against Darryl, but that wasn’t it. I see a lot of issues and problems that go unaddressed, or not addressed with enough vigor.”

But the experience taught him a lesson, both about running for office, and about giving out endorsements—which some candidates sought out. From now on, McBride plans to stay neutral.

And with the church, BCM, B-tech, a new role as the executive director of Berkeley Organizing Churches for Action and a new baby girl due in March, McBride has plenty to keep him busy. He doesn’t need a City Council seat to be an agent of change; he’s got the pulpit.

“One of my mentors told me the freest space in America is the black pulpit—all supported and run by people with their backs against the wall,” he said.

One of his parishioners, Nancy Williams, was one of those people. The West Berkeley resident was a long-time drug addict who had lost her only son to gun violence in front of her house. She had been involved in religion before as a Baptist and a Jehovah’s Witness, but had never felt anything like the “abundance of peace and joy” she felt at The Way.
“People like me out there dealing with drug addiction, and gun violence, to experience that turned my life around. I turned it over to God. Here I am, Lord. Do what you want to do,” she said.

On May 1, Williams will have been clean for three years. She has also quit smoking cigarettes and drinking.

“It’s a tremendous blessing to be a member of this church. Pastor Mike, my hat’s off to him. I thank God for him,” she said.

With all of the responsibility McBride carries, it would not be surprising if he were exhausted. Instead, he is the most joyful person in the church—which is a hard contest to win.

“Folks believe, and I certainly believe that there is a sustainable power that we have from God when we are attempting to do what’s right.”

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