A local initiative has emerged over the past few years to support members of local African American churches and address causes like criminal justice reform, as well as economic and civic empowerment. It is called the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis (BCCM) and was started by J. Lawernce Turner, senior pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Baptist Church, in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

As the executive director, Shirley Bondon has been one of the core members of BCCM that has helped the organization extend its reach, informing others that local Black churches are there to support issues facing many African Americans.

“Turner started the organization as a response to complaints that African American churches were not involved in social justice issues,” she said.  

Since its launching in 2020, BCCM has created services to help its members with needs like community collaborations, affordable housing and healthcare, and criminal justice reform.

Bondon said that even though she has enjoyed serving as executive director, her role hasn’t come without its challenges.

“It’s been a rewarding position,” she said. “It’s not easy work. We work on social justice and sociology for religion.There are disagreements on how the church should be involved in the local community, but we seek to be involved in the lives of all members of the congregation (in local Black churches).”

Bondon shared some of what BCCM’s  involvement entails.

“BCCM is trying to bridge the gap between people saying the church shouldn’t be involved in social justice or are not involved enough,” she said. “We are trying to serve the underserved as well.”

Involvement efforts made by BCCM leaders have greatly varied, and Bondon shared how the leaders have addressed a social justice issue that has been the heart of the organization’s foundations: policing reform.

“We proposed to Mayor Strickland that he do a study called ‘Reimagining Policing,’ where facilitators would have listening sessions and talk to people throughout the community about their experience with policing,” she said. “Then leaders would determine what are the practices that should be happening, then further examine research as to how to change the practices and make the recommendations on how to change policing.” 

Another initiative has been economic empowerment, specifically with affordable housing.

 “The eviction rate is extremely high in Memphis, so we’ve been advocating to change the eviction process to address unaffordable housing, provide some legal services to help people better understand their rights as renters and to encourage home ownership,” she said.

Another initiative that has been successful is providing members financial support.

“We started a small loan fund and the purpose of that is to encourage people to move away from predatory loans, which charge up to 400 percent interest, and to rather use loans that Hope Credit Union will provide, where the interest rate is no more than 1 percent,” she said. “We’ve had some success.  It’s a very small fund but it’s gotten the attention of funders all over the country about what Hope is doing and what we’re doing as it relates to that fund. We’re hoping to grow the fund, and we’re also starting a campaign to address predatory lending.”

LaToya Brewer serves as the Vice President and Regional Branch Administrator of Hope Credit Union and has been involved with assisting BCCM members with Hope’s services.

“I’ve assisted with the initial setup of the partnership and I’m currently involved in the application process when the referrals are sent to Hope,” she said. “ I deploy the referrals to my team to process.”

Brewer shared about the various services Hope Credit Union provides for BCCM members.

“Hope provides new memberships to BCCM referrals, which includes any of our additional products outside of the loan program,” she said. “The loan program consists of a loan product called Borrow & Save, but once they become a member they’re welcome to all of our products and services.”

Brewer also shared about the impact Hope has made on its members.

“We have been able to assist these borrowers with small dollar loans to take care of their immediate needs and we’ve also been able to extend our products beyond the Borrow & Save loans,” she said. “ We’ve also received mortgage and auto loan referrals from the partnership with BCCM.”

Another initiative BCCM has been passionate about is getting the community involved with civic engagement.

“We started a state-wide organization called the African American Clergy Collective, which is made up of ministers all over the state of Tennessee,” she said. “The purpose of that organization is to engage ministers and their congregations in the legislative process. This means they are to advocate on behalf of congregations on their personal interest. So, we meet with legislators, and propose bills that should be put into law around issues that are important to our community.The leaders also have a big interest in public education, so they’re looking at the public education system to determine what they could do in Shelby County about civic engagement.”

Through its efforts, Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis has helped many people in Memphis, further showing its dedication to supporting members of churches throughout the city as well as people in the greater community.