Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Wilkes
Hi Brandon, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born and raised in Toledo, Oh with my mother and two brothers. My mother is a hard working woman who often held down two jobs in order to make ends meet, so I learned my work ethic from watching her. At the age of 12 I was flipping through television channels and landed on a channel that had letters and numbers flowing across the bottom of it with people in a large government chamber talking about about something I could not understand. For some reason unknown to me I instinctively knew that those numbers were something of a secret code that rich people understood and that money was being made. So I set out to find out what those numbers and letters meant. My investigation lead me the stock market which helped me to understand that there was a world of information and experiences that rich people had access to that my community has no clue about. From that point on I had to get access to that world and I made the guess that the key to that world was through education. So I through myself into my academics and surrounded myself with like minded people. At the age of 15 I met Dorothy, the smartest girl I had ever met, and made a deal with her that if we stuck together then we could make it out of poverty and have lots of money. I must have been very convincing because she’s stuck with me for 35 years now.
After high school we both went to college at The Ohio State University. I was able to get a partial scholarship and work several different part-time jobs over the next four year to pay for school. I graduated with honors with a degree in Environmental Science and Dorothy got a degree in pharmacy. We got married the year after I graduated and moved to Cincinnati where I started a job at Procter and Gamble as a Research Technician. I worked at P&G for 7 years and truly enjoyed working there as a scientist. It paid well and helped add stability so that Dorothy and I could start our family. We have 3 children, Brandon II, Isaiah, and Keilah. All outstanding young adults now making their mark in the world.
In 2000, Dorothy and I were financially stable, we had achieved “the American dream” of buying a house, having kids, and good jobs. But there was still a since of something missing in our lives. We didn’t have the joy we thought that money would bring us and that society said comes with this life. It is at that time we begin to seek true purpose and we decided to go to church. We eventually got settled at a Church is Cincinnati that is now called Peoples Church. It had a new young pastor who was talking about having a church that reflected the demographics of the city. He wanted the church to be intentionally multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-generational. We found the place for us.
In 2004, I was asked by our pastor to consider leaving my job at P&G to come on staff at Peoples Church to help lead the church to become more diverse. After 6 months of prayer and budgeting my wife and I decided that we would as a family make the financial sacrifice and pursue the purpose of helping our church pursue the vision of racial unity. Over the next 10 years I worked alongside our pastor Chris Beard to transition the church from a 98% homogeneous white church to a church of 50% White, 25% African American, and 25% international with over 32 countries represented.
In 2014, a member of our staff felt led to plant a church like Peoples Church in St. Louis. My wife and I had no plans to help them other than a financial offering, but by providence my wife’s manager at Express Scripts asked her the very same week if she would consider moving to St. Louis as a promotion. With both of these things happening at the same time, we felt like God was leading us to St. Louis, so we moved here in the spring of 2014, totally unaware that the city would be in racial turmoil in the summer as a result of the shooting death of Michael Brown.
After the shooting I was at a meeting with other pastors in the city trying to think about how we could help with the current unrest. I was sitting next to a man who I thought was another pastor, but it turn out was an environmental scientist with Monsanto. We were fast friends once he learned that I was an environmental scientist in my past career and he explained that he founded an organization called the St. Louis Reconciliation Network which is working to heal the broken race relations in St. Louis. From that point on I began to volunteer as a teacher/speaker with Dave Gustafson, the founder of STLRN, and in 2017 became the Executive Director.
Since that chance meeting with Dave I have been working to help churches and non-profits around the city to understand the call for racial unity and reconciliation that is commanded by the Bible. I am also working with another ministry leader named Marco Van Raalten to unify the Church of St. Louis through an initiative called Together STL. Where our vision is to create spaces where Christ’s people come together and miracles happen. In the midst of my city wide ministry, my wife and I also lead an intentionally multi-racial church called Peoples Church St. Louis. We are a gathering that meets in homes so that we can know and be known by one another.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I feel that every life has trials. I struggled financially growing up with my mother. We would get evicted often so we moved often. I went to 4 different elementary schools and 2 different middle schools before we were settled so that I can attend only one high school. I had to work hard in college because I didn’t have the education that many of the other students had in high school. My freshman year of college I had to study 6hrs every evening to catch up to the basic level of science and math that everyone else had in high school. And as a young adult out of college I had to deal with a boss who was racist and learn a corporate culture that I only thought existed on television.
All all of that up with trying to learn what it’s like to be a husband when you have never seen a married couple live together and figure out what it is to be a good father when your father was not very active in your life and it was a recipe for struggling. But I am thankful that God and scripture guided me a lot of the way.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am the Executive Director of the St. Louis Reconciliation Network. We specialize in doing teaching and training on racial unity under the gospel of Christ. We also host community events that promote racial unity in the city. One of our premier events is the Race for Reconciliation 5K. We have held that event for 7 years and this past year had over 400 people participating and volunteering for the event. I am also a co-pastor with my wife for Peoples Church St. Louis. We are an intentional multi racial church that meets in homes. My wife and I are also authors of a book and work book called Finally Making Money. It’s a financial management book for people who grew up poor. We have a desire to help people like ourselves understand money in a different way that what our parents may have taught us directly or indirectly. I am also an entrepreneur. My wife and I started a company called Investing in Peoples, LLC where we will buy houses, renovate them and sell them to people in our church for slightly over cost. Giving them a great deal of equity in their property and a foundation for building wealth.
I think I’m most proud of being able to help the people in our church live life to the fullest. Teaching them to follow Jesus and watching all the great things happen in their lives bring me a great deal of joy.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
The church in the United States is at a crossroads. With the emergence of the Christian Nationalism movement I believe that Christians who truly follow the teachings of Jesus will have to be more vocal and assertive in loving people as Jesus has called us to love. I believe we will need to work more collaboratively with anyone who follows Jesus despite denominational lines.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.stlrn.org and www.togetherstl.com
