Pastor Michael McBride

Pastor Michael McBride (known as “Pastor Mike”) is a native of San Francisco and has been
active in ministry for over 20 years. Pastor McBride's commitment to holistic ministry can be
seen through his leadership roles in both the church and community organizations. A graduate
of Duke University’s Divinity School, with a Master of Divinity with an emphasis in Ethics and
Public Policy, Pastor McBride founded The Way Christian Center in West Berkeley, where he
presently serves as the Lead Pastor.
In March 2012, he became the Director for the LIVE FREE Campaign with Faith in Action, a
campaign led by hundreds of faith congregations throughout the United States committed to
addressing gun violence and mass incarceration of young people of color. He is one of the
national leaders in the movement to implement public health and community centered gun
violence prevention programs, which have contributed in 50% reductions of gun related
homicides in Oakland and many other cities across the country. He is a co-founder of
Community Justice Reform Coalition and the National Black Brown Gun Violence Prevention
Consortium which work to center black and brown gun violence prevention practitioners and
scale up life-saving interventions related to urban and communal violence.
Regarded as a national faith leader, active in the Ferguson uprisings and many subsequent
uprisings, he helps bridge, train and support millennials and religious institutions working on
racial justice and black liberation. Pastor McBride has served on a number of local and national
task forces with the White House and Department of Justice regarding gun violence prevention,
boys and men of color and police-community relationships. In 2016 he was appointed as an
Advisor on President Obama’s Faith Based Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood
Partnerships. He has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post,
MSNBC, CNN, the Huffington Post and many other media outlets providing commentary on
issues related to faith and racial justice.