• Contact
  • Return to IBSA
  • Advertise Through Us
  • Subscribe
  • E-Reader

IBSA News

Illinois Baptist State Newspaper

  • Quick Links
    • E-Reader
    • Subscribe
    • Advertise
    • Resource
  • News
    • IBSA
    • SBC
    • Culture
    • Illinois Churches
  • Stories
    • Thriving
    • Church Planting
    • Mission
    • Next Step
  • In Focus
  • Columns
    • Nate Adams
    • Eric Reed
    • Meredith Flynn
    • Table Talk
    • Reporter’s Notebook
    • Encouraging Words
Assistant Pastor T.J. Grooms

Assistant Pastor T.J. Grooms

Chicago pastor urges support to quell gun violence

July 20, 2022 By Diana Chandler

New Beginnings Church of Chicago Assistant Pastor T.J. Grooms ministers in Parkway Gardens, a low-income housing development where a mass shooting occurred early July 1 next door to the South Side church.

“I know everybody in that community,” Grooms said. “I knew three out of the five that were shot. It happened in the wee hours of the morning, and my phone was blowing up around 2:30 that morning.”

At least 10 people were shot dead and 62 injured across Chicago during the July fourth weekend. But the Chicago shootings, were lost in the shadow of the July Fourth mass shooting in Highland Park, a suburb 30 miles north.

Grooms doesn’t downplay the Highland Park tragedy, but encourages Americans and particularly fellow Southern Baptists to treat Chicago’s violence with as much disdain shown the violence in Highland Park.

“When they see the statistics on the internet or in the media,” Grooms said, “I don’t want them to sit back and say, ‘yeah, another one.’ I don’t want them to be completely desensitized or just see it as a statistic.

“I want them to imagine that their son or daughter that they have brought up and tried their best to steer in the right direction goes out and doesn’t come home. When you view it in that manner, you tend to help.”

The relative silence over the shootings in Chicago reflects, for Grooms, the lack of workers available to reap the plentiful harvest Jesus speaks of in Scripture.

“The harvest is always in areas where people don’t want to work,” Grooms said. “I see the marginalized of our society as harvest. I don’t see them as waste…. I see a gangbanger as a harvest. I see someone who is on the low end of the totem pole economically as a harvest.

“I believe that there are treasures that are trapped, as the Scripture says, in earthen vessels,” Grooms said. “And it is my job to do whatever I can to make sure that they realize that treasure in them. But in order for me to get to the treasure, because it’s in an earthen vessel, I got to get past their dirt.…I live by that principle.”

Grooms laments having normalized crime in the area himself until he had to bury a young church member who died from gun violence that was gang-related.

“I had gotten to the place where (I said) this is normal, and I should never have been that way. But I got there,” he said. “But this one hit different because this one was extremely close to me. It was almost like the first time I lost somebody over again.

“There are nights where I can’t sleep. There are times my wife (Quinn) and I will sit down and talk because she’s concerned about losing people that way. There are times when I’m like, Lord, is what I’m doing even working?”

New Beginnings Senior Pastor Corey Brooks, who founded in 2011 the nonprofit community vitalization group “Project HOOD” (Helping Others Obtain Destiny), recruited Grooms to the church in 2018.

Brooks has raised $18 million toward a $35 million fundraising campaign to build a community center aimed at deterring crime and encouraging success.

Brooks brought attention to the city’s rising crime by spending 100 nights on a rooftop inviting people to visit and discuss ideas, solutions, and opportunities to curb gun violence. Later he returned to the roof.

“Violence is like cancer: You can see it spreading,” Brooks said. “When you don’t deal with the violence, when you don’t handle it as you should, it continues to escalate not only here but in Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, San Francisco.…You have to intervene in people’s lives before they start down a pathway toward destruction.”

Grooms encourages Southern Baptists not only to pray but also to conduct and support similar ministries to deter gun violence.

Every church has an opportunity to minister to underserved communities that are near them or within driving distance.

“It may not be as bad, but there is a form of it that’s happening in your area,” Grooms said. “I would say this to the church: Be the church. You cannot change what you fear. If you are afraid to touch them, if you are afraid to talk to them, if you are afraid to be around them, you can’t change them. You can’t be the change for them.

“Don’t fear them. Be the change.”

– Diana Chandler, Baptist Press, photo from Fox News

Share This Story

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Featured Columns

Meredith Flynn

Breaking the fourth wall

Meredith Flynn

A recent study by Barna had good news and bad news for increasingly polarized Americans. More than 90% of U.S. adults say they welcome different ways of thinking about important topics. But 51% also say their ideas are usually better than other people’s ideas, up from 31% who said so in 2015. And 36% say […]

Nate Adams

Grateful words

Nate Adams

Recently Beth and I joined a group of Baptist pastors and leaders and their spouses for a tour of biblical sites in Greece. For a week we followed the footsteps of Paul from Philippi, through Thessaloniki and Berea, and on to the ancient world crossroads of Athens and Corinth. It would be difficult to briefly […]

The force is with us

Meredith Flynn

Our family’s recent Covid quarantine finally provided my husband an opportunity to introduce our daughters to Star Wars. Over several days, they dug into the space saga until we were all well-steeped in the story of good versus evil. A few days later, we were rushing around the house scrambling to leave for a much-needed […]

More Columns

What happens when church leaders encourage mentoring relationships with their team members

Ben Jones

If the church is going to have leaders tomorrow, it’s going to take a new wave of mentoring from existing leadership today. This reality drove organizers of the 2023 Illinois Leadership Summit (ILS) to ask those coming to the annual event, “Which younger leader will you bring with you?” The evidence that many pastors took […]

News

Miles Mullin

ERLC trustees elect Mullin as chief of staff

ERLC Staff

Veteran Southern Baptist academic Miles Mullin is the new chief of staff and vice president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. The ERLC’s trustees elected Mullin unanimously upon the recommendation of Brent Leatherwood, the commission’s president, in a special called meeting Thursday (Jan. 26). Mullin became the first addition to the ERLC’s senior staff […]

Why gambling is getting riskier in Illinois

Security training offered March 11

More News Stories

Mission

Sallateeska baptism demonstrates SBC connections

Baptist Press

(Ed. Note—In our July issue, we reported that Illinois’s very own Sandy Wisdom-Martin told the story of her brother’s recent baptism during her WMU presentation at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Anaheim. We thought we you would appreciate this longer account that shows God’s fingerprints through multiple SBC connections. It’s too good to miss.) […]

A first-time ministry to migrant workers is very fruitful

FIRST-PERSON: A once-feared tribe now spreads the Gospel

More Mission Stories

  • News
  • Mission
  • In Focus
  • Columns

Copyright © 2023 · Website by Megaphone Designs