Bishop Dwane Brock, Erie’s CEO of social change: 'This was not God’s will for us'

Victory Christian Center's Bishop Dwane Brock — who preached his first sermon at age 10 — celebrated half a century of ministry in November with a gala at the Bayfront Convention Center.

The program’s cover depicted him in black and gold vestments, complete with staff in hand. But Brock's pastoral care tends not to summon images of a doe-eyed shepherd guiding meek flocks in fields of plenty.

It is better captured in Brock’s seal — a fierce American bald eagle, claws and wings flexed, both soaring above the world and bearing it up.

It’s a compelling symbol for his ministry, which contends with history and justice, human weakness and hope, and community too long impeded from seizing the eagle’s — America's — freedom and strength to soar.

We talked after he celebrated that anniversary — about the past and his ministry's next leap forward: a bid through the East Side Renaissance to lift not the world, but the suffering east Erie hemisphere.

More: East Side Renaissance: Erie group eyes multimillion-dollar upgrades along Parade Street

Brock said he arrived in Erie to find an older congregation too satisfied with what they had — which, he said, "was nothing." Many of Erie’s Black families had migrated from the deep South during the Great Migration. The legacy of slavery and a certain kind of white charity in Erie combined, in his view, to hobble agency in some. Prejudice and policies in lending and hiring sidelined Black people from wealth and opportunity here and in cities across the country, but he also saw a more universal force at work, the human tendency to subside into passive acceptance.

“I knew in my gut this was not God’s will for us,” he said. “We have to be examples of achievement.” That meant keeping the church repaired and clean, seeking higher education and embracing financial literacy to access opportunity, he said. When he came to town, he found church members keeping money at home under mattresses and in jars — not in bank accounts.

“I'm about changing. I'm about being transformative," he said. "That's what my ministry is about ... you are not allowed to say, ‘I can't,' to me."

If he was naïve about anything arriving in Erie at age 21, he said, it was this:

“I was thinking that people would do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. And I found that not to be true. People had to be convinced it was right — and the convincing that it was right was a very Herculean process.”

That mission — to convince people to do right — led him to minister in a local tavern where shootings had occurred and, in 1990, organize Erie gang members to build a playground at East 23rd and Holland streets. In keeping with his mantra — nothing stops a bullet like a job — they learned how to landscape and landed jobs.

He presides over an ever-expanding campus at East 11th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. There he launched the Eagle’s Nest Training Center to impart the soft skills needed to access productivity. The Eagle’s Nest Employability Initiative expanded on that and helped hundreds of young people train on the job and gain hire, including at UPMC Hamot. He’s opened a school, the Eagle’s Nest School of Academic Distinction, meant to help Erie School District students acquire discipline and a sense of history that he feels have been weakened by the erosion of family ties. A new youth athletic center is taking shape behind it.

More: City approves $675,000 in COVID funds for Eagle's Nest athletic center in east Erie

Brock’s issued scathing critiques when he sees evidence of injustice. But confrontation is not his default. After the May 30, 2020, Erie riot following the murder of George Floyd, he, along with Erie Police Chief Dan Spizarny and religious leaders Black and white, led a peaceful march of 2,500 people on State Street.

More: Large crowds attend peaceful protest, march in downtown Erie

“We’re better together,” he said. “That’s just common sense, right? I had no say in the matter of being a Black man. I am who God expects me to be, who he wanted me to be. So, my responsibility is to make a better world to the best of my ability."

Through one lens, Brock, with powerful allies in business, law, and government, stands out as one of the most politically adroit leaders in Erie. He sits on boards of Hamot Health Foundation, UPMC Hamot and ErieBank. He’s the chairman of the Housing Authority of the City of Erie. The Erie Bar Association honored him with the Liberty Bell Award in 2018.

Brock says those relationships are a function of his ministry. What friends like Tom Hagen, chairman of the board of Erie Insurance, teach him helps him find ways to serve his mission, he said.

He'll need all of what he has learned, the relationships he's forged and the spiritual vision he's honed to achieve the East Side Renaissance.

The Feb. 27 front-page photo by Greg Wohlford captured Brock in a rare open smile as he strode down Parade Street with his partners, Matt Harris, a retired Pennsylvania state trooper and Character: Be About It founder, and Marcus Atkinson, a powerful voice in local media, youth mentor and former ServErie director. The image, I think, crackles with a distinctly Erie "don't give up the ship" brand and could prove iconic.

Brock, Atkinson and Harris want to bring out the best in Parade Street and the people who live and do business there. This is not just a bold play to heal the real estate market, but also to take local ownership and awaken and catalyze human potential too long squandered.

There's no guarantee of success, given the scale. But could the courageous decision to pursue it could prove as fateful for Erie as the moment Erie Insurance opted to retain its headquarters in downtown Erie, or when Erie Insurance CEO Tim NeCastro asked planner Charles Buki how to implement Erie Refocused? Buki’s answer triggered the formation of the Erie Downtown Development Corp. Leading businesses and universities tipped in millions of dollars in patient capital that now fuels an ongoing $100 million downtown makeover — without which Erie’s core would be speeding toward rock bottom. The city is now seen as a model.

Cities all over the U.S. seek ways to undo disinvestment, racial disparities and the human toll those have exacted upon generations. What if Erie, through the East Side Renaissance, sets the standard?

Brock said when he came to town he knew what he saw — inequity, violence, blight — was not God’s will for us. Complacency should not be an option for any community of pride and ability.

“I want to people know you can do. You can achieve,” Brock said.

Imagine if all who are needed to make this mission succeed listened to those simple words and rose like Brock's eagle to that call: You can do.

Viewpoint Director and Editorial Writer Lisa Thompson Sayers can be reached at lthompson@timesnews.com or 814-870-1802. Follow her on Twitter @ETNThompson.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie's Bishop Brock's East Side Renaissance targets blight, inequity