Paterson Native James Brown Helps Others Avoid Challenges and Reclaim Freedom  

In 2020, James Brown, born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, in “an environment full of criminal behavior and drug abuse and addiction,” found himself at a crossroads. He had spent 23 years stuck in the revolving door of prison and said he had had enough.

What he experienced behind bars and because of multiple failed attempts at living within the confines of the law and complying with parole orders had led him back to prison again and again. So much so that Brown said he wondered if he could be freed from addiction, trauma, and his past.

Finally, he decided to investigate the man called Jesus, which ultimately led him to form a nonprofit outreach group, “From Street to Christ, Inc.,” an organization committed to reducing recidivism, drug addiction, criminal behavior, and poverty for those released from the prison industrial complex and who had completed drug rehabilitation programs.

“I grew up with parents who were churchgoers, and I remember hearing about how the wages of sin were death, but I also had a father who routinely beat on my mother and then often turned his rage on me,” said Brown, 55, now a husband and father himself who’s determined to follow a different path and has succeeded since his last encounter with prison almost five years ago.

“I remember praying for God to kill my father when I was young, but God didn’t – that made me angry, furious with God,” he said. “I guess that’s what turned me to follow Satan and the streets where I was involved with drugs and guns and violence. So, between 1982 and 2020, I was in and out of jail.”

Brown said he searched for answers – for something that would help him avoid the pitfalls of prison, but his search always seemed to fail. “I tried Imhotep, Afrocentricity, the Nation of Islam – anything to help me establish a relationship with the Creator, but I couldn’t seem to put down the drugs, to stop fighting, or to end the cycle of violence with which I had grown so familiar.”

Brown said that during the last four years of his incarceration, from 2016 to 2020, he received a revelation from God. He not only opened his Bible but also began to read in earnest and decidedly committed himself to an examination of the man called Jesus and his teachings.
“Even when I was in church, I had never recalled hearing a minister explain the scriptures to such an extent that the stories about Jesus resonated with my own personal struggles,” Brown said. “But after those four years of intense study with God in my cell, when I was released in 2020, I knew what to do. As John 8:36 tells us, ‘I thought I would never be free, but He who is free in Christ is free indeed.’”

Today, Brown meets weekly with around 15 men from the Paterson community – former felons, alcohol or drug addicts, people experiencing homelessness – each of whom needs support and encouragement in their efforts to avoid the pitfalls of the streets.

“When I heard about a God who is a helper, comforter, and healer, I knew I was on to something,” Brown said. “I wanted others to know that God’s love is unconditional. And that’s really important when you’re just getting out of jail, and you don’t have a proper ID or a job and may not even have a place to live. In those instances, you have to be able to ignore what society thinks and says about you.

“Our ministry helps those who feel unworthy, who are the addicted and formerly incarcerated, discover ways to avoid self-destructive behavior so they can be transformed into the kinds of individuals of whom our families and communities can be proud,” Brown said.

Brown admits that a significant part of his outreach work is done in the streets of Paterson, but he also meets weekly, as was mentioned earlier, at his pastor’s church, Grace of God Church (Paterson).

“I use my own life as an example,” he said. “I was always backsliding because I simply did not know how to be good. Fortunately, God sent me several mentors from both individual men and organizations. And so, for the past five years, I have been teaching others, by example, what a person can do when they have a renewed mind, a commitment to change their old ways and a few dollars in their pocket to pay the bills,” Brown said.

For more information or to contact Brown, visit www.fromstreettochrist.org.