Today we’d like to introduce you to TJ McBride.
Hi TJ, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
So, my wife and I, and our family, moved from San Francisco, California, 10 Atlanta, Georgia, in the year 2003. We felt a tremendous divine call from God to start a ministry. And we knew that it was going to start in the Atlanta area. We started the church Tabernacle of Praise Church International (TOPCI) in our home in 2005 with six people. Sixteen years later, the Lord has blessed us to have close to 3000 plus person membership. We have three campuses in McDonough, Jonesboro, and Griffin. We have a Tabernacle of Praise Christian Academy, our elementary school from kindergarten to fifth grade. And we have our TOP Early Learning Center, which serves the children in our community. We’re pleased about what God has done. It has been a journey, but it’s mostly been a journey of faith. And that’s what I preach at our church. We preach about faith, believing God for the impossible, doing the impossible, and applying your faith to your life. The Bible says faith without works is dead. And so in our lives, we worked our faith by making decisions to trust God as we built a ministry.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road, but I don’t think anything you do will be smooth. But if you keep the desired goal in front of you, you pass all the tough transitions and appreciate the great blessings and goals you reach because you persevere. So we’ve had significant challenges throughout the years regarding finances. We started the church right when the stock market crashed, and that was around 2007, 2008. We had a lot of people that lost jobs. A lot of people lost their homes. And, of course, you lose your career, your home, your income, and then you can’t support your church financially. And so it was very tough, but you have to keep your faith. You have to stay strong, and you have to have the ability to pivot. You got to understand that if things are different, I have to operate differently. I have to do things differently. And it’s the same way we’re doing right now in this pandemic. The pandemic has been a challenge for every organization, every church, and every business for the whole country, but you have to learn the pivot. We are blessed that we could pivot, and we have more members who joined online than we did in person. And we have more donations that came in online than we had at in-person services. When you learn to pivot and do things differently, you’re going to get different results. It was a good thing that we could transition through and push through in those challenges.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
TJ McBride Ministries (TJMM) grew from having multiple speaking engagements. Eventually, I had to form my own ministry to accommodate speaking engagements, leadership training, and other requests I would receive due to the success God has given me from pastoring Tabernacle of Praise Church Int’l. Because of TJMM, God has blessed me to minister to pastors across the country through my pastoral organization called Kingdom Pastors Network (KPN). I’m blessed to travel to different countries to minister and do outreach with other churches, I help other ministries grow through leadership training, and I’m a published author. God has expanded TJMM beyond my imagination, and I give thanks to my team for that as well.
What’s different is the story of how this all came to be. My wife and I never had training on how to build a church, how to train leaders, how to maintain properties, how to create an Early Learning Center, how to grow a Christian academy, let alone how to grow the church to 3,000 plus in-person members. My wife and I didn’t know much, but we worked for it. We read so many books went to so many conferences. We studied and applied what we learned to our ministry. It was trial and error until we found our sweet spot, and we worked it and still are to this day.
I am most proud of my family for sticking together through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship and stepping out on faith. Even though our children were very young when we started the church, they were just as eager to help grow it to what it is today. They volunteered, ministered, and served up until they graduated high school and started their new journey in college. I am incredibly proud of my beautiful wife, Shunnae McBride. She is the core and the brains of TOPCI, and without her, there wouldn’t be a church. She’s not only my wife and business partner but my best friend. So, I’m always grateful for her.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
If you want to talk about apps, of course, you have to have the Bible app because that will help you, period. But there’s an app that I downloaded the other day, and it’s called Motivation. It sends me plenty of motivational phrases to my phone.
My favorite book right now is called Taking It All Back: The Power of Restoration. I’m a bit biased since I wrote the book. Still, I put this book together based on different messages God had given me to share with my church about restoration. We declared that this would be our year of restoration in 2021. Taking It All Back is your understanding that whatever you’ve gone through in life, God gives you the right to get it back. Whether that’s your joy, peace, drive, business, or family, whatever it is, you can get it back. As long as you do the necessary things to position yourself for restoration, God can restore everything you’ve lost. This book helps you to get into that position and builds your faith. As believers, we walk by faith. We walk by what we believe. We don’t walk by what we see. If we walked by what we see, we would be discouraged. But we walk by faith, knowing and hoping and believing that whatever it looks like, God has the ability, the power to turn things around. So in this book, we talk about how you can be restored mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially. I even included something for families because restoration and reconciliation need to happen in our families again. The definition of restoration means to bring back to its original state. That’s what God does in our lives. He brings you back and makes you better. This book will help you and guide you through your restoration journey.
And then, of course, I love listening to God’s word. My spiritual mentor is Dr. Bill Winston, and I listen to Bishop TD Jakes. Those are the two preachers that I listen to the most. I’m also a worshiper, and I love listening to great music that inspires me, keeps me going, keeps me motivated. So music, reading books, and hearing the word is what I do to stay positive and keep myself in the right frame of mind.
Pricing:
- Taking It All Back – $12.99
- Taking It All Back T-shirt with book – $25
Contact Info:
- Email: admin@tjmcbride.org
- Website: www.tjmcbride.org
- Instagram: tjmcbrideministries
- Facebook: tjmcbrideministries
- Youtube: tjmcbrideministries
- Other: https://linktr.ee/tjmcbrideministries
Image Credits:
TOPCI Marketing Alex D Rogers Onesimus Williams Renee Burt
