Who We Are / Our Team

We take Jesus seriously. Ourselves? A little less so.

Hope City is led by pastors, missionaries, teachers, worshippers, creatives, organizers, outreach people, and a handful of human Swiss Army knives. We care deeply about Jesus, discipleship, and the people God has placed in front of us. We work hard, laugh a lot, occasionally make a mess, and generally believe ministry works better when people are actually people.

Brad +
Mary

Lead Pastors, partners in ministry, and two people who care deeply about building a church where people are known, formed, challenged, and loved.

B+M

Brad

Pastor / Builder / Teacher

Brad carries much of the preaching, vision, leadership, and discipleship work at Hope City. He also leads Adult & Teen Challenge of Baltimore and has spent much of his ministry walking with people in hard places and building environments where discipleship can actually happen.

He is the family driver, resident fixer, Blackstone operator, dad-joke supplier, and unofficial wilderness skills instructor nobody technically asked for.

Mary

Leader / Strategist / Creative

Mary leads Hope City Christian Academy, gives oversight to kids ministry, helps strategize outreach, and spends a lot of time figuring out how people and ministries can work better together.

She is a creative genius. When she comes up for air, furniture gets rearranged, paint colors change, and somehow everything flows better. She is also completely unreachable while composing a text; the building could evacuate around her and she'd finish, hit send, then ask where everybody went.

Known for: Intensity, big ideas, fighting for people, and conversations that somehow become ministry strategy meetings.

Grace +
Tyrone

Married, serving together, teaching together, and bringing approximately equal amounts of creativity and unpredictable energy into the building.

G+T

Grace

Worshipper / Teacher / Maker

Grace leads worship, teaches elementary students at Hope City Christian Academy alongside Tyrone, serves with our kids, and is one of those people you can put almost anywhere and somehow the thing gets done.

She is also mean with a paintbrush, which means if you cannot find her, there is a decent chance she is somewhere in the building painting something that needed attention.

Tyrone

Teacher / Creative / Disrupter

Tyrone teaches elementary students with Grace, serves on our tech team, and designs incredible clothes through his own brand, He's Him.

He is creative, energetic, and entirely capable of waking up a quiet room with a sudden outburst at a volume nobody was emotionally prepared for. He also has a remarkable ability to begin a creative project and leave behind physical evidence that something definitely happened there.

Known for: Worship, kids, paint, clothes, creativity, volume, and mysterious piles of project materials.

Daniel

Creative Theologian Media Ninja

Sound. Lights. Video. Audio engineering. If it has buttons, cables, screens, sliders, or an error message nobody understands, Daniel is probably somewhere nearby.

But he is much more than our resident tech guy. Daniel is a serious theology nerd with an unusual gift for taking complicated ideas and making them understandable. Put a Bible in front of him and eventually somebody is getting a lesson.

Known for: Making things sound better, look better, and occasionally explaining a theological concept you did not realize you had asked about.

Jaiden

Worshipper Musician Servant

Jaiden is one of those rare people who will do just about anything you ask him to do — and somehow do it with a genuinely great attitude.

He carries a deep love for worship and the Word and has learned what it means simply to sit at the feet of Jesus and minister to Him. That heart follows him everywhere he serves.

He serves as Education Director at the Teen Challenge Men's Center and writes and produces his own music through Jaiden Lewis Music. He also possesses an apparently bottomless supply of dad jokes despite the minor technicality that he is not, in fact, a dad.

Known for: Worship, songwriting, serving without complaining, and jokes that make everyone else complain.

Naishawn

Teacher Organizer Hooper

Naishawn serves as an intern with Teen Challenge, teaches elementary students at HCCA, works with our tech team, and possesses the mysterious spiritual gift of making disorganized things organized.

He is also mad skilled on a basketball court, loves anime, and has the remarkable ability to fall asleep almost anywhere, at almost any time, with absolutely no warning whatsoever.

Known for: Organization, basketball, serving wherever needed, and treating consciousness like an optional setting.

Mario

Missionary Teacher Taco Guy

Mario leads many of Hope City's outreach efforts, oversees translation during our services, teaches in our upper school, and serves with our kids.

He also makes legitimately fire street tacos and possesses the unfortunate habit of being so determined to help that he occasionally sacrifices his lower back for the advancement of the Kingdom.

Known for: Serving people, bridging languages, excellent tacos, and lifting things he probably should have asked someone else to lift.

A Different Kind of Team

They don't just work here.

Several of the people you just met have chosen to raise missionary support so they can give themselves to the work happening through Hope City, Hope City Christian Academy, and Adult & Teen Challenge.

They are not simply filling positions. They are building their lives around serving people, making disciples, and carrying the mission together.

Grace / Tyrone / Daniel / Jaiden / Mario / Naishawn

Around here