Cambridge pastor to lead TenPoint

The Rev. Jeffrey Brown is resigning after 22 years as pastor of Union Baptist Church in Cambridge to accept a post as executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, an organization he and other black ministers founded 17 years ago when a shooting during worship at Morning Star Baptist Church galvanized black clergy in Boston to try to reduce violence in the city. The organization was widely hailed for its role in the so-called Boston Miracle of reduced youth violence in the 1990s, but has since struggled with financial challenges and disputes among its founders.

“It’s important to signal to the broader community that we’re reemerging as a movement,’’ Brown said in an interview this week at the TenPoint headquarters in Jamaica Plain. “A cofounder at the helm will signal a level of seriousness to get it back into shape.’’

TenPoint has an annual budget of about $2 million and is expanding to 42 employees, from just seven two years ago. The organization has been attempting to professionalize its operations in recent months, hiring a chief operating officer, regularizing its audits, and beefing up its programming staff, even as it is hiring several dozen street workers to work with teenagers involved with gangs.

TenPoint has recently claimed some success with its “Season of Peace’’ campaigns, which attempt to reach young people through fliers, also known as “club cards,’’ distributed at popular hangouts. It has also been emphasizing outreach to jailed teenagers in an effort to prevent postrelease revenge attacks.

Brown said that as executive director, he hopes to improve fund-raising, recruit more churches to take on youth violence as an issue, and to try to build a national network of antiviolence organizations.

“The TenPoint Coalition has really needed to stabilize its leadership, so this announcement is very welcome news,’’ said Paul S. Grogan, the president of The Boston Foundation, a grant-making organization that has been a longtime supporter of TenPoint. The foundation is now funding much of the coalition’s growth by paying for the hiring of the street workers as part of an initiative called StreetSafe Boston.

“We are deeply troubled about the spike in youth violence in the city, not only because of the mayhem it is causing to the participants and to the occasional bystander, but also because of the tremendous toxic atmosphere of fear that is affecting all of the children in these hot spot neighborhoods,’’ Grogan said.

“We’re highly confident that resurrecting the best aspects of what worked in the ’90s and adding some new elements can make a huge difference.’’

The TenPoint Coalition was founded in 1992 by a group of black ministers, including the Reverends Ray Hammond and Eugene Rivers, with the idea that churches were the best-equipped institutions in the city to reach out to young people and help steer them away from violence. The organization is best known for its work attempting to mediate between feuding gangs, and Brown has long been at the heart of those mediations.

“Like any organization that has a meteoric rise, one doesn’t sustain it for ever - and Boston TenPoint is going through an evolution as it transitions to new leadership,’’ said Rivers, who is no longer involved with the organization.

“Jeff is one of the most talented clergy that we have in the area, and the challenge for him is taking Boston TenPoint to the next level, and in an environment which is very different than the circumstances which gave birth to the original vision.’’

Brown, 47, was born in Anchorage and grew up on a number of military bases while his father was in the Army; he summered with grandparents in North Carolina and New Jersey and attended high school in Pennsylvania. He attended Baptist churches as a child and Pentecostal churches as a teenager; he began preaching while a senior in college, moved to Boston in 1984 to attend Andover Newton Theological School, and was ordained a minister by the National Baptist Convention.

While at Andover Newton, he interned at Union Baptist - playing the piano for the young adult choir, among other tasks - and he was hired by the church as its pastor in 1987, when he was 25 years old. During his tenure at the Cambridge church, worship attendance has grown from about 100 to some 600, he said.

“The church has grown with him, and he has grown with the church,’’ said Quintus McDermott, a deacon at the church. “He’s done a lot for the church, but now he’s reached the point where his involvement with the youth is calling for him.’’

Brown lives in Dorchester and is the father of three children, who spend part of their time with him in Boston and part of their time with their mother in Newton. He has been a longtime board member of TenPoint, and had been filling in as interim executive director before Hammond prevailed on him to take the job.

“It became very clear we needed to bring on an executive director who could be engaged with the on-the-ground work and could help us think about connecting with other cities in the region, around the country, and internationally,’’ Hammond said. “Jeff loves pastoring and loves people, but this provides an opportunity to have the churches connect with a population of young people that it is increasingly separated from.’’

Brown has been highly visible on the public stage for some time - he was particularly close to former governor Mitt Romney, who at one point named him the unofficial mayor of a community of Katrina refugees sheltered on a Cape Cod military base - and his decision to take the job at TenPoint is being greeted positively by many who hope the organization can help reduce violence in the city.

“I think that the TenPoint Coalition, the Boston Police Department, and the city have not been as successful as we were in the ’90s on this front, primarily due to the fact that federal funding was eliminated,’’ said Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis. “There’s a real commitment on the part of all the partners to work together, and things are lined up now to use our existing resources and whatever resources we can get from the outside to rededicate ourselves to crime reduction.’’

For his part, Brown says the battle against youth violence can ultimately succeed.

“I used to hear stories from my father about having to eat in the kitchens of restaurants, and I used to hear people say that things wouldn’t change in terms of civil rights, but the work of a few individuals who stood up against the powers that be started something that changed it,’’ he said. “We believe that we will see a day that the violence that we are currently experiencing will be a thing of the past.’’

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.