Rev. A. R. Bernard: It’s piling up, yeah. There was a wonderful article in the Daily News the other day that dubbed [me] the most influential African-American New Yorker. That’s an interesting title, because even that is God’s favor. He’s given me a gift and I appreciate the privilege and opportunity to represent Him, not myself.

Clayton Perry: Did you ever see it coming?  

Rev. A. R. Bernard: No, I had no idea. I’m just trying to do the right thing and do the best I can with what I was given.

Clayton Perry: Do you ever wonder why you were the one to be chosen?

Rev. A. R. Bernard: I still can’t figure that out. I have to be totally honest with myself because I see people in my own congregation who are more qualified than I am in certain things. I have to appreciate that God just determines, “You know, I’m going to use this guy or this girl.” We just have to accept that. 

Clayton Perry: I teach full-time, so I am really interested to find out more about the Brooklyn Preparatory School. How did this school come about? What immediate plans lay in its future?

Rev. A. R. Bernard: Interestingly enough, it came out of my own need. My children were in the public school system and I saw what it was doing to them spiritually. I wanted to find an environment in which they could grow more holistically, with their faith as the core of their learning experience.

As a teaching ministry, our church attracts teachers. We gathered all 400 educators or members of our church who are educators and I asked them, “What are the most impressionable years in a child’s life?” They said from 3-6 years old, so we took 3-6 year olds and we were able to take these little kids and socialize them in a way that they love God, love learning, and see life through the eyes of God. Now, we have graduated over 180 students into the gifted programs in the New York City schools. Our children have scored in the 96th percentile in reading comprehension and the 95 percentile in Mathematics on the Stanford achievement test. They’ve been exposed to museums, art, language, computer literacy. They’re assertive yet humble.

Now we are filing to establish a charter school where we can take that and extend the experience through the 12th grade. We realized what the keys are and now we can apply them at higher grade levels.  Keep us in prayer, because it’s one thing to experience this kind of success at an early childhood level, but when you introduce higher grades, the dynamics change. It’ll continue to be a learning process, but we’re excited about it. Education is more than the impartation of information; it’s the communication of life.