Service to his community, city, and Congress A thread has been running through the life’s work of Rep. Bobby Rush (MATS’98) from the time he was in the Boy Scouts, served in the military, joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, helped organize the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and entered politics. Coming to McCormick helped him identify that thread—a commitment to give voice and hope to the people he serves. “I always had a vision for my life,” say Rep. Rush, who served in Chicago’s City Council for 10 years before being elected to the U.S. House of Representative in 1993, where he served for three decades. “But I did not have biblical spiritual insight into my life until I went to McCormick and settled down and began to seriously study my calling in Christ.” During the late 1990s and A de昀椀ning moment in Rep. Rush’s McCormick experience happened one day while early 2000s, McCormick’s a professor was reading Luke 4:18-20. “The text spoke to me,” he recalls. “It made African American Leadership sense of my life. Preach the gospel to the poor…heal the brokenhearted…help the Program, under the blind to see…set the oppressed free…all that was what my life was about. My whole leadership of program journey was right there.” director, the late Rev. Dr. The commitment to serve the underserved was seen in community survival Leon Finney, Jr. (D.Min.’90), programs such as free breakfast programs, medical, and legal aid programs when graduated nearly 100 Master he was with the Black Panthers; community development initiatives while a Chicago of Theology and Doctor of alderman, and support for government programs that would provide economic Ministry degree students. opportunities for urban areas when he served in Congress. Rep. Rush was among its many graduates. “McCormick was the place where I really began to focus on and mature in my calling,” says Rep. Rush, who founded the Beloved Community Church of God in Christ on Chicago’s South Side in 2001. “It’s where my passionate patterns and purposes were drawn out, and I felt empowered to be faithful to my ministerial call wherever I went.” 2023 ANNUAL REPORT 11