Marcus Allen of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin sits down with Angela for a wide-ranging conversation about faith, service, combat, and community. What unfolds is a portrait of a man shaped by rejection, forged in war, and called to build something lasting.
Marcus traces his journey from Clarksdale, Mississippi through Milwaukee's Great Migration chapter, three combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a divine detour that landed him in Madison in 2016. Now celebrating 10 years at Mount Zion — which itself turns 115 this year — he talks candidly about what it takes to lead a congregation that refuses to be just a church.
They get into the real: PTSD and the military's broken reintegration systems. The Black church's complicated relationship with mental health. The hypocrisy of using Christianity to justify policy that abandons the least of these. The fundraising gauntlet facing faith-based nonprofits. And the sermon Marcus preached just the day before — about Jephthah, the son rejected by his own father — and why it hit so close to home.
Mount Zion runs a free drop-in behavioral health clinic (licensed therapist, crisis stabilizer, substance abuse counselor — no appointment needed), after-school programs, foster care aging-out support, juvenile detention programming, a food pantry, older adult transportation, and is now eyeing housing. They serve 300 unduplicated individuals a year across 15–18 Dane County zip codes. Eighty percent of the people they serve have no church connection.