Godfrey R. Patterson was born in Chicago, Illinois. At an early age he was brought to Memphis, Tennessee to be raised by his great-uncle and aunt, Deacon and Mrs. Ananias Boyd. He graduated from Northside High School and from there he went to Lambuth College in Jackson, TN where he was a Dean’s List student and All- Conference basketball player. After graduating from college he responded to the “call of Gospel ministry” and enrolled at the Howard University School of Religion in Washington, DC. At Howard he distinguished himself as both a campus leader and community organizer, co-founding the Howard University Student Aid to Political Prisoners (HUSAPP) and becoming a coordinator with the Wilmington 10 Defense Committee.

While at Howard he united with the Metropolitan AME Church under the pastorate of Dr. Robert L. Pruitt and subsequently was ordained an itinerant elder and began his pastoral ministry in the Washington Annual Conference at the Lee Memorial AME Church in Kensington, MD. Over the course of a ministry which has spanned more than 40 years he has served congregations in Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, California, and Kansas.

Adhering to his long-held conviction that “social action and community development cannot be mere after-thoughts relegated to the periphery of our spiritual activity but must be incorporated into the very essence of who we are as people of God.” This led to his founding InFocus Ministries, an “evangelistic social gospel workshop.” He has traveled extensively throughout the nation winning souls to Christ and organizing these converts to become agents of positive change in the Black community.

Pastor Patterson is the author of The Ten Black Commandments (Principles of Survival) (1979); two books, The Autobiography of a Stranger (2002), Just Trusting in God (2006); and a screenplay entitled “Framed,” based upon the October, 2002 “Beltway Sniper” rampage in the Washington, DC area. He is currently working on a third book, Meditations from the Heart of a Stranger, as well as a video project connected with his book Just Trusting in God.

His personal motto is taken from the words of Hale: “I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I ought to do. And what I ought to do, by the grace of God I will do.”

He has one child, a daughter, Angela, who resides in the Washington, DC area.