Former U.S. Representative Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake is the senior pastor of the 10,000 member Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jamaica, Queens. During his 21-year pastorate, Allen has become one of the nation’s foremost Christian churches and non-profit corporations. The church’s annual operating budget of nearly $24 million, expansive commercial and residential development, 500-student private school, and various commercial and social service enterprises have placed it among the nation’s most productive religious and urban development institutions. The 11 corporations, church administrative offices, school, and ministries comprise an 825-person workforce, making it one of the Borough of Queens’ three largest private sector employers.

In the U.S. Congress, Representative Floyd Flake established a reputation for bipartisan, innovative legislative initiatives to revitalize urban commercial and residential communities. Most notably, the Community Development Financial Institutions Act of 1993 contained provisions named the Bank Enterprise Act (BEA), authored by Representative Floyd Flake, that provided incentives for financial institutions to make market-oriented investments in destabilized urban and rural economies. These BEA provisions continue to yield millions of dollars worth of direct and secondary investments for residential and commercial growth, needed federal insurance relief for banks, and increased private sector capital flow in communities with declining economic fortunes. The BEA has directly impacted the volume of residential mortgage and commercial lending in grossly under-invested locales. In an age of heightened partisan discord, Representative Flake’s BEA attracted bipartisan political support as well as banking industry and consumer group support during hearings and consideration of the bill in both chambers of Congress.

Allen A.M.E.’s administrative and corporate operations reflect the same cost consciousness and demands for efficiency that Reverend Floyd Flake required of legislation before the House Committee of Banking and Finance. Reverend Flake was a perennial critic of efforts to create public policy that failed to factor critical market realities—especially cost and efficiency—into public policy development and decision making. Similarly, Allen A.M.E.’s $24 million operation is a national paradigm of church and nonprofit efficiency. Allen A.M.E. has attracted a unique cadre of skilled corporate directors, corporate operations executives, commercial bankers, educators, and social service providers to establish a leadership model for community-based faith organizations. In fact, if Allen were a forprofit entity, it would appear as one of the nation’s 100 largest African Americanowned enterprises. Allen Church is the second largest African-American employer in New York City behind the TLC Beatrice Corporation.

Further, Allen’s administrative structure, efficiency, and development efforts have increasingly attracted international and national recognition in print and electronic media. Reverend Floyd Flake is a proponent of market-oriented community and economic development in corporate settings, policy forums, seminaries and divinity schools, and countless other forums as a way to widen the circle of inclusion for more Americans. Under Reverend Floyd Flake’s leadership and true to its Christian doctrine of self-help and communal responsibility, Allen Church has provided resources and guidance for innumerable faith-based and secular institutions across the many years and nation.

Dr. Flake earned the Doctor of Ministry Degree from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH. In addition he holds other degrees from Wilberforce University.

Before assuming the pastorate of Allen Church, Reverend Flake was the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center and Dean of the Chapel at Boston University following a successful stint as Associate Dean of Students at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Flake is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Social and Economic Policy and is a columnist for the New York Post, and is a member of the Fannie Mae Foundation Board of Directors.

He is married to the former M. Elaine McCollins, and they are the parents of four children.