Rev. Dr. Darrell Armstrong A True Servant Leader
BY CANDACE WALLER
Rev. Dr. Darrell Armstrong, senior pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, NJ, has found two new ways to serve children. He is deeply committed to advocating for issues of justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and access. Historic new positions further extend his lifelong passion for service, and based on his early educational experiences of integrating public schools in Los Angeles, CA and his early childhood experiences of foster and kinship care through the Los Angeles County Welfare System, he has cultivated a deep conviction to strengthen marginalized communities.
Elected in June 2024 as the president of the Board of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), Armstrong is serving a two-year tenure. He is the first ordained and the first Black male to hold this position. Another first in 2024, president-elect of the Coalition of Religious Leaders (NJ-CORL), the first Black
spiritual leader in the Coalition’s 30 plus-year history— puts Rev. Armstrong in place where he can leverage his vast network of public-private partnerships to propel the organization to even greater relevance.
“We look forward to working with him to coalesce the power of faith-based ‘grassroots’ and ‘grasstops’ religious organizations here in the Garden State, for greater collective impact,” said Director Rev. Jack Johnson. Some 50 years old, NJ-CORL represents religious leadership from Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh faith traditions. The Coalition’s membership of some 65 faith leaders includes bishops, imams, rabbis, denominational executives, and faith based public policy executives,
APSAC, a multidisciplinary group of professionals, achieves its mission in several ways, most notably through expert training and educational activities; policy leadership and collaboration; and consultation that emphasizes theoretically sound, evidence-based principles. APSAC envisions a world where all at-risk and maltreated children and their families have access to the highest level of professional commitment and service.
His service to APSAC includes, but is not limited to, being a 2017 founding member of the National Initiative to End Corporal Punishment, a keynote speaker at the 2018 annual APSAC Colloquium, and an active member of various committees including co-chair of the Faith
Committee, and chair of the Development Committee. APSAC President Emerita Stacie LeBlanc says she is excited to see how the organization will grow under Rev. Armstrong’s leadership. “I am thrilled Rev. Dr. Darrell
Armstrong has been elected Board president, marking a historic milestone,” LeBlanc said. “His leadership and dedication to child advocacy are invaluable, especially given that he is a survivor of the Los Angeles child welfare system. His vision is essential as APSAC supports professionals and faith leaders dedicated to protecting children and families.”
Serving the community is something Rev. Armstrong has done for decades. He is in his 24th year of service as the pastor of the historic Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, NJ, the oldest Black Baptist congregation in the state’s capital. Shiloh is a thriving multicultural, multi-racial, and multigenerational community of faith, which under Armstrong’s leadership became the first house of worship in the U.S. to officially declare itself a “No Hit Zone.”
His love and service for his community were goals he committed to early in his career. He obtained his policy training at Stanford University in California with a BA in Public Policy and followed that up with theological training at Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and therapeutic/clinical training at The College of New Jersey (Ed.S. in marriage and family therapy). His educational background and life experiences have uniquely prepared him to be a respected voice in the national and international child welfare and family-strengthening communities.
He is a certified trauma professional and credentialed master trainer in the National Partnership for Community Leadership’s Fatherhood/Responsible Male Involvement. He is also a founding member of the Police Chaplaincy Units in both the Trenton and Ewing Police Departments, where he focuses on connecting clergy to multidisciplinary teams through their local child advocacy centers.
From 2006 to 2009, serving as director, assistant commissioner, and director of the Division of Prevention and Community Partnerships in the NJ Department of Children and Families, Armstrong oversaw a $100M budget of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention funding and was responsible for co-writing New Jersey’s first statewide “prevention plan.” In 2016, he was appointed the chief administrative officer to the United Nations for the Baptist World Alliance, where he advocated for Human Rights and espoused family-strengthening policies and practices on a global level.
Armstrong is the founder of F-A-A-I-T-H (Faith Leaders Against Abuse In The Home), a new global non-governmental organization (NGO) working to help houses of worship around the globe become trauma-informed/responsive, resilience-minded, strengths-based, family- oriented, centers of hope and mindful faithfulness.
“It is not lost on me that youth who age out of and emancipate from child welfare systems across the nation rarely get the type of opportunities that have been afforded to me,” said Rev. Armstrong. “I freely share my journey as a child welfare-involved youth to a child welfare national leader, with the hope that my election not only inspires those who work with marginalized and under- resourced families (e.g. the LPCs, LMFTs, LCSWs, etc.)…but more importantly, empowers children from displaced families to know their starting point in life does not define their ending point; their future destination should inspire them!” He concluded, “One should never underestimate what true love and genuine investment in a child can do—regardless of the race, region, or religion of the giver or recipient of that love!”.
