Rev. Burton Barr, Jr. has served as an associate minister of the West Side Missionary Baptist Church since 1994. Barr serves as director of the Prison, Substance Abuse, and Outreach Ministries, director of prison ministry for the Missionary Baptist State Convention of Missouri, and the Berean Missionary Baptist District. He is commissioner of prison ministry for the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc., chairman of the St. Louis Clergy Coalitions Law and Order Committee, and member of the Coalition of Prison Evangelist (C.O.P.E.), the Eastern Missouri Coalition to Abolish The Death Penalty, and the Missionary Baptist Ministers Union of St. Louis & Vicinity. Barr is the author of the best selling autobiography, The Hoodlum Preacher.