BOB ABERNETHY: Our Cover Story this week, faith and finance, would seem to be a contradiction in terms. Churches are nonprofit, they serve first the spiritual and then the material needs of their communities. They help the poor. Lately, in a growing number of the 70,000 black churches in America, there's been a noticeable shift in the direction of the material: a marked increase in economic activity. As correspondent Bob Faw of NBC News points out, it's a new affirmation of the old proverb, "God helps those who help themselves."
BOB FAW: In the churches of black America, there has always been hope. But now there's a brand new message offering hope not only in the hereafter, but in the here and now. It's a two-fisted combination of spiritual empowerment and economic development tapping the estimated $250 billion black consumers spend every year. Leading the charge at the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston is the Reverend Kirbyjon Caldwell, once a high-flying Wall Street investment banker, who gave it up to build this congregation, which then numbered 25, into a powerhouse of nearly 11,000.Reverend KIRBYJON CALDWELL (Windsor Village United Methodist Church, Houston): We are to mirror right here on Earth, what's already being done in Heaven.
FAW: Caldwell is on the way. Three years ago his church set up a nonprofit corporation, which borrowed $4 million and then persuaded a local supermarket chain to donate an abandoned building.Rev. CALDWELL: It was a vacated, dilapidated eyesore, former Kmart building.
FAW: Generating no income?
Rev. CALDWELL: Generating no income.
FAW: Now it's the Power Center -- 100,000 square feet of commercial real estate -- which generates $12 million a year and almost 300 jobs. There's a full-service bank and pharmacy in an area which previously had neither. There are facilities for the third largest catering service in Houston, and a bustling beauty salon. Each outlet pays rent to Caldwell's nonprofit corporation, which uses the money to attract other businesses.
Rev. CALDWELL: When you put food on the table and the roofs over the heads and hope in the hearts and inspiration in the community, clearly that adds social value.
FAW: And the Reverend Caldwell is not finished. Combining his faith with his M.B.A. from the Wharton School, he's now lining up financing for 460 low- and moderate-income homes. Caldwell says that if the inner-city church does not come up with new programs, the church and inner city will perish.
Rev. CALDWELL: When you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've already got.FAW: Caldwell's approach in Houston is also being applied by the Reverend Charles Adams at the Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit.
Reverend CHARLES ADAMS (Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, Detroit): We have moved from the era of civil rights to silver rights. From political and social rights to economic rights.
FAW: The nonprofit foundation started by Adams's church has turned rat-infested slums into prospering businesses.
FAW: And in Queens, New York, the Reverend Floyd Flake's Allen AME Church has built a senior citizens housing complex and a commercial center of shops, restaurants, and offices.
Dr. ROBERT FRANKLIN (Interdenominational Theological Center): I think that we can easily get lost in the money-making enterprise.
FAW: Many inner-city churches have had scant reason to rejoice in recent years. Now, though, seeing jobs replace poverty and run-down locations become robust, they have learned that spiritual help and economic security go hand in hand. Washington's commitment to poor neighborhoods may shift with the political winds, but here, the commitment is fervent.
