Kirbyjon Caldwell: Megachurch Pastor Combines Faith and Finance

(This Q&A first appeared in May’s Wharton Leadership Digest and is reprinted here with permission.)

Growing up in Houston’s impoverished Fifth Ward, Kirbyjon Caldwell learned everything he needed to know about business at his father’s clothing store — earning a degree at the Wharton School also helped. But shortly after launching his own business career, Caldwell said he was “called” to religious leadership. Today he is the pastor of the 15,000-member Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas, where  he has pioneered innovative economic development projects. In March this year, Beliefnet.com, a leading religion website, named Caldwell — who offered the prayer at the 2001 presidential inauguration — one of the country’s ten most influential Black Spiritual Leaders. This month, the ReligionWriter caught up with Caldwell, a featured speaker at the June 7 Wharton Leadership Conference, to talk about his passion for combining faith and finance.

Andrea Useem: Tell us about your own story. You graduated from Wharton, and today you are a religious leader. We would have expected you to go into investment banking instead.

Kirbyjon Caldwell: I expected to do that myself (laughs.) I have always had a keen if not passionate interest in transforming the economic infrastructure of communities. My dad owned a men’s clothing store, so I had entrepreneurial blood running in my veins since birth. When I graduated from high school, I wanted to make a difference, to help people in Houston, to do good while doing well. So I focused on economics as an undergraduate at CarletonCollege and later was accepted at Wharton. After I graduated, I went to work for First Boston on Wall Street, then moved to Houston to work for a regional investment banking house as a fixed income institutional salesmen. I’d been there three months when the “calling” occurred.

Useem: Can you tell us about that moment of “calling?”

Caldwell: The most intelligent statement I could make is to say it was an experience that does not readily lend itself to a verbal description. To put it in religious terms, it was a moment when I became eclipsed by God’s will. All I knew was I was supposed to stop selling bonds and start pastoring a church. It’s been suggested there are at least two great moments in one’s life: one when you’re born, and the second when you discover why you’re born. I believe everyone is called to do something, and most of us, obviously, are not called into full-time ministry — for that I say thank the Lord, because that would be pretty boring. But we’re called to be more than a mom or a dad or a spouse. I think we’re called to leave an indelible imprint in this phenom called life. I encourage everyone to ask him or herself: “Why am I here?” There’s a reason why you were born and there’s a reason why you’re still here. I don’t think you should go crazy trying to figure it out, but you should be alert and alive to and, hopefully, aligned with that purpose.

Useem: After being ordained as a minister, you became the pastor of a church with only 25 members. Did that feel like a come-down for you, a person with two graduate degrees, suddenly in charge of only 25 people?

Caldwell: Only 12 of whom came to church on Sundays (laughs.) I was assigned there by the [United Methodist] Church, and I believed God wanted met to be there, so I focused on that and went to work. Now we have over 15,000 members, and we take up more money in one worship service than we did that whole first year, and we have six or seven worship services a week.

Useem: How do you explain that success?

Caldwell: In spiritual terms, we had five keys: a winsome worship service, multiple magnetic ministries, a powerful prayer ministry, enthused and involved lay people and an entrepreneurial methodology. The sixth thing, which may not be meaningful for a business audience, but which is very relevant in today’s culture, is having a clear Christology [understanding and declaration of the person of Jesus Christ.]

In business terms, we really understood our target population. Two, we delivered our product as excitingly as possible. We did all our work with volunteers and only a small paid staff; as you know, that can be challenging. So the third thing we did right was have an informed and enthused HR team.

But here’s something else interesting. We did not care about the competition. We didn’t care what the other churches were doing; we just focused on what we were doing. Having said that, the real competition is not the church around the corner, it’s culture, it’s whatever keeps folks from going to church. We had a real kick-butt attitude, and in this case the butt was apathy, arrogance, ignorance and the status quo. And of course the financial pieces — managing cash flow, maximizing assets — we were doing that as well.

Useem: How did your M.B.A. help you lead your church?

Caldwell: My Wharton experience clearly contributed to my willingness to pursue “success” on a large scale. And of course when it came time for us to secure debt and raise capital, it helped to be comfortable with the nomenclature. Really, though, it was my experience working in my dad’s clothing store as a kid in

Houston that has proved invaluable, in terms of interpersonal skills and the just down-right work ethic. I think it was the Houston Fifth Ward experience, combined with the Wharton experience, that helped me have the right attitude.

Useem: Your latest book has the title Entrepreneurial Faith.What do you mean by that phrase?

Caldwell: Interestingly, when the word entrepreneur was originally coined, it had nothing to do with money. It was about identifying and galvanizing resources, particularly people, to pursue a common goal. Who better fit that description than Jesus Christ himself? Of course the more commonplace definition of entrepreneurship has to do with attracting economic and financial resources to make a vision happen. Beneath that is the notion of having a mission and deploying every resource you can get your hands on to make that a reality; at the end of the day, that’s what a real entrepreneur does.

Useem: Some people might resist the idea of mixing business and religion. Is it a contradiction to mix faith and finance?

Caldwell: Not at all, in my view. Faith and finance were never intended to get a divorce. Rather, God intended them to be in a healthy relationship. The Bible has more verses on money and commerce than it does on faith, prayer, heaven and hell combined. Go figure. What has happened is, theologians and lay persons have misinterpreted and misapplied that teaching on faith and finance. God has blessed us to be a blessing to others, and that has an economic meaning too.

Useem: Why was economic development important to you and your church? Why not just focus on getting more church members?

Caldwell: The area of HoustonI grew up in — the Fifth Ward — was underserved, to say the least. Since very early on in life, I’ve had a desire to make a difference in the community. So when I went into the ministry, making a difference economically was part of my agenda. It’s just a passion I have. Point Two Three Four, 234-acre is a multi-use community we are developing in

Houston. It consists of Corinthian Point, a YMCA, a public school, an independent living facility, a community park, and an 8.5 acre commercial development, currently anchored by Walgreen’s and CVS. Understand that in this neighborhood, there were no drug stores. Corinthian Point is the largest residential subdivision ever developed by a non-profit entity. There are 464 homes, and 80 percent of the homes are low- to moderate-income housing, though you wouldn’t know that by looking at them;“ they’re very nice. We are also developing a 451,000 square foot community center, which would include a charter school, a NASA program and the sanctuary, the family life center; it will literally be a smorgasbord of spiritual and social services. This community is literally being transformed. The houses are already up, people are already living in them. From a spiritual standpoint, it’s unscriptural not to own land. God wants us to own land. From a social standpoint, statistics are clear: when people own land, education levels go up, crime comes down and life is made by better. There are positive spill-over effects.