September 4, 2000
Pastor pushes community development corporations
___By Linda Lawson
___LifeWay Christian Resources
___RIDGECREST, N.C. (BP) --To meet community needs such as housing, childcare, transportation and food, many African-American Southern Baptist churches are establishing faith-based, non-profit community development corporations, according to Carl McCluster, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Conn.
___McCluster, also president of MCVision Ministries, which consults with churches about community development corporations, led daily conferences during Black Church Leadership Week at Ridgecrest Conference Center.
___McCluster's 300-member church operates a community development corporation with five divisions of services--senior adults, youth, housing, technology and rehabilitation. He emphasized that every corporation is unique and targeted to meet specific needs in the community.
___Among the Shiloh services is an initiative, Home Ownership Made Easy, to provide counseling and help to people with limited incomes who desire to become homeowners.
___McCluster said churches should get involved in helping people buy homes because "if everybody in your church owned a house, your church would have more stability and more tithes and offerings."
___A church does not have to be large to sponsor a community development corporation, McCluster said. "If you have 40 members who are faithful, you can do an outstanding job in community development."
___To develop a vision for this requires what McCluster, a former Wall Street investment banker, termed "top-down selling."
___"Begin with God's vision rather than trying to pull God down to where we are," he urged. "If God said it, he's always going to make a way for it to be."
___In addition to faith-based development corporations operated primarily by Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups, McCluster said corporations such as banks are forming corporate development entities to meet community needs outside their primary businesses. A third type is the grassroots, resident-driven community development corporation launched by renters, homeowners and business people who live in a community or even people who work in a community but don't live there.
___He emphasized the three types are not mutually exclusive. A faith-based venture may include partnerships with local businesses, government agencies and residential groups.
___"The right partnerships can help you to have the best CDC, but you have to remain who you are through the process," McCluster said.
___While the pastor must play a key leadership role, he warned pastors in the session not to go it alone.
___"You can't do it by yourself. That's the pathway to destruction," he said.
___In addition to the workload, a community development corporation requires a wide range of expertise--business, legal, writing grant proposals and other areas, he said.
___While a community development corporation is a ministry, it must be operated on sound business principles, he said. "A non-profit that doesn't make money is not a non-profit. It's a former non-profit."
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