The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) foresaw the mortgage crisis that hit the U.S. in 2008 a number of years before anyone even suspected such a cataclysmic event would happen.
Within the African-American community, at any rate.
As far back as 2004, "our pastors were calling us up, concerned at the number of people buying houses and asking for dedications [a church blessing]," says Reverend Anthony Evans, NBCI's president. "They did not recall many of these individuals having steady and consistent employment and that set off a red flag."
But in 2004, there wasn't even a hint of the crisis to come, and convincing any official entity of that eventuality, as the NBCI tried to do, was next to impossible. So the NBCI went ahead on its own, Evans says, initiating a concerted financial literacy and education program that today remains a focus for the organization and aims to rebuild and increase the savings rate of African Americans across the country.
Once 2008 hit, of course, most of America was badly affected by the mortgage crisis and its after-effects, but because the African-American community is usually "three years behind every boom and bust," the effects of the crisis have been even deeper and more protracted, Evans says. More importantly, they have impacted the capabilities of the church, to which many – even those in the higher-income brackets who were its key financial supporters – have turned to and continue to look toward for help.
Given that the church is the main pillar of the Black community ("the pastor is the spiritual leader of the church – he comes to grandma's bed when she dies and visits Little Timothy in jail… nothing happens in an African-American church without the pastor's sanction," Evans says), it has to be financially sound in order to provide support to its congregation, so a major part of the ongoing financial literacy and education program is aimed at fortifying the church's finances first.
However, "we also want our congregation to know that the church is not the lender of last resort," Evans says, so the program also hopes to be able to impart the basics of proper financial planning, from day-to-day budgeting to saving, to church members. Not only will these people become more financially astute and able to fend for themselves better, but as their savings increase, they will be in a position to give back to the church, which will then be able to extend a helping hand to the neediest members of its congregation, Evans says.
Thus far, NBCI has successfully educated 125,000 families on the important facets of proper financial planning, Evans says, through classroom-style financial literacy classes and other grassroot approaches. The church also asks all its members to save one year of their salary over the next seven years and it has applied for a grant to kick off an online, faith-based financial education course that can be completed in anywhere from six months to three years.
