The Minister of 'Good Success'
Meet Kirbyjon Caldwell—megachurch pastor, real-estate whiz, community developer, and the President's spiritual confidant
Jenny Staff Johnson | posted 10/01/2001 12:00AM
Those who first saw Kirbyjon Caldwell when he delivered the benediction at President George W. Bush's inauguration in January observed something unexpected: a prominent black pastor supporting a Republican president when such supporters were scarce. Caldwell himself admits that he has voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the past, and when talking about some political issues—say, affirmative action—his "compassionate" seems several steps left of "conservative." So, how did he wind up praying at Bush's inauguration and introducing him at last year's GOP convention in Philadelphia?
Despite their apparent differences, Bush and Caldwell have a lot in common. Both are Texans. Both are Methodists. Both earned MBAs from renowned business schools. And both have a passion for using faith-based programs to meet social needs.
The two men have been friends ever since Bush (then governor of Texas) learned of Caldwell's community-development efforts. Today, Caldwell occasionally prays with the President over the phone, and Bush has long pointed to Caldwell's work as a positive example of what can be accomplished through local churches and parachurch ministries.
In his hometown of Houston, Kirbyjon Caldwell is known for his lively preaching—he strikes some as equal parts motivational speaker and revivalist. But the real buzz on Caldwell concerns his success in leading his church, Windsor Village United Methodist, into real estate and other economic-development ventures. Exhibit A is the Power Center, a 104,000 square-foot former Kmart that now houses a private Christian school, a branch of Houston Community College, office space for small businesses, a pharmacy, a hair salon, a federal public-assistance office for women and children, and the area's only bank. Since 1999 the Power Center has had an estimated $28.7 million impact on its neighborhood, an economically depressed sector of southwest Houston.
Exhibit B may be Windsor Village Methodist Church itself, a spiritually bustling congregation filled with affluent African-American members. When Caldwell arrived at the church in 1982, it was a financially struggling body of 25. Today, with 14,000 members, Windsor Village has become the largest United Methodist Church in America and continues to grow.
Caldwell, then, is becoming one of the most influential pastors in the nation. His breezy combination of positive-thinking theology, self-help affirmative action, and apolitical politics makes him a fascinating study in contrasts—a man whose fervent evangelical convictions are rivaled only by his pragmatic belief in economic development.
Perhaps a major reason for Windsor Village Church's explosive growth is its pastor's experience with numbers. The 48-year-old Caldwell began his career not as a minister, but as an investment banker. "I never thought I would pastor a church," he recalls. Instead, he attended Wharton Business School and worked for a year on Wall Street before landing a lucrative job in 1978 with a bond-trading firm back home in Houston. He was on the fast track for professional stardom. "It was the Gold Rush era of Houston, and I was standing on the ground floor waiting for those elevator doors to open and deliver me into six-figure-dollars country," he writes in his 1999 book The Gospel of Good Success. "Not many African-American males could make six serious figures in 1978—especially without wearing a sports uniform."
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