This pastor led his congregation to do what others said couldn’t be done. Now Jacksonville’s Westside is revitalized, and his church is reenergized by Vaughn McLaughlin’s message of economic empowerment.
If I were king of the foreeeeeeeesst.”
Vaughn McLaughlin’s impersonation of the Cowardly Lion is dead on. And when he suddenly breaks into it in the middle of conversation, it’s unexpected. You don’t know whether to laugh or sing along.
“Not queen! Not duke! Not prince!”
McLaughlin is king of all he surveys: a congregation of 3,000, a Christian academy of 650 students, a mini-mall of shops operated by the church and some of its members, an incubator that helps fledgling entrepreneurs start their own businesses. But it wasn’t always this way.
Jacksonville, Florida’s Westside was a thriving commercial hub until white flight sent residents scrambling for the outer suburbs. By the time McLaughlin’s fledgling congregation located there in 1991, there was almost no trade. The Normandy Mall had closed, and most restaurants and shops on the main drag were shuttered. The old Volkswagen dealership sat vacant 13 years before the church bought it and converted the repair shop into a sanctuary.
Today the area is busy again. The newly paved streets are lined with all the major fast food chains, and a national pharmacy built a new store on the corner. Wal-Mart and Home Depot moved in, and another hardware giant will open an outlet this summer.
And the church has now purchased the 400,000-square-foot Normandy Mall, once advertised at $12 million, for $4 million. The church, The Potter’s House Christian Fellowship, is renovating it as a new church headquarters and retail center. The Potter’s House will leave its current properties a few blocks down the street for the academy.
Many in Jacksonville credit the economic revival on the Westside to the presence of the Potter’s House and the success of its businesses. McLaughlin has been embraced by Jacksonville. He co-chaired the 2001 Jacksonville Billy Graham Crusade.
Jacksonville’s political leaders regularly appear at The Potter’s House, seeking this pastor’s counsel and support. He has twice been invited to the White House to offer advice on President Bush’s faith-based initiative for social ministries. He returns in May for a conference on prison ministry. The Potter’s House teams with Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship at several north Florida facilities. “I’m gonna tell the president what these men need is housing and job training when they get out—so they don’t go back to drugs and crime and jail.” The ministry’s maintenance chief is a former inmate whom a church elder led to Christ while the man was incarcerated.
The church has two dozen ministries, many of which help members realize their dreams of better jobs and better lifestyles. McLaughlin preaches economic empowerment, but not a prosperity gospel (“blab-it-and-grab-it,” as he calls it). Salvation of the soul will lead to a changed life, he says.
But all that McLaughlin and his congregation have accomplished they’ve done without government money. “We have what we have by the grace of God and the sweat of our brow.”
McLaughlin was profiled in the Wall Street Journal, several Florida business magazines, and in 2001 was named “entrepreneur of the year” by the business school of Florida State University. He leads business workshops across the country.
If there is anyone behind the curtain, it is McLaughlin’s wife of almost 25 years, Narlene. “He told everybody that acquiring the mall would be the easiest thing we’ve done. And, in faith, it’s true. After all we’ve seen God do, this would be a piece of cake. But have you ever tried to explain to an insurance company that a church will operate a mall? They don’t understand that.” Mrs. McLaughlin is the ministry’s administrator. “And compliances and fire codes and building codes—”
It is she who explains the Wizard of Oz figurines on the shelves behind his desk. “He’s fascinated by that movie. How many times has he used that in a sermon?! We battle evil, we gotta have heart, we gotta have courage.”
McLaughlin is a whiz, if ever a whiz there was.
Others would say he’s a whiz at encouraging people to believe what Christ can do in them. McLaughlin would say if he’s a whiz, it’s not first at business, but obedience—courageous obedience.
McLaughlin talked with Leadership‘s Eric Reed.
Did you have any experience that would forecast your success in revitalizing this community?
None at all. I’m a living witness that God can use anybody.
A friend of mine who had played with the Jacksonville USFL team came to stay with us after the league folded. We had partied together in college. He became a Christian, but I was still having a wild time. I thought he was strange, man, but his faith was real. Eventually, Narlene and I accepted Christ.
I had been a Christian only a few months when I began preaching. Before I preached my first funeral, I went to the cemetery just to see what the preacher was supposed to do. I didn’t know. I didn’t know how “play” church.
Soon I became pastor of a church about forty miles from Jacksonville. It was a rural church, but I’m from the city. I was there nine months. God pulled me away like he did Paul in the back side of Arabia. It was in that wilderness that I began to understand God had something for me to do in the city. After I resigned, I spent three or four weeks in prayer. On my face before God, I began to write down everything God showed me.
I wrote on a legal pad most of the ministries we’re doing today. It was a vision of economic empowerment.
I had never seen any of these things done in church before. I knew we were supposed to evangelize and disciple and impact our community, but what about the physical manifestation of those things? What would it look like? And how would we do it?
I read those notes over at least once a year. Little by little, year by year, these things have come to pass.
Is vision the key to your church’s impact on the community?
The key to any successful ministry is obedience. Jesus was obedient unto death, even death on the cross. He’s our example. Obey. No matter what it looks like, you obey. Obedience is better than sacrifice, and God has honored our obedience.
Why would a church build in the midst of blight?
To restore that place. Peter talked about being good stewards of the manifold grace of God. That word “manifold” means the multi-faceted, multi-colored grace of God. It’s sort of like painting the town. We have the ability to repair what is broken, to correct what is wrong. God has graced us to save this place.
A local church ought not just drive in on Sunday, have an hour-and-a-half of preaching and singing, and then leave. If you’re in a community, then you ought to affect that community.
I ask other pastors, “If your church were to leave the community you’re in, what impact would that have? Would they miss you? Would they weep?” I think our community would miss us if we weren’t here. I hope they would. We have built relationships with the people of our community and with retailers in hopes of saving this community. That kind of networking can save a community.
We are the community.
Your ministry has been described as holistic. What do you mean by that?
Holistic means ministering to the whole person, as Jesus did. In the Gospels, we see Jesus feeding people before converting people, healing people, then rejoicing that the person has been made whole.
We had a biker in church for a while, a real rough guy—named Troll. Troll has a real disdain for church, but he comes anyway. He gets caught up in the worship. He gets teary-eyed. Then I notice that Troll is leaning forward when I talk with him. He’s hard of hearing. I say, “Troll, I want you to go the doctor and get the fanciest hearing aids you can find.” So we buy Troll some ears, $2,000 for ears.
Then I see he doesn’t have any teeth. So we buy Troll teeth. Fine-looking teeth.
Since then, I’ve only seen Troll twice, but that’s not the point. We minister to people, not because they’re church members, but because they need it. And not just spiritual needs, they have spiritual, social, emotional, and financial needs, too.
Is economic empowerment part of making a person whole?
Jesus said in Luke 19, “Occupy until I come.” “Occupy” is a business term—barter, trade, do the work of a banker. In other words, carry on with daily life and be successful at it until he returns. Economic empowerment means telling people they can do that, showing them how, and giving them the opportunity.
People have the ability to make wealth with their hands, but they don’t know how. When we opened the Multi-plex, we began giving people opportunity to start a business.
How does the business incubator work?
We teach basic entrepreneurial skills, and we provide the space rent-free to get them started. We remove the fear, but we don’t make it easy for them. They need to know it costs something to be in business. That something is hard work.
If a business isn’t making it, we reevaluate it and encourage them to make changes. Some people have the dream, but don’t have what it takes. A lot of others have moved into malls and other larger retail venues and are doing well.
Who are the people who’ve done well?
One of our earliest successes was a recording studio. A young man wanted to produce records. We helped him open a studio in our building, one of the best in the area. He has recorded for DC Talk, Out of Eden, GRITS, and others—for over ten years now.
Our attorney had been a housewife for eleven years, raising two little girls, when she heard the word of the Lord and enrolled in college, then law school. She graduated cum laude from the University of Florida and passed the bar exam. We encouraged her during that time. After she worked with a downtown law firm for a year, she wanted to open her own office here at the Multi-plex. We set her up. Today she handles all our legal matters, and has built a good clientele. She has fulfilled her dream.
Another woman wanted to open a dance studio. She had danced professionally off Broadway. We built a studio here, and she teaches tap and ballet.
We sent the head of our credit union to school to learn finance, and our counselor completed a degree in family and crisis counseling.
Our kitchen manager is in culinary arts school. She had worked part-time in the café, then when she decided to complete her degree, we offered to help. She just returned from an internship in Paris.
And your role in changing people’s lives—
I had a transformation when I moved from being a leader per se to being an equipper. I equip people to serve God by fulfilling their dreams. I help them have a vision, and we work together to make things happen.
I’m an equipper.
It sounds like part pastor, part “great and powerful Oz.”
It does! Oh, when I was a kid, man, I was fascinated with that movie. I’d watch it every year on my little black-and-white TV. I didn’t know the land of Oz was in color until I was an adult. In fact, the Mayor of Munchkinland lives just about 30 miles from here. The last surviving star of the show. He speaks at churches. I’m trying to get him to come here. I would just fall down. I would just pass out.
Do you have a favorite character in the movie?
The Cowardly Lion. I just love Bert Lahr. He was so compassionate and so funny. “What makes a lion roar? Courage! What makes the eagle soar? Courage! What do they have that I haven’t got?Courage!” I like the way he goes from scaredy cat to courageous lion.
Your wife says you often include Oz references in your sermons.
To me it has so much spiritual meaning: There’s the enemy that’s trying to keep us from getting home. There are the people who become our friends along the way and help us reach the Emerald City.
You have pursued a dream—turning an abandoned mall into the center of the community again—for seven years. Why did it take so long?
Several years ago, I felt the Lord leading us to the old Normandy Mall. I used to go there as a kid, to see Bruce Lee movies. By the time the church moved into this area, the mall was mostly closed. Only Sam’s Club Warehouse was operating.
We hired an architect and drew plans. I led the congregation over there, and we drove around it seven times. The newspaper featured us on the front page. The headline said, “Pastor wants to resurrect mall.”
But it never happened. The deal was too complicated, the undertaking was too big, and it would have put too much strain on the ministry.
So the mall sat there, vacant, for seven years.
Was the congregation discouraged? Did your leadership suffer?
It’s said that a one-eyed man is king in the kingdom of the blind. That’s been me through the years. God gave me enough vision to see what could be, and our people have accepted our leadership. A lot of times it wasn’t clear to me, but it was so deeply expressed in my spirit that I knew God had to be in it.
So what prompted you to pursue the mall a second time?
I was in Philadelphia teaching a seminar on economic empowerment. “Take massive action,” I told these church elders and leaders. “Don’t be daunted by what you see. Do what God has called you to do!”
On the plane flying back home, all I could think about was the Normandy Mall.Take massive action. I drove straight from the airport to the mall and asked, “God, is it time for us to buy the mall?”
Two hours later, the realtor met me, “The owner wants $9 million.”
I offered two-and-half.
That’s how the negotiations began.
How did the church leaders respond when you said, “Let’s try it again”?
I met with the elders and stewardship ministry. I told them, “The cloud has moved.” That’s our philosophy for following God. If the cloud doesn’t move, we don’t move. If the cloud moves, we move. Not matter what our situation, we move.
The elders said, “If you believe it’s time, then we’ll do it.” So we moved.
We agreed on a price and closed the deal, and five months later, we expect to move into the Sam’s Club, which we’re renovating as our worship center. Then we’ll develop the rest of the buildings as shops and restaurants, a real center for the community. We’ll reopen the health club and install lanes for bowling. The movie theaters will be concert venues. The business incubator will move there, and we’re talking with a company that provides job training about locating in one of the anchor stores.
Your ministries have all been privately financed, even the $4 million mall purchase. What is your view of accepting federal money, as in the president’s faith-based initiative?
I admire the work of those establishing the faith-based initiatives. In fact, I serve on the regional board that is in talks with the White House about how to carry out some of their plans. But so far, the Potter’s House and our ministries have not tapped into that. We have lived on our tithes and offerings. We have never had a grant.
Never?
We’ve never applied for one. That makes some people who are talking about faith-based initiatives a little nervous. But we feel we’ve proven ourselves. We have what we have by the grace of God and the sweat of our brow. Every time we’ve needed to buy a dilapidated property and renovate it, God has provided people and money to do it.
Everything we need is “in the house.”
We need plumbers, God brings them. We need electricians, they’re there. We need finances, and the people give. We have good relations with our local government officials, but we haven’t depended on them for money. In fact, they’re starting to come to us.
You said networking can save a community. How does networking affect your church?
I attended a meeting last night. The mayor and the sheriff were there. Several key leaders talked with me about our purchase of the mall. They said, “You’ve proven what you’re capable of doing. You won’t have to do this project alone.” City leaders—the fire marshal, and all—have been very supportive of our work. We want them to be glad our church is in the community, not wish us out, or hinder our plans. I don’t think the church should be alienated from government, because oftentimes what the police can’t do, or what social services can’t do, the church can.
After we built a basketball court and started a recreation program, the city commended us. The president of the city council offered to put up a scoreboard and lights so we could have night games and give teenagers a place to go at night. You see, we’re not in the money business. We’re in the business of helping people, and often money comes as a result.
How does a church get started changing its neighborhood?
I talk to a lot of pastors who are applying for grants and all this kind of stuff. I say to them, “You don’t need a grant now. You need the ministry first.”
In other words, you need to target the ill of your community. Identify the greatest need, then motivate your people to attack that need. You don’t need a building first, but a burden.
A pastor first needs a burden for a specific need in a specific place. When you have a burden, you’ll begin to change things, and people will join you in that work.
If you look at a model like ours, you see that faith-based organizations can transform a community—fight crime, bring back business, educate people, and train people for labor. Our community knows we’re here by the work we’ve done. And we’re here to stay.
When everything else falls apart, the church is going to be here. Look at our record, our history, and our faith in God. In times of war, everybody runs to church. In depression, people come to church.
The church is a long-standing institution on this planet, and it’s not going anywhere, until Jesus returns.
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