2000 Achievement Award Winner:
Civic Commitment Award
Republished with permission from the HBS African-American Alumni Association
In 1992, the Mt. Nebo AME Church in suburban Upper Marlboro, Maryland, applied to its bank for a $50,000 loan. Their dynamic pastor, the Reverend Jonathan Weaver, had attracted so many new members since his arrival that the congregation had outgrown its building, and needed to move to a temporary home. The loan would be used to make the new site, located in an industrial park, suitable as a place for worship. Despite the fact that Mt. Nebo had recently repaid a $200,000 30-year mortgage within seven years, the bank wanted to impose several conditions including a requirement that no less than three trustees guarantee the new loan.
It was a bitter and all too familiar experience for African Americans and faith-based institutions. Reverend Weaver quickly wrote to the president of the bank, saying that his (then) 750 members would be disappointed to hear the outcome of their request. The bank then approved the loan in short order, but Weaver did not let the matter rest. Instead, in January of 1993, he brought together 20 pastors from the surrounding area to express their common frustration with discriminatory practices, but, more importantly, to devise a plan of action that would harness the collective economic power of their congregations and communities. Weaver also encouraged education for both sides. Bankers needed to better understand how churches operate and their role in the community, and congregations needed to learn the language of finance.
From that initial aggregation of churches emerged the Collective Banking Group (CBG). Under Reverend Weaver's guidance, the nascent organization of increasingly sophisticated consumers examined the lending and hiring practices of major regional banks, and interviewed bank officials over a two-year period. Selected banks were then asked to sign a four-point covenant and to establish a mutually beneficial partnership with the CBG, which by December of 1995 had grown to include 45 churches, representing 75,000 households and a quarter of a million people. Today the CBG comprises 215 churches and close to 90,000 households. Of the five CBG member banks, three are majority-owned including Bank of America ("they got religion" Weaver likes to say) and two are African-American banks. Congregations are regularly encouraged from the pulpit to take their business to those financial institutions. $15 million had been deposited at last estimate, and, in 1996 alone, the banks returned more than $50 million to the community, in the form of mortgages for homes and church property as well as small business and personal loans.
As its president, Weaver is frequently cited as the key to CBG's success and growing clout. His emphasis on entrepreneurship, savings and investments, and collective bargaining, resonates throughout large congregations as well as smaller ones in less affluent areas. He is a strong advocate of the growing role many churches have assumed in addressing financial as well as political disenfranchisement. "The African American church is flourishing and has a major responsibility to do more than speak to the spiritual part of our lives. We're beginning to touch the life of the community by talking about job creation and managing wealth, and by developing business acumen as well as mechanisms for working together." His views and approach to economic empowerment have been compared to those of another prominent church and community leader, the Reverend Floyd Flake, who, as it happens, played a pivotal role in Weaver's journey into the ministry.
Raised in Rockville, Maryland, Jonathan Weaver enjoys telling his "local boy makes good" story. When he was admitted to Harvard Business School, the Montgomery County government, his post-college employer, offered their talented native son a paid leave of absence. Looking ahead, Weaver envisioned "contributing something to this world through the depth of my determination and commitment", but, although he and the Lord were then "on speaking terms", Weaver was not yet ready to follow the calling his grandmother had prophesied for him as a child. Instead, he returned to Maryland and became, at the age of 25, the county's youngest and first African American assistant chief administrative officer. He later moved to New York to become director of development for Operation Crossroads Africa, and joined Allen AME Church in Queens. There he continued to grow spiritually under the preaching of Reverend Flake, and one Sunday in April, 1981, he told his pastor, "I can't run from it anymore."
"There's no doubt that I use what I learned at HBS everyday in my work as pastor," Weaver says. "When I came to Mt. Nebo in 1988 I was greeted by about 68 people. Since then we've grown to 2000 members, so I'm in the business of marketing, as well as organizational and financial development." He acknowledges that some people nevertheless don't understand why he went to business school, which he attributes to a "distorted view" of success. "You shouldn't allow external forces to tell you what you should be," he advises. "You must seek as much information and wisdom as you can, but ultimately you are the one who must chart your course and determine what your destiny is to be."