When Kimberly James came to Red Bird’s Concord Church in 2006, she said, she was a single mom trying to make ends meet. Though she majored in finance in college, she struggled with managing her money and was in a lot of debt.
That all started to change after she took a personal finance class at the church. “I didn’t truly understand money until I got to Concord,” she said, noting that the class helped her set goals to reduce unnecessary spending.
James is among the congregants and community members who have benefited from financial programs at Black churches across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. These programs are particularly valuable because of the generational wealth gap between Black and white communities, said Jamal-Dominique Hopkins, director of the Black church studies program at Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary.
“Within the Black community, where there may not be real estate, wealth or there may not be businesses that pass on” to the next generation, he said, “each generation … kind of starts from scratch. The head start that the counterparts may have within white communities is so far, and the gap is so wide.”
The wealth gap between Black and white households has been especially pronounced in Dallas. A 2018 report by Prosperity Now, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that studies financial security, found that Black families in Dallas had a median household income of $31,000, or 42% of the median income for white families.
That disparity was wider than that found across Texas as a whole, where Black households’ median income was 61% of white households’. Nationally, the wealth gap between Black and white families has consistently widened since 2010, and peaked in 2022 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank.
Hopkins said Black churches have long stepped in to address societal problems “that they neither created nor are responsible for,” from food and housing insecurity to education. “That’s just something the Black church has always taken on.”
‘Money Matters’
Earlier this year, Bryan Carter, Concord’s senior pastor, gave a four-week sermon series called “Money Matters” that focused on personal finance. He encouraged congregants to join a “financial fast” where they spent money only on necessities.
“When we look at the prayer requests that we get or people that may be in crisis, a lot of times, it can be related to finance,” Carter said. “All of us have a responsibility to be good stewards for what God places in our hands.”
Richie Butler, pastor of St. Luke “Community” United Methodist Church, said he preaches about personal finance and the importance of stewardship. He encourages congregants to consider “what it means to be a good steward of everything — every dollar, every minute of my life.”
“If it’s all a gift from God, how do I manage that so that God is pleased, and also so that [the] community is better and the world around me is made better?”
St. Luke’s offers a class on building a financial legacy that covers topics including writing a will and estate planning. The church also offers finance classes through the Zan Wesley Holmes, Jr. Community Outreach Center, including a “Cash Flow, Collateral and Leverage” program that teaches participants about cryptocurrencies, stocks and real estate investment.
“In the African American community, we have two saviors,” Butler said. “We have Jesus and education. And financial literacy is part of that education that will lead to liberation.”
Stewardship is a guiding principle of the financial education classes at Friendship-West Baptist Church, said Donna Henry, who leads the church’s finance and investment ministry. Church programs include a six-week personal finance class and one-off workshops on home buying, investing and credit.
In 2014, the church acquired a credit union to serve residents in southern Dallas County. Called Faith Cooperative Federal Credit Union, it offers a variety of banking services, such as auto, mortgage and micro loans and personal savings accounts.
Corey Love first went to the credit union in 2020 looking to buy a truck for his construction company. He met with the credit union’s president, Stephanie Johnson, who advised him to work on his credit before taking out a loan. She told him his credit was being hurt by his student loan and credit card debts.
After taking her advice, Love said, he raised his credit score from 560 to 730 within three months. Since then, he has financed several vehicles with the credit union, he said, and at least four of his friends have bought cars with loans from there at his recommendation.
Since taking her first finance class at Concord, Kimberly James has taken a number of others at the church and has taught some of her own. She also recently finished paying off her house in Grand Prairie, she said.
A lot of people she’s worked with at the church have hidden their money problems, she said, relying on the faith that God will provide. “But God also said ‘Faith without works is dead,’ ” James said.
“So if you’re not actually doing something about it through using godly principles … you’ll never know what God wants you to have.”
Adrian Ashford covers faith and religion in North Texas for The Dallas Morning News through a partnership with Report for America.
