Church-ownership a miracle for mall
Published: May 30, 2007
The front side of the Forest Park Mall could belong to any shopping center on Roosevelt Road. Behind a stucco facade, customers hunt for groceries at Ultra Foods, shower curtains at Kmart, phones at a US Cellular store.
But enter the mall and follow the beat of a gospel band, and you’ll find yourself in a 3,500-seat sanctuary where worshipers from the Living Word Christian Center are clapping and singing hallelujahs. Rev. Bill Winston preaches while cameras project his image on giant video screens.
This is the landlord’s side of the building.
Combining Bible and business acumen, Living Word has transformed what was once an eyesore listed on a Web site called Deadmalls.com into a thriving if unusual hybrid: half mega-church, half shopping mall.
Since the nondenominational church bought the dying mall in 1998, Living Word has more than doubled to 15,000 members while creating a facility divided between a state-of-the-art worship center and the church’s commercial subsidiary at 7600 W. Roosevelt Rd.
Both sides of the mall speak to the church’s mission: not only saving souls, but also modeling economic development for a largely black congregation. Living Word has established a business school, a broadcast media center, a Christian bookstore, a kindergarten-through-8th-grade academy and its own clothing stores selling business apparel.
The church-owned Forest Park Plaza Inc., which runs the mall, has built a new facade for the building and earns rent from tenants like Kmart and Old Country Buffet.
“I truly believe that if a person is a Christian, that they, according to the Scriptures, are the seed of Abraham,” Winston says. “And as the seed of Abraham, everything I lay my hand to is going to prosper.”
Along the way, Living Word has transformed a block that village officials had feared would become a blight on a major commercial strip in the western suburb.
“Pastor Winston and his team have just done a phenomenal job,” Forest Park Mayor Anthony Calderone said. “The mall was absolutely deserted when Living Word purchased that property. … It was terrible, absolutely terrible.”
The revival has had a spinoff effect. Winston says the mall sustains 400 jobs and creates $100 million a year in taxable income, a figure Calderone says sounds about right.
Living Word is trying to replicate its mall-church at a 12-acre shopping center it bought in 2005 in Winston’s hometown of Tuskegee, Ala. And his ambitions go even further. The church has raised nearly $5 million in its attempt to buy a bank, and it is planning to start a military academy.
A new water-bottling plant, which will double as a teaching model for students at the business school, is expected to be running this summer. Winston is chairman of the bank and is listed as principal in most of the church’s enterprises.
Business interests like Living Word’s are more common in black congregations than white, says John N. Vaughan of Church Growth Today, a mega-church research and consulting center in Bolivar, Mo. Whereas major white churches tend to shy away from economic ventures, African-American churches have promoted economic empowerment by establishing credit unions, retirement centers, and even, in the case of a church in Houston, a shopping mall.
“The black pastor has been a champion for their people since they came out of slavery,” Vaughan says. “Within the African-American community, this is much more common because it is part of their DNA to be socially responsive.”
The man behind the mall’s revival was born in 1943 in the hometown of the Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first African-American military pilots.
The town was home to what is now Tuskegee University, established by one of Winston’s heroes, Booker T. Washington. A former slave, Washington taught that blacks needed to pursue their own economic advancement to achieve civil rights — a philosophy that influenced Winston.
After graduating from Tuskegee in 1967, Winston entered the Air Force and served as a fighter pilot in Vietnam. In March 1971, he piloted an F-4E Phantom that struck anti-aircraft batteries deep in North Vietnamese territory. The mission won him the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After the Air Force, Winston worked for IBM’s Minneapolis office, he says. While at the company, he met his wife and fellow pastor, Veronica, and they married in 1983 (they have three children). Winston was called to the ministry in 1984, beginning at a church in Minneapolis. He attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa for several months in 1996 but did not receive a degree, the school reports. He also studied at Logos Bible School.
Winston’s book, “The Kingdom of God in You,” says he earned an honorary doctorate from Friends International Christian University, a California-based school whose accreditation is not recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Reached by phone, a university official said it by policy cannot confirm the degrees it awards, but Winston is listed on its Web site as an alumnus.
Living Word opened in 1988, and its first church was in a windowless building in a high-crime West Side neighborhood. The door was propped open for ventilation. Rumbling trucks interrupted the sermons.
The low point came when someone stole Winston’s Oldsmobile. “We were in there having a service one night, and came out, and the car was gone,” he says. “I tell people that we were casting out demons and one of them got out there and drove my car away.”
The church promises its followers strength in their battles with Satan. A prayer formerly posted on the church’s Web site offered the power to break free from “curses, fetishes, charms, vexes, hexes, spells, every jinx, all psychic powers, sorcery, bewitchments, enchantments, witchcraft, love potions, and psychic prayers that have been put upon me, back to ten generations on both sides of my family.”
The talk about empowerment through faith isn’t limited to the church. Downstairs in the mall, the Joseph Business Center is directed by Mark Muse, who holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The center offers a nine-month program for $2,600, and it hosts seminars ranging from investing in gold to starting a business. This year, 66 students were scheduled to graduate.
The church plugs the center through video infomercials during services. This caught the attention of Quentin and Akilah Townsend, former Romeoville residents who own a real estate company in Georgia. In 2004, the couple bought the Atlanta Vision — an American Basketball Association franchise — for $500,000. The team made its first profit this season, he said.
“We wouldn’t have bought the basketball team without the education that we received from the Joseph Business School,” Quentin Townsend said. “It taught us how to identify a business structure. So we felt comfortable moving forward as far as looking at the financials, looking at the performance.”
The churchgoers have made a difference at both Kmart — the sole anchor left in the mall when the church moved in — and at its nearby competitor, Wal-Mart. Both stores report an increased customer flow, especially on Sunday.
“At services, Winston demonstrates the kind of faith, charisma and fundraising skills that allowed the church to buy and revive a $5 million mall. He leads worshipers from the Garden of Eden to the Gospel of Mark as they call out “Amen!” and “That’s right!”
Members will need to pitch in to fix the heating and air-conditioning system, he says. He believes they can raise the cash in three weeks. They need $236,000.
“Say to your neighbor, ‘That’s nothing,’ ” Winston tells the crowd.
It is faith like this that has turned the Forest Park Mall into a marketplace for both Bible and business. And Winston has ambitions of promoting these products beyond his congregation.
“I tell people if I can get you fixed on the inside,” he says, “you can go to your neighborhood and fix it on the outside.”
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