Local pastor combines scripture and entrepreneurial spirit
By Meliqueica Meadows
Of the St. Louis American
G. Vincient Dudley Sr., pastor of the steadily growing New Life in Christ Interdenominational Church in Illinois, has turned his entrepreneurial spirit into a new small business venture. After a local Christian bookstore closed, Dudley and his wife, Glenda, purchased the furniture and fixtures at a public auction and opened Treasures of the Kingdom bookstore in Fairview Heights. With the recent opening of the bookstore, Dudley said he hopes their example will encourage the nearly 1600 New Life members to follow suit.
“Before integration every community with a significant amount of African Americans also had a significant amount of African American owned small businesses. Integration eliminated that and while integration was ultimately a good thing, what happened was that the majority culture had better and larger businesses so the African American businesses largely dried up,” the reverend Dudley said.
“Now mega churches like New Life are spurring a new phenomenon of people who want to be in business for themselves. That’s what my wife and I are doing with this business and we hope that we are leading the ways with our congregation to follow in this trend. It’s all about creating wealth.”
To instruct and encourage his members towards entrepreneurship, Dudley regularly hosts a small business group meeting at his church that provides information on ways to create and maintain small business ventures of their own. Dudley said he is focusing his energy on ensuring that New Life has a positive impact on the local community and the region. He said Treasures of the Kingdom bookstore is just one of the avenues they hope will help accomplish that goal.
“We have a small business group in the church where we teach about economic empowerment because that’s part of the mission of the church. We teach small business owners how to get themselves going and so I thought it was good if I could just lead the way by starting my own small business,” Dudley said.
Through Biblical principles, Dudley teaches members how to grow and cultivate their own businesses, which he said relates directly to scripture that instructs believers to build wealth to pass on to future generations.
“We are African Americans who are going into business which will help us to lift up the community with respect to owning your own business and bringing employment to the African American community and also to carry out the Biblical mandate that is prescribed in the book of Deuteronomy. God said that he gives us the power to get wealth so we are getting wealth. Wealth is more than just having a job; it is creating wealth and assets to be passed on to the next generation and that’s what we’re doing.”
For more information about Treasures of the Kingdom bookstore or New Life in Christ Interdenominational Church call (618)632-6542 or visit www.nlicic.org.
