\n<\/p>\n
As far as anyone knows, Carmel Jones started the only financial institution in the history of Great Britain that began with a religious vision. But if Pentecostals aren\u2019t supposed to start credit unions based on dreams about Jesus speaking to them on a church roof, no one ever told him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no one to guide me but God,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
Jones, a Church of God in Christ minister who founded the Pentecostal Credit Union (PCU) in 1979, died<\/a> on July 22 at the age of 85. He started the credit union so that Black pastors would have access to capital to buy churches. Today, it is the second largest in Great Britain, with about 2,000 members and nearly nine million pounds in deposits (the equivalent of about $11 million in the US).<\/p>\n The PCU has financed the purchase of dozens of church buildings, providing homes for some of the most prominent Black Pentecostal congregations in the UK, including the Assemblies of the First Born Church, the New Testament Assembly, New Testament Church of God, and Rauch City Church.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was the church\u2019s Black banker!\u201d said John and Penny Francis, co-leaders of Rauch City, in an interview<\/a> with Premier Christianity<\/em>. Their multisite London church \u201cstarted with Reverend Carmel Jones, who gave us our first mortgage when our high street bank turned us down.\u201d<\/p>\n Delroy Powell, bishop of the New Testament Assembly, recalled Jones as a \u201cdisruptive visionary,\u201d who was far ahead of his time, figuring out how to use the financial system to benefit Black Christians.<\/p>\n Jones was born in Jamaica in 1936 in the Bye-berry district of St. Elizabeth Parish. He was the fifth of six children born to Roslyn Samms and Arthur Jones, a small farmer.<\/p>\n His mother raised him in the Anglican Church, Jones recounted<\/a> in his self-published autobiography, where he served as an acolyte. His father put him to work, and when Jones was 17, gave him a choice of going to the United States or England. He chose England, and sailed to London in August 1955.<\/p>\n The 17-year-old Jones immediately went to work in the UK, starting as a checker with the railroad. He earned a little more than six pounds per week (the equivalent of about $250 today). He scraped by and also sent his mother about 40 percent of his income every month. He repaid the money his father had spent sending him to England, too, learning important lessons about loans and how much a little access to capital could be life-changing.<\/p>\n Adjusting to British life was not always easy for Jones. One Sunday after he first arrived, he went to an Anglican church near where he lived. As the service began, he noticed the other parishioners did not seem to be paying attention to the prayers and Scripture reading.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw them looking straight at me,\u201d he later wrote. \u201cI couldn\u2019t understand it until the vicar came up to me. He said, \u2018Sir, thank you very much for coming. But my congregation is a bit uncomfortable with a Black person in their midst.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Jones didn\u2019t know it, but the church was associated with the famous \u201cClapham sect\u201d of Anglican evangelicals, which inspired men such as William Wilberforce to advocate for social reform, including the abolition of slavery. Two centuries later, when a change in immigration policies brought a lot of citizens of former colonies to live and work in Great Britain, Christians in Clapham did not want to worship next to Black people. (The church apologized<\/a> in 2020.)<\/p>\n Jones left and, after that, stayed away from white Christians. For a while, he wouldn\u2019t have anything to do with church. He got a new job at Decca Record Company, working in the music publisher\u2019s factory, starting as a pipe fitter\u2019s assistant and working his way up to assistant foreman.<\/p>\n He met a young woman named Iveline who had arrived from Jamaica a year after he did. He immediately fell in love with her and told<\/a> a friend, \u201cThere goes my wife.\u201d One year and eight months later, he married her.<\/p>\n Jones went to church with Ive but did not consider himself a Christian or interested in Christian things until an encounter with an evangelist in 1959. Standing at a crossroads under an elm tree, as Jones later recalled, the evangelist started up a conversation with Jones about his wife. Wasn\u2019t she beautiful? Wasn\u2019t she wonderful? Didn\u2019t he think she was a gift from God?<\/p>\n God was good! Jones should worship him, the evangelist said.<\/p>\n That night Jones had a dream he was back in Jamaica outside the Anglican church he grew up in. Jesus was holding out a hand and pointing into the church.<\/p>\n When he woke up, Ive was sitting by the side of the bed. Jones hugged her and told her he was now a sinner saved by grace. He joined the Church of God in Christ, his wife\u2019s Black Pentecostal church.<\/p>\n As a born-again Christian, Jones continued to be led by dreams. Once, he apologized to his wife after he dreamed that Jesus told him he hurt her. Another time, he made an important decision after he dreamed he discussed it with an angel.<\/p>\n The most impactful dream, though, was the one where Jesus met him on a roof.<\/p>\n The whole thing started with an article in The Sun<\/em>, titled \u201cWho can start a Credit Union?\u201d The idea struck a chord with Jones. It reminded him of a historic practice in Jamaica called \u201cpardner,\u201d where people pooled their money and loaned it to each other. Elsewhere in the Caribbean, African diaspora communities call it \u201cesusu,\u201d \u201csusu,\u201d and \u201cbox hand,\u201d a kind of cooperative savings and loan system.<\/p>\n Jones saw that something like that would really benefit Black Pentecostals in Great Britain. Few of the churches had their own buildings, despite growing, thriving, and multiplying. The pastors would apply for loans at the banks, and they would always get turned down. They often had to rent social halls, cleaning up the messes left by Saturday night dances.<\/p>\n \u201cBoy oh boy,\u201d Jones recalled<\/a>, \u201cbeer cans and bottles and, even worse, people being sick all over the place. Then said I, \u2018Lord, Your people deserve better than this. Help me to help ourselves.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n A credit union could be the answer to that prayer. He sent off for the rule book and got it in the mail. Then he read it for six weeks, carrying the book with him everywhere. Every Saturday night, after ferrying people home from various church services and fellowship events in a commonly-shared Pentecostal minibus, Jones would go to the building where his church was meeting, let himself in, and pray until about 2:30 a.m.<\/p>\n He did that every week for six weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cLord,\u201d he said, \u201cyou know how your people are touchy when it comes to money. \u2026 Speak to me, reassure me, and let me hear loud and clear that I have your permission and blessing to go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n After the sixth week, he went home at 2:30, went to bed, and had a vision of Jesus. He was standing, majestically robed, on the roof of the church. Jones was up there with him, with the credit union rule book in his left hand.<\/p>\n \u201cThen he said unto me,\u201d Jones recalled, \u201c\u2018What is that in your hand?\u2019 I said, \u2018The rules, sir.\u2019 He said to me, \u2018Go your way and do what is laid on your heart, and I will be with you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Jones started the credit union in October 1979. Twenty-one people met in the Jones home, signing up as members, each contributing one pound and twenty pence.<\/p>\n Not everyone loved the idea, though. Some preferred older ways of pooling money, without any debt. Others said Black people couldn\u2019t be trusted to repay their loans and the credit union would bring disgrace on the Pentecostal community.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it fails, as it surely will, it will bring the entire Pentecostal Church organisation into disrepute,\u201d one Black minister told Jones.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you saying that I am going to fail?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d the minister said<\/a>, \u201cbecause Black people always fail, especially where money is involved.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones didn\u2019t believe that, though. He didn\u2019t accept it. The following year, at age 44, he left Decca Record and went to work full-time as a banker for Black church people.<\/p>\n By the end of the decade, the Pentecostal Credit Union had moved out of the Jones\u2019 house and into a three-story building. And it continued to grow. Soon Jones was also asked to help the development arm of the Credit Union League of Great Britain (now known as the Association of British Credit Unions), work with researchers at numerous universities studying how to provide more access to capital in underserved communities, and advise the World Council of Credit Unions. In 1991, he was honored by the Queen with a Member of the Order of the British Empire award.<\/p>\n \u201cWe based our trust in our Christian brothers and sisters that they would repay back the monies without any fuss or bother,\u201d Jones . \u201cTrust was the driving order of the deal.\u201d<\/p>\n By 2009, the credit union had 740 members and not a single record of default. Then the PCU ran into trouble when one church decided it was going to discontinue payments until it could renegotiate the terms.<\/p>\n \u201cSatan, that wicked one, refused to pay any more of the loan,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n In the midst of the dispute, someone reported to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) that Jones had been working around rules put into place in the early 2000s. The FSA decided credit unions could only make loans to individuals, not organizations like churches. The PCU, however, had decided to make a loan to a church but record it, on the books, as a loan to individuals at that church. An investigation later found at least one of those individuals didn\u2019t know they had a loan in their name.<\/p>\n The FSA reprimanded Jones sharply and censured the credit union, calling the unlawful loan \u201cdisgraceful<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones, for his part, acknowledged what he had done and took responsibility. He said he was frustrated with the regulation that wouldn\u2019t allow him to help churches, which was the whole point of the credit union in the first place. So he came up with what he called a \u201ccreative loan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI knew what I was doing was wrong,\u201d he later wrote, \u201cbut my peace of mind was that I did not defraud the credit union of one penny, or any one of the whistle blowers.\u201d<\/p>\n Prominent members of the credit union said that even though the church had stopped paying back the \u201ccreative loan,\u201d they didn\u2019t hold anything against Jones. They didn\u2019t really think he\u2019d done anything wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cI am sorry that the creative ways by which Reverend Jones was able to assist us and others has landed him in trouble with the Financial Services Authority,\u201d said<\/a> John Francis of Rauch City Church. \u201cReverend Jones is a good man.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones resigned in 2012 at age 76, and the FSA decided not to fine him.<\/p>\n In 2020, the credit union that he founded celebrated its 40th anniversary. The new leadership at the PCU praised him for his foresight and innovation. Many leaders in the Black Pentecostal community joined in celebrating his legacy.<\/p>\n \u201cJones\u2019 deep insight in marrying the black majority Pentecostal church with the concept of credit unions has provided a powerful and positive influence,\u201d PCU chair Leslie Laniyan wrote<\/a>. \u201cHe harnessed and built upon the belief that the route to inclusion for black communities in this country was an economic one.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones is survived by his wife, Ive, and their two daughters, Elaine and Lorna. He is predeceased by a son named Lionel. A funeral will be held at Rauch City Church in London on August 15.<\/p>\n