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At Greater Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Detroit, Curtis Brown is training a dozen sales representatives to pitch "pre-need" cemetery services--graves, vaults, tombstones and mausoleum crypts--to the church's 425 members.
"This is a win-win situation," said Brown, a sales director. "We want to leave a lasting reservoir of revenue for the churches, employ people and give back to the community."
The program at Mt. Olive is part of a national agreement reached in 1995 between the National Baptist Convention USA and British Columbia-based conglomerate Loewen Group Inc. It was launched in Detroit as a pilot program in May, targeting black churches.
But the program has drawn the ire of many funeral home owners and some ministers in Detroit, who view it as a threat to the black-owned funeral home industry. Along with churches, funeral homes have been long-established institutions in black communities. Potential acquisitions by large outside corporations stir up emotional debate.
The debate also has raised questions about joint ownership of funeral homes and cemeteries--arrangements outlawed under Michigan's funeral home/cemetery anti-combination law.
Locally, the program is administered in Southfield by the National African American Church Council, the National Baptist Convention's marketing arm. The program also is being tested in Washington, D.C., and St. Petersburg, Fla.
With cemetery services costing anywhere from $500 to $4,000, considerable business is at stake.
For every cemetery service sold, the sales rep, known as a funeral counselor, earns a 10 percent commission. Sales managers receive 2 percent. Church members also receive 10 percent discounts off the price of cemetery services.
Greater Mt. Olive and the National Baptist Convention's Christian Education Fund split another 11 percent of the revenue under the program.
Loewen (NYSE: LWN), known as the world's second-largest provider of funeral home and cemetery goods, owns about 1,000 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries in the United States and Canada, obtained mostly through acquisitions.
With 33,000 churches and 8.5 million members, the National Baptist Convention is the nation's largest organization of African-American churches.
"The churches are undercutting their own people," said Karla Cole, president of James H. Cole Home for Funerals Inc., which operates two funeral homes in Detroit. Formed in 1919, Cole is one of the oldest black-owned funeral homes in the city. "In the long run,...