The God squad: Mark Cress built Corporate Chaplains of America Inc. on two foundations--the Bible and a business plan.

• Author: Covington, Owen
• Position: FEATURE

Mark Cress should've been happy. He says he was. After a few false starts, he had realized his dream of launching and running a successful business. From a $5,000 investment in 1987, he had built Richmond, Va.-based Success Stories Inc. into a company that grossed $1.8 million in 1992 and ranked 137th on Inc. magazine's 1993 list of the nation's 500 fastest-growing privately held companies.

The company produced television shows about local businesses. Its success was driven largely by Cress. "He was tough," says Jess Duboy, his partner in Success Stories. "People had to perform for him. He was not going to allow someone to slack it."

But Cress felt something calling him. He says God was pulling him in a different direction. So in the summer of 1993 he took an eight-week sabbatical to reflect on his life and his career, traveling out West with his family. He didn't call the office. He read the Bible. He prayed.

Then he returned to Richmond and quit. "Jess, I don't know how to tell you this," Duboy remembers Cress saying. "I have really felt a calling, and I've got to sell my stake in the business." He sold his share to his employees, moved to Wake Forest and enrolled that fall at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

But unlike his classmates, he wasn't preparing for the pulpit. He had in mind a corporation, not a congregation. As a boss, Cress says, he couldn't give employees everything they needed to be successful in the workplace. "They would have problems, and I wouldn't know how to help them. I didn't know how to make a hospital visit. I just felt clumsy about all that, but it did allow me to see a need." Chaplains, he decided, could fill that need--chaplains with business experience, who knew the pressures employees face.

So he started the nonprofit Corporate Chaplains of America Inc. in 1996. He began with one chaplain--himself--and one client, a Knightdale junkyard with about 25 employees. CCA has grown to more than 300 clients--75 business locations in North Carolina--in 14 states. It had nearly $2.7 million in revenue in 2003, and he expects that to grow to at least $3.5 million this year. He plans to expand into four more states and increase his chaplain roster to 100 by the end of the year.

Cress, 48, will tell you that he's a lousy chaplain. But that's OK. He handles one client, the junkyard, and he has 60 full-time chaplains on staff. What CCA needs from him is business savvy. And Cress has spent much of his life accumulating it.

"All I ever wanted to be was a business guy. My brother would play Army; I'd play businessman." Growing up in Vinton, Va., near Roanoke, he delivered newspapers, washed trucks for a local company and went on summer sales trips with...