Robert R. Lavelle was a Reformed Presbyterian in heart. The poverty-fighting Pittsburgh banker died at age 95 on July 4.

He kept his membership in a predominantly African-American Presbyterian congregation in Pittsburgh, Pa. But he practiced the doctrine of Christ’s kingdom with an unusual level of excellence in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, helping to boost the amount of home ownership from about 13 percent to 40 percent over a 30-year period.

He took biblical principles into the heart of the seemingly secular calling of banking and home mortgages. His Dwelling House Savings and Loan provided discounted loans for low-income families so they could afford to own homes.

Mr. Lavelle saw home ownership as an important building block in fighting poverty and rebuilding run-down urban neighborhoods.

“When we provide home ownership to poor and black people,” he once explained, “the economics of their areas change from dope, numbers, prostitution, pimps and loan sharks, to home ownership, good city services, police and garbage collection, quality schools, viable businesses and jobs.”

This home ownership initiative opened doors for him to share his faith with customers and teach them biblical principles such as faithfulness and thriftiness, as he sought to help them keep up their mortgage payments.

He demonstrated both kingdom theology and practice by showing that Christ could give a banker applications of the Bible in setting interest rates. In visiting a customer for mortgage delinquency, he encouraged character transformation instead of pushing quickly for a default.

“Dwelling House is the most biblically sensitive and Christian institution I have ever seen,” said Robert Wauzzinski, a Ball State University teacher who has written a book on the Dwelling House history, The Transforming Story of Dwelling House Savings and Loan—A Pittsburgh Bank’s Fight Against Urban Poverty.

“They incorporate more biblical religion than any church or nonprofit I have seen, and I have seen many,” he said. They brought racial reconciliation, mercy, justice, goodness, stewardship and love to the business of buying and selling.”

Wauzzinski studied other business leaders in other times of history. In another book, Between God and Gold, Protestant Evangelicalism and the Industrial Revolution 1820-1914, he explores evangelical business leaders such as the abolitionist Tappan brothers of New Jersey, John D. Rockefeller, and evangelist Charles Finney, and as well as the influence of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Over that span of time he never found any business leader quite like Lavelle, with his capacity to bring faith to bear in the heart of his business and with his grasp of a key component to ending poverty. A heart attack came close to killing Lavelle in 1980. The extension of his life gave him another 30 years to demonstrate Christian faith in the midst of a troubled neighborhood in a big city.

A man of stubborn conviction, Lavelle looked to Christ for help instead of his own skills. The son of a pastor, he came from a poverty-stricken African-American family in Pittsburgh and for many years wanted to make a success of himself on his own. His conversion to Christ in his 40s gave him a different perspective.

“God didn’t give me a lot of smarts. He knew I’d be too egotistical,” he told me in one of my last interviews with him. “So I had to depend on the Bible. All my success only came when I was applying biblical principles to my life.”

His life carried some inherited spiritual blessings through his parents (“his children will be mighty in the land” [Ps. 112:2]). He remembered childhood family worship: “Around the table we all had to say a Bible verse. Mine was Matthew 5:8—‘Blessed are the pure in heart.’” Perhaps because he was so rooted in Scripture unconsciously from childhood, Lavelle sank the Scriptures very deep into the Dwelling House mission. He attracted savers from all over the country, including some who did not share his Christian faith but appreciated the fruits of it. He provided an unusual depth of salt and light in a city with many other Christians in prominent civic leadership positions. Sadly the Dwelling House mission ended last year, as cyber-thieves penetrated the thrift’s computer system and took $3 million in reserves. The thrift’s assets wound up being taken over by PNC.

Many other evangelical business leaders have dedicated their work to Christ, using profits to support missions, or seeing their success as a platform to enable them to share their faith in a very public way. Lavelle was rare in his capacity to make Christ Lord of the real guts of his business. He took the classic evangelical notion of Christ’s Lordship over all areas of life and made it very real in the world of money and banking, in the midst of the poor and needy. In that sense he was a very honorary member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.

—Russ Pulliam