Closing Chick-fil-A restaurants on Sundays was the best decision that the chicken chain's founder said he ever made.

Truett Cathy, founder and CEO of the Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A, spoke to a crowd of about 800 people Tuesday evening during a banquet to benefit Renewanation, a Roanoke nonprofit with a mission to create a tuition-free school system that teaches a Christian worldview. The organization also announced some new developments, such as a plan to teach voluntary Christian courses this summer through a public school system.

The 88-year-old Cathy, who was escorted into a Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center banquet room by police officers, gave a speech that sounded at times like a sermon. He told stories about growing up in poverty, one of his first jobs as a newspaper delivery boy and his experience running one of the nation's largest fast-food chicken chains.

Cathy prided his company, founded in 1967, with sticking to biblical principles. Closing the business on Sundays "honors the Lord" and makes employees happier, he said.

It's one reason that the chain has only a 3 percent turnover rate in its employees, Cathy said. Chick-fil-A had sales of $2.96 billion in 2008.

Landing Cathy as a guest speaker was a surprise for the year-old Renewanation organization.

Melvin Adams, president of Renewanation, said some Roanoke-area Chick-fil-A employees endorsed the nonprofit during a training trip to the chain's headquarters, ultimately catching Cathy's attention.

"Mr. Cathy gets thousands of requests [to speak]," Mark Baldwin, a Chick-fil-A spokesman, said this week from his Atlanta office. "That's what he loves doing."

The CEO's next stop is Washington, D.C., on Friday at the National Press Club, where he and his son, Dan Cathy, president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A, will talk to the national press about 2009 sales projections and its goal to become debt-free.

But on Tuesday evening, the frail Cathy was whisked out of the banquet without granting interviews to the media.

During the banquet, the Rev. Jeff Keaton, founder of Renewanation, said the nonprofit is working with a school system to offer Christian courses next summer as part of a summer curriculum. He would not reveal the name of the school system.

Renewanation is raising funds for its schools to be tuition-free, with donations funneled into endowments. Earlier this year, the group said it wanted to raise $3 million by December. Last November, it raised $270,000 at its first banquet.

Adams said Tuesday that he did not know how much money Renewanation had raised so far this year.