American Idol
Twenty years ago he was a ditchdigger living on welfare. Today he’s one of the most powerful— and one of the richest—preachers in America. Can T.D. JAKES get an amen?
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Now truly out of the box, Jakes continued to flourish. His national conferences drew phenomenal crowds; a gospel music CD—Woman, Thou Art Loosed—received a Dove award and a Grammy nomination; and a 1998 book, The Lady, Her Lover, and Her Lord, also aimed at women and heavily promoted by his new publisher, Penguin Putnam, quickly reached the best-seller list and stayed on it for months. Attendance at the Potter’s House continued its explosive growth, requiring a new $45 million worship center, which was consecrated in October 2000 and paid off in less than four years. At the same time, Jakes’s personal fortunes grew dramatically, symbolized by his purchase of a stable of luxury cars, a Lockheed JetStar II, and a 10,000-square-foot mansion valued at more than $3 million on the shores of White Rock Lake, next door to Mount Vernon, the estate once owned by billionaire oilman H. L. Hunt.
AS WE SAT IN the executive suite of the Potter’s House, sleekly furnished in chrome, glass, black marble, and yellow-beige leather, Jakes seemed relaxed and unpretentious, casually clad in gray trousers and a gray-and-black-striped long-sleeved sport shirt with a sizable but not flashy silver necklace barely showing at the collar. Neither defensive nor attempting to steer the conversation, he answered my questions thoughtfully, often with self-deprecating chuckles of awareness that no one could live up to the perfection some of his admirers attribute to him. “I’m not the Christ,” he said. “I’m just a donkey the Christ rides on.”
The Potter’s House and Bishop Jakes are excellent examples of modern Pentecostalism, often called neo-Pentecostalism because the emphasis on distinctive doctrines, the rigid rejection of “the world” and its pleasures—alcohol, tobacco, movies, short skirts, makeup, and jewelry—and a sense that God looks on the poor more favorably than on the rich (but is waiting until Judgment Day to prove it) has largely given way to a nondenominational ethos that combines dynamic worship services that reflect secular styles, preaching focused more on practical living than on theological hairsplitting, and the enthusiastic support of prosperity. Such charismatic gifts as healing and speaking in tongues are still exercised, but less often and less publicly. Though some churches retain ties to a specific denomination, many, especially the megachurches, have chosen generic names such as Lakewood, Saddleback, Cornerstone, and Harvest Time Fellowship, lowering barriers to affiliation and giving pastors great leeway in developing a market-sensitive product and approach.
“I see Pentecostalism more as a way of life than as a denomination,” Jakes conceded, but it would be inaccurate to characterize him as primarily a motivational speaker or his message as just another version of the prosperity gospel. He regularly hammers home the importance of Jesus’ atoning death and resurrection—“He died … for me! He rose … for me!”—and the wonder-working power in “the blood, the blood, the BLOOD” of the Lamb. He holds out Christ as the answer, here and hereafter, and chides those who pray more fervently for a new car or success in business than for the eternal salvation of a son or daughter.
Like most standard-issue prosperity preachers, Jakes places great emphasis on cheerful giving. When the time comes for the offering, the Potter’s House worshippers have been socialized to erupt with applause and joyful shouting as they wave envelopes containing their tithes, and he reminds them that “when tithes go up, blessings come down.” And yet he avoids depicting God as a magic gum ball machine—penny in, blessing out. Shayne Lee asserts that Jakes once subscribed to a cruder form of prosperity preaching, perhaps to justify his own sudden wealth, but agrees that his current approach focuses much more on non-miraculous economic empowerment. For his part, Jakes is at pains to deny being a simplistic prosperity preacher. “I do believe God blesses us when we give,” he explained, “but I don’t think that’s the end of the story. Jesus said, ‘My people perish from a lack of knowledge.’ So when I do a major conference, it’s not uncommon to see a Suze Orman talking about investments. Many times, our community is hearing that for the first time. ‘What is a mutual fund?’ ‘What are stocks and bonds?’ This is not ‘Send me $10.99 and God is going to bless you with a new house.’”
Jakes’s outreach isn’t limited to the United States, however. Last fall, he led more than three hundred African Americans on a humanitarian and evangelistic trip to Kenya. He paid for the digging of six water wells and five water stations in a drought-stricken region and brought a team of medical professionals who treated more than six thousand Kenyans and built a clinic. The trip ended with a worship service in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park that attracted almost a million people. In our conversation, Jakes spoke movingly about walking through the Gate of No Return on the Ivory Coast, “a gate they said we would never go back through again. Caucasian ministries have done a great job of evangelizing throughout Africa, but I think there is a different impact when African Americans come, because for us it is more than winning souls. It is a family reunion. It is much like a set of twins who were separated at birth and raised in two different environments, meeting again as adults for the first time. Part of my history is hidden from my eyes and beyond my touch, and when I touch Africa, I touch a part of my soul that aches for definition.”
To the criticism that his message may work in America but not in desperately poor third-world countries, Jakes responded, “I’ve seen Christians go into third-world countries and pass out tracts and come back and brag about how many people got saved but leave them starving, eating out of trash cans, selling their bodies for prostitution to get something to eat for their families. My approach is very pragmatic. I am no longer interested in throwing Thanksgiving dinners for homeless people once a year to give me a good feeling. What are they going to eat the other three hundred sixty-four days of the year?”
JAKES ACKNOWLEDGES that he does not look back on his own season of poverty as the good old days but insists his wealth has not changed him deep down. And he has no qualms about being rich or spending money on worldly goods. “Many people,” he has written, “view accumulating wealth as unchristian behavior. There’s a tendency to think that the Christian must dress like a monk and live in a monastery, or he or she is not sincere. Well, I bring a message of liberation. The Lord does not mean for you to forsake all ambitions in order to serve him. He just wants to be your priority.” Jakes is also quick to note that his wealth comes not from his salary as a preacher but from his success as an author, as a creator and producer of albums and movies, and as a businessman. And he points with deserved satisfaction to an article in the May 2006 issue of Black Enterprise magazine that notes that he “oversees two kingdoms, divided by a carefully constructed firewall,” with two separate staffs, two sets of accountants, using separate financial institutions, to avoid any hint of impropriety. Ole Anthony, who heads the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation and keeps a watchdog’s eye on television evangelists—he played a role in bringing down W. V. Grant and in exposing another charlatan from Dallas, Robert Tilton—disapproves of Jakes’s lavish lifestyle, but he points out that all available evidence indicates that he is an honest man and runs a clean operation. “I don’t believe the man has a bone of larceny in his body,” Anthony said.
It is worth noting that the existence of two sovereign kingdoms does not preclude diplomatic relations, and T. D. Jakes Enterprises unquestionably benefits hugely from its symbiotic relationship with the Potter’s House and T. D. Jakes Ministries. The church and the viewers who contribute to his ministry pay the tab for Jakes’s telecasts, which, in addition to carrying the message of the day and drawing people to the Potter’s House, serve as infomercials for his books, CDs, DVDs, and other products. They also advertise at conferences in which these same products, including videos and tapes of conference presentations, are sold. Jakes has on several occasions matched the theme of his large conferences to the title of his latest book. And when he strikes the mother lode, he mines it with impressive tenacity. The classic example, of course, is Woman, Thou Art Loosed. In addition to the original book, issued in hardback three years after it appeared in paperback, Jakes has written a WTAL workbook and devotional guide; produced a WTAL music album, a WTAL cookbook, and a WTAL pink Bible, with pink pages containing his advice to women interspersed with the Scriptures; written and produced a successful touring play by the same title; turned that into a novel and then into a movie; then promoted and marketed all these at his church, on television, on speaking tours, and at his conferences. Further, he reworked many of the same ideas in half a dozen other books designed for women. Similarly, when he realized the attraction of gender-specific themes, he began his “ManPower” conferences and wrote Loose That Man and Let Him Go!, T. D. Jakes Speaks to Men!, So You Call Yourself a Man?, and his latest, He Motions—Even Strong Men Struggle.
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