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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AS IMPORTANT AS the church is to Jakes’s financial empire, it is far more than simply a stage, studio, and sales machine for his sermons, books, CDs, and videos. Looking beyond the power of its pastor and behind the scenes of the dynamic worship services reveals a remarkable network of nearly sixty separate ministries, many expressly designed to help people move on up. In addition to the standard offerings of the modern megachurch—Bible classes, multiple choirs, counseling services, evangelistic outreach, help for the homeless, an AIDS ministry, Scouting programs, fitness training, and sports teams—the Potter’s House offers intensive mentoring and training programs for youth, with such ego-boosting titles as Seed of Abraham, Judah’s Lions, Esther’s Court, and the Potter’s House Diplomats (PhD), who receive instruction about national and international issues in preparation for assuming leadership roles later in life. The Michael’s Angels group offers support to teenage single mothers; the King’s Daughters “explore the beauty of being a virtuous woman”; and Rahab, a group named for a woman of Jericho who had some blemishes on her résumé, works to restore confidence and strength to women suffering from “the illusion of failure.” A continuing-education program offers classes on leadership and investing, skills also nurtured in the God’s Leading Ladies and the Mighty Men of Valor classes and the School of Kings Economic Kingdom Building class. Even ushers undergo training to become “professional ministry technicians.” For those seeking a respite from self-improvement, the Wassup Fellowship promises nothing more uplifting than “talk, networking, and fun.”
One of the most far-reaching and impressive endeavors is the Potter’s House prison ministry. Led by Larry Gardner, a former chaplain in the Texas prison system, 150 volunteers hold services in 28 Texas facilities at least once a month. Beyond that, Potter’s House services, religious-education classes, and a life-skills program beam into 300 prisons nationwide via satellite and 600 more receive copies of the bishop’s books, CDs, and DVDs. “What we’re doing now [in the criminal justice system] is simply not working,” Gardner said. “We can’t imprison our way out of our problems. We need to offer people another chance.”
For a fortunate few, the investment involves participation in the Texas Offender Reentry Initiative, a Potter’s House program that works with newly released criminals—currently about four hundred a year—to provide them with such crucial resources as housing, employment, job readiness and coaching, GED training, alcohol and drug counseling, and help with fitting back into their families. The program currently operates in four cities—Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio—and director Tina Naidoo hopes to have a Houston unit up and running soon. Neither Jakes nor his program directors actively challenge aspects of the criminal justice system that have led to the disproportionate imprisonment of African Americans and Hispanics, but they are clearly aware of such inequities. Jakes speaks out regularly in favor of restoring the right to vote to people who have been incarcerated and laments the difficulties poor people have in obtaining justice because they can’t afford a lawyer.
The most ambitious of the Potter’s House ministries operate under the umbrella of the Metroplex Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit entity whose programs include extensive practical instruction in such matters as financial management, home ownership, and entrepreneurial activity. In a mammoth effort newly under way, the MEDC is developing an entire residential community, to be known as Capella Park, on a four-hundred-acre tract just across the highway from the church and Dallas Baptist University. When completed, the development will include 1,500 homes, ranging in price from $120,000 to $400,000 and situated along broad boulevards and expansive greenways. At the center will stand Clay Academy, a private Christian preK–8 school that already operates in another location but will soon move into an impressive $11 million state-of-the-art facility scheduled to begin its first classes this fall.
The respect engendered by the scope and soundness of such efforts has enabled the Potter’s House to join with other organizations to meet both immediate and long-term needs. When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast last August, Jakes raised $1 million in less than an hour on the telephone, and the local CBS affiliate broadcast live from the church as hundreds of volunteers helped people locate one another and matched offers of housing, transportation, employment, food, medical care, and cash to those in need. It was this superb showing that led to Jakes’ serving as the homilist at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance a few days later and to his being chosen by former presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton to help distribute $20 million to churches and religious organizations following Katrina and Rita.
Because of his unapologetic championing of capitalism and his cordial relationship with presidents present and past—during the Clinton impeachment hearings, Jakes said on Larry King Live that a pilot’s personal life is less important than how well he flies a plane and compared those hounding the president to a lynch mob—some black leaders and liberal whites believe that Jakes has not used his influence and power to challenge unjust social and economic systems. He contends that he can be more effective by offering strong suggestions in private to the president and other leaders rather than screaming at them through a microphone. And he does not seem a likely candidate to be co-opted by the religious right or by political forces that enlist conservative Christians to support policies that have little to do with religion. “Go ahead and preach against abortion,” he told a Cincinnati audience, “but when you get through preaching against abortion, give us some milk up here so that we can feed the babies you told us we ought to have.” And when he spoke at the post-Katrina prayer service, he looked President Bush in the eye and asked, “What are you going to do?”
Jakes rejects the claim by some on the religious right that America is or was ever intended to be a Christian nation and has said, “As we continue to try to politicize God or market God or say that America is Christian or that God is with one [political] party or that God is here and not there, it only further points to the fact that we don’t understand how big God is—and how great God is.” He also resists identifying with a political party. “It is simple for me,” he explained. “I pastor Republicans and Democrats. They don’t come to hear me talk about that on Sunday morning. I preach the gospel. My role here is as pastor, not president. I tell them I’m not for the right wing. I’m not for the left wing. I’m for the whole bird. If you do that, the eagle can really fly.” As for his comfort with capitalism, he said, “If you just teach raw capitalism without teaching that the greater values of life are family and friends and love and commitment and spirituality, you are going to have a problem. By the same token, the church cannot allow all the wealth and political power to go to the world while we clap our hands and sing and wait on Christ to come. It is very important that there be some power in the church to influence the community and the world.” Clearly, Bishop Jakes and his team at the Potter’s House are working and succeeding at that task. The Reverend William Bryan, the director of the intern program at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology, observed that Jakes has brought power and influence to South Dallas, an area that has long been neglected by the rest of the city. “It’s hard to imagine that it could be done better,” Bryan said.
Despite remarkable success in allowing and enabling minorities to participate fully in American society and the consequent growth in the black middle and upper-middle classes, race and ethnicity still retain deep significance. Although modern Pentecostalism has generally returned to its original proclamation that “God is no respecter of persons” and that racial differences should be ignored, centuries of separation are hard to overcome. The Potter’s House Web site claims that 13 percent of its members are Caucasian—and that may be true—but the number of Anglos at the services I attended seemed smaller than that, though they were clearly present, fully participating, and likely felt more comfortable than people of color at mainline Protestant churches in, say, Highland Park.
The Potter’s House is still largely a black church, reaching down to rescue the fallen and disadvantaged but devoting much of its effort to providing support and encouragement to upwardly mobile African Americans—an extremely important cultural task. It seems easier and is certainly more common for a white preacher such as Houston’s Joel Osteen to attract large numbers of blacks and Hispanics than for a black preacher such as Jakes to attract significant numbers of whites and Hispanics. That could change. As black preachers become increasingly familiar to white viewers of religious television and as black megachurches meet similar needs and attract similar attention in other cities, whites may learn to look past unfamiliar or once-devalued cultural styles or, more positively, even embrace their vitality and richness. Black churches are already having a transformative effect on contemporary Pentecostalism, and Pentecostalism is arguably the most dynamic segment of contemporary Christianity, here and abroad. No preacher, of any hue, seems better prepared to dominate that emerging landscape more compellingly than Bishop T. D. Jakes.
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