In Black America; Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. First of all, it's very humbly. I never thought in all of my life that I would have an opportunity to be comfortable to any president in any way, shape a form, to have the privilege just to be a silent prayer partner to me. It's quite meaningful. And for me, that called transcends politics for me, you can't. I think to be God's man, you can't make yourself available to one side at the expense of the other. And although I may not always agree, totally within your side on every issue, to express that disagreement by excluding myself from being able to be involved with them, it's not the way I choose to do that.

I would rather disagree with you face to face and say, this is what I think about it, rather than say, I'm not going to be around you because I don't agree with you. I think that's the floor of our world today. And if we have become too tribalistic and if we become tribal and go back into our particular people groups who only think like us, our perception of truth, is flawed because it's not irrigated with controversy of the other person's idea. So I have enjoyed the opportunity that you did and really, really benefited from it. But it is humbling. And sometimes it's challenging because their enemies become your enemy, the people I hate you for things you don't even have anything to do with. Since your shoulders have to be broad enough to see the greater good of relationships and connectivity. Bishop T.D. Jakes, senior pastor of the Potter's House Church located in Dallas, Texas, and the spiritual shepherd to millions around the world. In 1996, 50 families relocated with the Jakes family from West Virginia to Dallas and founded the Potter's House Church. Since then, the multi-racial non-denominational church has grown to more than 30,000 members,

and always almost 400 staff members, and have over 50 active outreach ministries. Jakes fashion for helping hurting people's shoulders self within the Potter's House ministries, which include Ravens Refuge, a homeless ministry, Operation Rehab and Outreach for prostitutes and the Transformation Treatment Program for Drug and Alcohol Abusers. In August 2013, more than 50,000 attendees from 40 countries came to Dallas, Texas for Megafess, a family-friendly festival that brought together the best of T.D. Jakes' ministries events, including woman-thought-art loose, manpower, mega-kids, and the mega-youth experience. I'm John E. Johansson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Bishop T.D. Jakes, of the Potter's House, In Black America. Nobody ever asked me that before, and that's very unique, because I did not come from a mega-church background, and I had no clue how to do that, and I think that the way that I approach it is

very different. I never set out to be a big church. It just happened so many people came, we had to build it, and I'm a fighter by nature, so when the people began to come and all of the sudden I had the challenge of building to serve them, and to me building the church flowed from a heart of wanting to provide for the parishioner much more so than it did from a place of ecotistical ideologies, because I had never been a part of a big church, so that wasn't a big thing, and people who come to our church are shocked to find it's a big church, but it feels small, because we have down home church, I mean, just good old hand clap and foot stomping, storefront church from time to time, and I think it is because you have to be true to who you are, and I think people are drawn to authenticity, and if you have the courage to be yourself, it resonates with people, and they respond, and so, you know, when I do what I do, and I preach the way I preach, and I clap the way I clap, it was taboo to do that, because all of the big time preachers who were on television were

teaching in calm and quiet and reposed, and if you can't get on television and act like that, and I saw which camera was on, and the one with the red dot, and I looked at it, we're right at it, you know, and if I love me or leave me, this is who I am. Bishop T.D. Jakes is a leader, visionary, provocative, thinker, and an entrepreneur, who served as senior pastor of the Pondor's house, a global humanitarian organization, and a 3,000-member mega-church located in Dallas, Texas. Name America's Best Preacher by Time Magazine. Jakes' voice reverberates from the world's most prominent stages. Through his nexus of charitable works, Jakes is known for extending a hand of help to the needy, heart of compassion to the hurting, and the message of inspiration to the disenfranchised. Born Thomas Dexter T.D. Jakes on June 9, 1957, and West Charleston, West Virginia, he began his ministry there in 1979.

In 1996, 50 families from that community followed Jakes to Dallas, Texas. That ministry has now grown into what Christian Today calls one of America's fastest-growing mega-churches. Jakes ranks among the 25 most influential African-Americans, Britain's 100 Most Influential Black People, Ebenees Power 100, and is the recent winner of McDonald's prestigious 365 Black Award for his humanitarian efforts. His worldwide impact has spread through an empire that spans film, television, radio, best-selling books, and conference series. My father started a janitorial service that he was trying to build into a company. My mother was taking care of us at home until I got school aged and then she started teaching again. She was an educator by profession. And I grew up very impoverished, and though I didn't know it at the time, and very meager and simple beginnings. So with my brother and my sister, who were still a part of my life,

and with me now when I came to Texas, they came with me. Wouldn't you understand that you had a calling for the ministry? You know, I had a glimpse when I was eight years old going to a sorority meetings with my mom and listening in her speak. And my first glimpse, I didn't know that it would be in ministry, but I knew that I was a communicator. And I told her at eight, I said, right now, I'm going to hear you speak, and they call me Miss Jake Sun. But the time will come, you'll come to hear me speak, and they'll call you Tom Jake's mother. And I will let you go. At 17, I think I've started to know it was really ministry. And at 19, I entered into the ministry. But at eight, I caught a glimpse that at my heart, I'm a communicator. And I think even today, even beyond being a minister, I think I am just a communicator, having a conversation with my generation, whether it's the books or movies or the pulpit, it doesn't matter where I love to talk and to listen and to learn and to teach. And my mother told me that the world is a university and everybody and it is a teacher when you wake up in the morning, be sure you go to school.

When you decided to move your congregation and church to Dallas, what was the impetus for that move? West. I've always been a visionary and I've always had great passion to accomplish certain things. And I felt like I had done all that I could do in the city that I was in. And yet I had a passion, I wanted to start ministries for the homeless, I wanted to do to fight some of the challenges that were existing in major cities. And I'm not a little tall, I grew up in Charleston with Virginia. You know, it didn't, it does now, but it didn't have the kind of problems that are riddling our major cities. And I felt like that the church could do something fresh and different to make a difference in the community. Not so much the vision that the church did in the 60s, continuing the civil rights movement, but to go down into some contemporary challenges that were facing our communities today and to provide some solutions for those issues. What, what was it about Dallas, of any say that you may have contemplate coming to?

Well, to be honest with you, my dream city was always Atlanta. I grew up thinking that, you know, if I were left Charleston, it would be for Atlanta, but God open the door for me to come to Dallas, I really think it was him. And in hindsight, I realized he's smarter than I am. He's centrally located. I can move internationally from here in a way that I could not in West Virginia. I can move from coast to coast pretty easily from Dallas. And Dallas is a big city, but it had a small town feel to it. The people have a simple values like what I grew up with in West Virginia. So I didn't feel like such an alien when I came here to Dallas. You were 21 when you met your wife, Cereena. What was it about her that you knew she was going to be a soulmate? That is one of the hardest things to put in the words imaginable, you know, my son often asked me, how do you know? And I just tell him, you don't know. You know, I don't know whether a bell rings off or a bother goes off in your shoe or something like that. But I knew that

that there was something in her that she could walk with me. And I do say this, you don't pick your companion like you pick your watch. You know, it's not like an accessory for your suit. It's an accessory for your soul for who you are and the person not publicly, but personally. And there's something in her rhythm and her calmness and her tranquility. She's totally opposite for me. Totally opposite. You know, I'm the extrovert. She's the introvert. But I think I think she's a very attractive woman, but I think her most attractive feature to me with her tranquility, the calm, reposed way my wife confronts life. Give me some some peaceful place to to recline in and to rest in. As a child going up, obviously, the churches that you attended or church that you attended were small. You're a past of a mega church. How do you miss that? And I want to say old school type ministry with 3000 Congressmen. Nobody ever has

been there before. That's very big because I did not come from a mega church background and I had no clue how to do that. And I think that the way that I approach it is very different. I never set out to be a big church. It just happened. So many people came and we had to build it. And I'm a fighter about nature. So when the people began to come in all of a sudden, I had the challenge of building to serve them. And with, to me, building the church, flowed from a heart of wanting to provide for the parishioner much more so than it did from a place of egotistical ideologies because I had never been a part of a big church. So that wasn't a big thing. And people who come to our church are shocked to find it's a big church but it feels small because we have down home church. I mean, just good old hand clap and foot stomping door front church from time to time. And I think it is because you have to be true to who you are. And I think people are drawn to authenticity. And if you, if you have the courage to be

yourself, it resonates with people and they respond. And so, you know, when I do what I do, and I preach the way I preach and I clap the way I clap, it was taboo to do that. Because all of the big time preachers who were on television were teaching in calm and quiet and reposed. And if you can't get on television and act like that. And I had some of which camera was on and the one with the red dot. Now, we're right at it, you know. And if I love me or leave me, this is who I am. And that ability to be authentically yourself has been a critical part of my life. I am particularly impressed with the delivery of your messages, your sermons. You don't have a script, you don't have it written down. I mean, you're walking and teaching. Is there teleprompters around the pilot's house? Are you just memorizing? No, there are no teleprompters that I don't memorize it. But and I do actually write notes. When I study, I actually take notes

and I have an outline. But once I get it on the pad, it burns into my head. And I have a structure, but I don't need to carry notes around. I created the notes that most didn't create me. And I don't allow them to incarcerate me. And the way that my gift flows, it flows up out of my heart, like music, like it's the strangest thing because it's not the formal methodology whereby ministry are trained to prevent a text with three points in appointment. It is the ancient art of storytelling that goes all the way back to my ancestors. Our history and our ancestry and our culture, blended itself to storytellers and the ability to tell a story in a compelling way. And that's why I ended up doing film because I am at heart a storyteller like my ancestors were. And so we've been taking a good look at Ruth and how God ordered her steps

and how she is a more bite woman in case you're not familiar with her, she is, in fact, a more biteist, a more bite woman coming out of the land of Moab and idolatrous and perverse nationality of people who did not recognize God as God. But because Bethlehem and Israel in particular were going through a famine, Naomi took her two sons and her husband and they went down into Moab and met these two girls and we talked about Ruth and Orpah who married Naomi's two sons. Now you got to understand these characters because if you don't understand these characters you won't understand the metaphor of what it means to you. The two sons that these two girls married died and Naomi's husband died and we talked about how these three women who were engulfed in the grief and the sadistic pain of losing their companions engulfed each other in tears and web. Orpah goes back to Moab because she can and she's released to go. Naomi says she's going to Bethlehem

where she came from. She's wilted and withered. Ruth standing in between Naomi who represents where she wants to go and Orpah who represents where she came from turns toward Naomi and says I'm going with you. That God shall be my God. That people shall be my people. Where the largest ishologic or dyes. I so die. But the cost of her decision is quite painful because now she is in Bethlehem a more bite woman, a minority woman, a woman who is considered a second class citizen, not a legitimate citizen of Bethlehem. She is impoverished and she's widowed. She has an economic issue as well as a spiritual issue but she is willing to go through the adversity because she has been so impressed with Naomi and her God that she wants to be where Naomi is experiencing Naomi's God walking into the abundance that Naomi has decreed possible and so she is in Bethlehem. Bethlehem

is translated to mean the house of bread and yet she's starving for bread. Isn't it funny how you can be in the right place and still have a great need? Isn't it funny how you can be in the place where blessings are flowing and because of your situation you are unable to enter into the blessing that other people have. But she knew she was in the right place and that is imperative for you to be able to do what God has called you to do. Theologically Naomi represents the nation of Israel who through the death of her husband typifies the separation that Israel experienced from the wholesome worship of Jehovah their God. Her two sons and the death of her two sons, the birthing of her two sons represent Israel dividing into two kingdoms. The death of her two sons represents the end of the era where Israel has divided into two kingdoms and the ending of that era is signified by Ruth making up her mind to follow Naomi back home. Now Ruth following

Naomi back home is the type of the church whose embellical cord to God comes through the rich soil of Judaism. We have a Judeo Christian society. There is a cord between Judaism and Christianity. What we call the Old Testament teaches us the identity and the personality of our God. And so Ruth calls back with Naomi representing the church now coming into a covenant relationship with God through her association with this older woman named Naomi who incidentally happens to be her mother-in-law. Now when we look at Ruth then we see that she is a metaphor for the church. Her life, her struggles, her acquisition of land become the picture or a template as it were for the church. Now I've got you totally confused. Good. You'll be all right. Ruth now is coming into Bethlehem. She's gleaning over in the corners of the field. They're the famine. The woman

is hungry. She's gleaning, gleaning is to gather wheat. She's gathering whatever wheat she can, wherever she can, over in the corners of the field. She hopped up on. Boaz is filled. Boaz is rich. She's loaded. He has influence and influence. And he sees her gleaning in the corner of the field. Now you ought to be ready to catch hold to me and go forward. Boaz is talking to some women who are gleaning and he looks over there and says, who is that over in the field? They said, that's Ruth, the Moabitis. And he says, this is what I want you to do. I want you. She's going to be coming this way. And when she follows this direction, I want you to leave some handfuls of what you have harvested. Just drop them on the ground for her to find. Now watch this. Here comes Ruth from the background to the forefront, from obscurity to the notoriety. Isn't it nice to be in the right direction? Bishop James is moving. At the day you've been moving

around a lot. When you look at what you have to accomplish every day, how do you put all that together? Every day is different. My day is every the same. I couldn't do it if I didn't have great staff. I have incredible staff. And a lot of people do, but my key people are called the ninjas. They're the kind of the people that pay no attention to the clock. They're passionate about what they do. They're workaholic. And so I don't try to manage all of the different parts of my life. I just manage the people who manage all the different parts of my life. And I never go to bed with the day completed. I wake up in the morning knowing that there's still something to do from yesterday. And I'm okay with that. But what I love about my life is that it is very diverse every day. No day of the same. Nothing is predictable. But every day of challenge. And I'm the kind of person who flourishes in the fight. I fuel in the air. I get more power from the challenge than

I do from Tranquility. And so it helps to make me tick to know that there's a there's the need of the man to challenge something fresh for me to do and work on every day. 2005, you and New Orleans with President Bush after Hurricane Katrina 2009 at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. How does it feel being around presidents? Well, you know, well, first of all, it's very humbling. I never thought in all of my life that I would have an opportunity to be confident to any president in any way shape or form to have the privilege just to be a silent prayer partner to me. It's quite meaningful. And for me, that call transcends politics for me. I think to be God's man, you can't make yourself available to one side at the expense of the other. Even though I may not always agree

totally with either side on every issue to express that disagreement by excluding myself from being able to be involved with him. It's not the way I choose to do that. I would rather disagree with you face to face and say this is what I think about it. Rather than say I'm not going to be around you because I don't agree with you. I think that's the throne with our world today. It's that we have become too tribalistic. And if we become tribal and go back into our particular people groups who only think like our perception of truth is flawed because it's not irrigated with the controversy of the other person's idea. So I have enjoyed the opportunity to do that and really, really benefit it from it. But it is humbling. And sometimes it's challenging because their enemies become your enemies and people hate you for things you don't even have anything to do with. But your shoulders have to be broad enough to see the greater good of relationships and connectivity. Before I get into questions about megafests, it's one area that I need to touch on. George Zimmerman

Verde. How has the church and religion played in race relation if any since then? Since the Verde, I think the church's first responsibility was to respond to the reaction of their parishioners. And in the black community, the reaction of the parishioners were everything from horror to anger. And I think every good pastor meets his congregation where they are. And I attempted to do that. I'm sure pastors all around the country in their own way or style responded to their congregation based on how their congregation responded to the Verde. Unfortunately, this is not a problem that the church takes on for meaningful revolution. The only thing that we can do is confer people who are hurt by it or in the case where maybe there are people who are celebrated. But what we need if to take a deeper and close look at our policies and our laws and how they're written and to make sure that they're not written

in such narrow margins that we remain legal at the infogestus because it is possible to be within the confoundability and outside the confound of justice. Slavery teaches us that civil rights teaches us that women not being allowed to vote with legal, but it wasn't just. There are a lot of things that are legal that are not just and we have to continue to update the way in which our laws are written to bring to take out the inequity that exists between legality and justice. A week from tomorrow as we do this interview, Megaphas would take place here in Dallas. The concept you bring all the women that are loved, man-powered, and now you have mechakias all under one umbrella for three or four days. Yeah, I must be kidding. When you say you got a lot of steps. That's unique in itself that you're not having them in different parts of the country. You're having them all right here and it's over the

Labor Day weekend or prior to the Labor Day weekend. Why so? Well, first of all, Labor Day weekend provides people an opportunity to travel. There are more time to be off with my attempt to make things more convenient. In hindsight, I probably wouldn't do it on this weekend again because some people are going back to school earlier than I realized and that was a problem for the younger generation. Having said that, even for our staff and their company fee, I still think that Megaphas is challenging and I know that there will be a lot of vacations taken right after Megaphas because it is a mammoth undertaking. But it is also something that we love to see people coming in from all over the country and around the world to have a broad, a good time and a broad atmosphere of not only great services with great preachers and great music and great singing but empowerment sessions with business leaders, faith and film festivals with some of the most renowned actors and actresses across the country. I just got a call the other day from Beverly telling me that Carrie Washington, who plays a little bit in a broken scandal. She is going to be joining

us and they have talked about Angela Beth that may be there and we are working to give force for her. So it is going to be a great opportunity to have a plethora of actors sharing what they do and how they do it and people who are interested in the industry come to that. So where else can you go and hear a Cheryl Brady or a TV Jakes or a Creflo Dollar in the same atmosphere with E. Dewey Smith and a four-swinterker and somebody of an Angela bad fit and then have Frederick the entertainer to do a comedy so with Neesie Nash. I think that Megaphas is a reflection of the diversity of my interest. I have always refused to be compartmentalized and thereby stifled by only being interested in faith. I am interested in everything. I am interested in the economy and politics and world peace and clean air and clean water and just because you're a Christian, doesn't mean that you are just compartmentalized to the Bible and that you're not a human being. So I have embraced all of life and I breathed in my nostrils every breath I

take and I try to exhale help to other people and process it and that's what Megaphas is all about. As a filmmaker and I want to applaud you spark where every time there comes on television, I watch it and I just judge spark. But there's also going to be the inaugural International Film Festival. Yes sir. We need to go hand lock that up. Okay. He has to go to another area. Okay. Okay. Because we feel like all buddies need to do this for a while. The Faith and Film Festival is an opportunity to celebrate positive films with positive messages that are uplifting and to bring Hollywood into further awareness that there is a demand for those types of films and we're starting to make a difference. So it's going to have, it's going to be all kinds of great films. Our winning Mandela is going to be airing their black netivities, going to be airing there, a host of new films coming down the ratchet list that have all kinds of creative entity that wonderful cast and still are family friendly. So I invite everybody to come out

to Megaphas to register for it to come to Oprah's life class. Right. It's a great opportunity to be in a live class with Oprah and myself. She's going to do two shows and you can get two shows with one ticket and that's how we're going to kick off Megaphas with Oprah's life class. We need to go home and watch yourself on TV later. Thank you, Mr. Dave. Thank you, sir. It's my pleasure. Bishop T.D. Jakes, senior pastor of the Potter's House, located in Dallas, Texas. If you have questions, comments or suggestions ask your future in Black America programs, email us at jhansonhansson at kut.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer Dave with Alvarez, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today.

Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs, kut radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, kut radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of kut radio.