c. 1997 Religion News Service

BALTIMORE _ Even before a crowd of 5,000 women, Bishop T.D. Jakes’ preaching cuts through commonplace generalities to the specific pain of an individual: the marriage she’s trying to hold together, the physical abuse she has suffered, the loneliness of single motherhood, mistreatment on the job.”There are women in this room who have been through hell and high water, but God has stepped in and made a way out of no way,”he preached at a recent National Women’s Conference, bringing many women in the predominantly black audience to their feet in enthusiastic agreement.

For more than two hours, with only a Bible as a reference, Jakes spoke _ not so much to women in general but to their problems and their pain, their sense of loneliness and isolation, offering words of comfort and healing. That’s his calling, he says, and women _ and men, often in separate conferences _ are flocking to hear him.

Jakes’ dramatic preaching, laced with a Pentecostal fervor that appeals to a wide range of Christians, has propelled him to the front ranks of contemporary evangelists and leadership of a multicultural, nondenominational congregation of more than 10,000 just a year after he moved to a Dallas suburb from his native West Virginia.

Monique Brooks, 37, of Alexandria, Va., is a devoted adherent. She has listened to Jakes’ tapes and read his books, including his current best seller,”Woman, Thou Art Loosed!”a 200-page volume decorated with roses and perfumed with the scent of flowers.”I think that his approach … doesn’t make you feel ashamed of your weaknesses or your pain,”said Brooks, a contracts administrator who attends an independent Baptist church.”He doesn’t attack you for feeling that way. He shows you how to get out of where you’ve been, based on the Bible.” Jakes, in an interview, shifts the focus away from himself and declares that he is simply God’s instrument.”I’m not the source. I’m just the pipe,”he said.”I’m really very ordinary and I’m no different from anybody else. I’m just a person. The story is him (God).” Jakes, 40, believes his sensitivity to pain that has become the hallmark of his preaching comes from his childhood experiences caring for an ailing father. One of his tasks as a young man growing up in Charleston, W.Va., was”mopping up blood at 2 o’clock in the morning”as his father lay hooked to a kidney machine.”I grew up acquainted with grief,”Jakes said.”I grew up with death. I grew up with life in terrible situations. I have absolutely no respect for anybody who won’t stand beside you in a storm.” In 1982, the year his father died of kidney disease, Jakes became a full-time minister, operating out of a storefront church, Emmanuel Temple of Faith in Montgomery, W.Va.

By the late 1980s, he had been ordained a bishop by the Greater Emmanuel Apostolic Faith Tabernacles, a Pentecostal group based in Columbus, Ohio. He has since switched to the Higher Ground Always Abounding Assemblies, another Pentecostal organization also headquartered in Columbus, and serves as vice bishop of that group.

Jakes said his ministry was triggered by what he learned as he counseled women and taught Sunday School. After noticing that many women had similar problems, he began holding conferences he described as”mass counseling”sessions.

Jakes thinks women feel a sense of”healing and some restoration”because his words blend biblical concepts with a man’s point of view.”I think that the male perspective is significant because of the lack of fathers in our generation. I (don’t) say anything to them that a good father wouldn’t say to his daughters,”said Jakes.

A year after he began the”Woman, Thou Art Loosed Conference”in 1992, Jakes started a”Manpower”series of conferences for men. Tens of thousands have attended those conferences in cities across the country.”If men are going to open up, they’re not going to open up around their women because it endangers our role and our ego,”he said, explaining why he often meets separately with men.

Jakes, who appears on both Black Entertainment Television and Trinity Broadcasting Network, follows a grueling schedule that can take him to as many as five states in one week. His stops include crusades, church services and conferences for singles and for pastors.

In 1996, he moved his 50-member staff from West Virginia to the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff, continuing his pain-healing mission, even changing the name of his church to better reflect its ministry.”Our ministry is called The Potter’s House because we are geared toward mending broken lives, regardless of what color they are,”he said.

Sherry DuPree, an author who has researched African-American Pentecostal groups, said Jakes’ success is partly due to his ability to put the individual at the center of his message.”People think he’s talking to them individually, even though he has a large audience,”DuPree said.”People are so focused that they feel that he’s speaking to them personally through the Scriptures … I think he feels that he has the pulse of the people.” (BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

In fact, as Jakes spoke at the Baltimore Convention Center, individual women stood, raised or shook their hands or moaned in reaction to his words. In one case, a woman screamed from the back of the auditorium as he spoke.

Toward the end of an already emotional evening, he directed the women to lay hands on another woman’s belly and pray. His remarks about them being”pregnant with destiny”and”pregnant with ministry”prompted many women to break down and cry or to”get happy,”tearfully dancing in the aisles or running up and down in front of the stage. Some became”slain in the Spirit,”and lay stretched out on the floor or a row of chairs for several minutes before gaining their composure.”The thing you’ve been looking for in everybody else is inside of you,”Jakes shouted.

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Jakes’ words hit home with Imogene Cross, a 50-year-old high school social studies teacher from Lakewood, N.J., who attended the Baltimore conference.”I felt like T.D. Jakes talked directly to my spirit, to my body, my soul,”said Cross, a Baptist.”I know now what I have to do … I’ve been crying on people’s shoulders and getting nowhere and now I’m going to be crying on Jesus’ shoulder.” Daphne Wiggins, a scholar who has observed Jakes’ from a distance, said women often feel empowered and healed as he names injustices they’ve dealt with and gives them concrete ways to overcome them.”Symbolically and clerically, he serves as kind of a catalyst for … people to begin to hear that there’s a way out of whatever rut you find yourself in,”said Wiggins, an assistant professor of religion at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

And Wiggins said Jakes doesn’t hesitate to tell men when they’re responsible for some of the problems women face.”He says to men in sermons … `You need to be responsible for the sons you’re not taking care of,'”she said.

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Financial success has followed Jakes’ popularity. His ministry, which includes programs to help the homeless and drug abusers, had revenues of about $15 million last year, said Elder Silas Wheeler, administrator of T.D. Jakes Ministries.

Jakes bristles at the thought that some may believe his ministry’s wealth is incompatible with Christian ministry.”Anytime that you say that if I was a Buddhist I could be wealthy, if I was the head of Nation of Islam I could be wealthy, if I ran the Mafia I could be wealthy, but because I’m a Christian I’m forbidden from being wealthy, there’s something real sick about that,”he said.

Wheeler predicts the next step for Jakes will include a heavier international focus. Jakes hopes to hold crusades in England and Africa. His broadcasts are already heard in six African countries, and he hopes to expand to Europe soon. His books and videos are being translated for Spanish-speaking audiences in the United States and abroad.

As Jakes sees it, his ministry’s diverse reach is based on the simple premise that no matter what culture a person comes from, everyone has the same basic needs.”When you start dealing with common needs it embraces all people,”he said.”We have certain things that force us to come together and pain is one of them.”

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