Mark Dawes,Religion Editor

Internationally acclaimed preacher Bishop T.D. Jakes, 51, yesterday completed two nights of ministry at public rallies held at the National Stadium as part of the 'The Way Forward' conference. The event was organised by Pastors in Action - a group of local clergy led by well-known Pentecostal/ Charismatic Renewal leaders, Pastor Merrick 'Al' Miller, Bishop Herro Blair and Bishop C. Everton Thomas.

The visiting preacher is today scheduled to address specially invited pastors and their spouses at a meeting scheduled for the National Indoor Sports Centre.

Bishop Jakes last weekend, while vacationing in Montego Bay, shared his perspectives with The Gleaner on a number of issues. Below is the fourth and final instalment of that interview. Part one was in Monday's paper on B6; part two was carried on Tuesday on A6 and part three on Wednesday on pages B8-B9.

Q: Bishop, Jamaica suffers from crime in a big way. Jamaica, in some quarters, is called the murder capital of the world. Is there any advice that you can offer our people as we struggle to curb crime - particularly murders?

A: I don't pretend to be professional in the plight of the Jamaican people. I won't try to come here in a week and educate you about a world that you live in. I have better sense than that. But I will speak in broad terms.

Wherever there is pervasive violence, it is generally is because that society is trapped. One of the ways that we can liberate people is with opportunities. They need a piece of the pie. And until they get a piece of the pie, then the only solution that we offer to crime is prison, which does not rehabilitate. It just incarcerates.

The other thing is education. We need education if there is going to be a great deterrent towards crime. When people know better they do better. We need to educate them. They need entrepreneurial assistance. While, as a minister, I believe in salvation and conversion, salvation is not the only issue here. There is a sociological foundation that needs to be corrected.

Getting people ready for heaven is not going to totally fix it. It will, to a degree. But it won't totally fix it until they have opportunities. We have to open up a way where they can live and breathe and have a future. Or we are going to continue to have this kind of systemic violence.

To what extent has your wealth been a help or hindrance in ministry?

Let me clarify something that people have come to know but originally did not know. I have not just been a clergyman, but I have always been an entrepreneur. I have always had outside businesses that I ran, and from which the vast majority of my wealth was accrued.

All of my life I have been involved in entrepreneurship, but it was not always successful. Business is like a plant, you have to grow into it.

So I have my own record label. We developed over a million CDs and DVDs. I have a contract with Sony Pictures to produce films. I am doing my second movie in Hollywood. I sold millions of books, largely through secular entities, not through Christian television. A lot of people don't know that. The only thing they know about is the image they see on TV. When people define you by a 30-minute message they think you are one-dimensional. I have never been one-dimensional. I have separate staff, separate offices, separate boards. My church matters and my business matters are kept separate.

Has my wealth been an asset? Yes it has been an asset because it has brought me before people that I would not have been able to access otherwise. I have been able to be a witness and a minister to the Deion Sanderses of the world and the Michael Irvines of the world. I have been able to access people like Will Smith and other people that I would not been able to if I was not working in Hollywood and places like that. I have been able to access Dr Phil.

Talk show launch

I am getting ready to launch my own talk show. I have diverse interests outside of ministry. It has been a liability, too, because success alienates other people. They feel intimated. They feel resentful. They make assumptions - they feel you must have done something wrong. Because we as a people do not celebrate success. We look at success with contempt because we have been taught through history to believe that success should not come in our colour and certainly not among anyone who has faith, because faith was given to us in slavery to keep us in huts. To keep us calm in huts while we sang about heaven.

Bishop there is a pervasive 'male malaise' in Jamaica, the United States and other parts of the western world. How can church folk play an effective role in redeeming males. And how can society play a role in redeeming males?

First of all, we got to have more men talking to men, than women talking to men. The male ego is not going to allow him to receive the kind of counsel that he needs to receive if it is only coming from women. The problem is we have no fathers. Our fathers did not stay. Our fathers left. And with the absence of males being the role models, we are in a crisis.

The second thing is that men are not going to rehabilitate themselves just because they feel the presence of the Lord or they enjoy worship and things like that. There has to be practical methodology whereby we approach them and show them the relevance of our faith by practical application; showing the men walking with God, the relevance of having a family and leaving a map for them to evolve.

It is difficult for a man to be what he does not see. It is difficult for him to become what he never got. So if he grew up in a house with a father who left, then it is difficult for him to become a father who stays.

We need ministry that cuts to the chase and deals with those issues with men. Ministry to men has to be issue-oriented and not feeling-oriented. We are giving them a feeling experience in an issues-driven world. Until we start dealing with men about issues, they are going to ignore us, because we keep harping on feelings, but they are dying over issues.

Strong ministry

In terms of society's response to men, I think concerning education, we have failed men in a drastic way. If we don't do a better job with men before they get past the sixth grade (primary school), the battle is lost. When he can't read, when he can't talk, and he can't construct a sentence or paragraph and his woman can - he feels lost. Black men all over the country and all over the world are struggling to find out 'How do I fit in with my own family, my own wife, when my wife can read and she can write, and construct sentences and she's got a job and she is making more money. Then what am I good for?' Anytime you lose self-esteem you are going to have anger and violence, domestic violence and drug abuse.

It is not that society is losing men, it is that society is losing boys. If we lose boys, then the man is only the derivative of a lost boy. We will only correct it when we start focusing on the male child. I tell women, 'You are raising somebody's husband. You can't wait till he is 20 before talking about responsibility. He has to start early, to begin to develop the mental skills.' Our men don't have the skills.

Empowering our men

When you look at the demographics of the men in prison and the low education of the men in prison, and that fact that the majority of men incarcerated cannot read - the statistics of men who cannot read in prison are amazing. We are losing the boys.

What society can do is open up opportunities for education. What society can do is point to positive role models who have been effective, the Ken Chenaults (the CEO of American Express) of this world, the president Obamas, the Cornel Wests (American scholar, intellectual, philosopher, critic, pastor, and civil rights activist) of the world, and there are many people over here, I just don't know them to name them.

We need to parade them before our boys. What we have paraded our boys have become - hip-hop stars, basketball players, singers, rappers and preachers. What we show them, they become. We need other examples - black doctors, black engineers, black chemists, and black scientists.

We need to make it good to be smart. We have not marketed brightness to black boys, so they don't buy it, because we have not marketed it. We have marketed bling-bling and hip-hop, and they become what we have designed for them.

Bishop T.D. Jakes and his wife, Serita lead the congregation at the Potters House in singing a worship song during a May 2006 worship service at the church.

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