T. D. Jakes

Personal details

Birth name Thomas Dexter Jakes

Born June 9, 1957 (age 57)
South Charleston, West Virginia ,
U.S.

Nationality United States

Spouse Pastor Serita Ann Jakes

Occupation
Apostle, Prophet, Bishop, and
Author[b]T. D. Jakes

Personal details

Birth name Thomas Dexter Jakes

Born June 9, 1957 (age 57)
South Charleston, West Virginia ,
U.S.

Nationality United States

Spouse Pastor Serita Ann Jakes

Occupation
Apostle, Prophet, Bishop, and
Author[/b]T. D. Jakes

Personal details

Birth name Thomas Dexter Jakes

Born June 9, 1957 (age 57)
South Charleston, West Virginia ,
U.S.

Nationality United States

Spouse Pastor Serita Ann Jakes

Occupation

Apostle, Prophet, Bishop, and
Author
Thomas Dexter "T. D." Jakes, Sr. (born June 9,
1957) is the Apostle/Bishop of The Potter's
House , a non-denominational American
megachurch , with 30,000 members. T. D. Jakes'
church services and evangelistic sermons are
broadcast on The Potter's Touch, which airs on
the Trinity Broadcasting Network , Black
Entertainment Television,[1] the Daystar
Television Network, The Word Network and The
Miracle Channel in Canada. Other aspects of
Jakes' ministry include an annual revival called
"MegaFest" that draws more than 100,000
people, an annual women's conference called
"Woman Thou Art Loosed", and gospel music
recordings.

Early life

TD Jakes grew up in Vandalia, West Virginia,
attending local Baptist churches. He spent his
teenage years caring for his invalid father and
working in local industries. Feeling a call to the
ministry, he enrolled in West Virginia State
University and began preaching part-time in
local churches, but he soon dropped out of the
university.

He took a job at the local Union
Carbide and continued preaching part-time.
During this time he met his future wife, Serita
Jamison. The couple married in 1981. In 1982,
Jakes became the pastor of the Greater Emanuel
Temple of Faith, a small, Montgomery, West
Virginia independent Pentecostal church with
about ten members.

Over the next few years,
the church grew, drawing an integrated
congregation that helped increase Jakes'
renown as a speaker and pastor. He moved the
church twice - from Montgomery to Smithers
and then to South Charleston, where the
congregation grew from about 100 members to
over 300. During this time, he began a radio
ministry The Master's Plan that ran from
1982-1985.

He also became acquainted with
Bishop Sherman Watkins, founder of the Higher
Ground Always Abounding Assembly (an
association of over 200 Pentecostal churches).
Watkins ordained Jakes as a minister of the
Higher Ground Assembly and encouraged him to
start a church in the Charleston Area.

Jakes also used this time to continue his education by
studying through correspondence courses from
Friends University. Jakes completed a B. A. and
M.A. in 1990 and a D. Min. in 1995.

After the 1990 move to Charleston, as his
congregation grew, T. D. Jakes began to focus
on the spiritual needs of the women in his
church who had been abandoned and abused in
their lives. He began a Sunday School class for
them, "Woman, Thou Art Loosed," in which he
encouraged the women to use their past pain as
a foundation for new growth.

He later started a similar class for men, which he called "Manpower." In 1993, Jakes self-published his
first book, drawing on his experiences working
with the women of his congregation.

Woman,Thou Art Loosed would become Jakes' signature work and a national religious bestseller. He also began a new television ministry, Get Ready,
which aired on Black Entertainment Television
and the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Also in
1993, Jakes moved his church yet again, to
Cross Lanes, West Virginia.

His ministry continued to expand, prompting the
founding of the T. D. Jakes Ministries
organization to oversee his work beyond the
church itself. He continued to write and to
publish, spreading his message of spiritual
healing to new audiences. In 1994 he held the
first of what would become a series of
conferences for ministers and their spouses,
"When Shepherds Bleed."

In May 1996, Jakes moved his family and his
ministry again, as well as fifty other families
involved in his work, to Dallas, Texas. There he
purchased Eagle's Nest Church, a large Dallas
church. Renaming the church The Potter's
House, Jakes continued his work. The Potter's
House, which was a 5,000 seat auditorium and a
34-acre campus, had grown to a congregation of
14,000.

Career

In 1980, at age 23, Jakes became the pastor of
Greater Emanuel Temple of Faith, a storefront
church in Smithers, West Virginia with ten
members. The congregation grew to encompass
100 members and was notable because it was
racially integrated.

In 1990 Jakes moved to South Charleston, West
Virginia, and his congregation grew again, to 300
members. In 1993 he moved to Cross Lanes,
West Virginia, where the congregation grew to
more than 1,100 people, of whom 60 percent
were African American and 40 percent were
Caucasian.

In 1994 T.D. Jakes Ministries was established as
a non-profit organization that produced televised
sermons and conferences. From 1995 to 1996,
Jakes hosted "Get Ready," a weekly radio and
television show with national distribution through
syndication.

In 1996 Jakes, his wife, children, and a staff of
50 employees relocated to Dallas, Texas, where
Jakes founded the Potter's House, a non-
denominational megachurch. Located on a 34-
acre hilltop campus, the Potter's House features
a 5,000-seat auditorium, as well as offices for
employees and staff. Between 1996 and 1998,
church membership grew from 7,000
congregants to 14,000.

In 2005 Jakes accompanied President George W.
Bush on his visit to the areas devastated by
Hurricane Katrina. In his book Decision Points,
President Bush describes Jakes as "a kind of
man who puts faith into action."

On January 20, 2009, Jakes led the early
morning prayer service for President Barack
Obama at St. John's Church in Washington, D.C.,
according to NBC News.

In the fall of 2009, Jakes planned on launching a
secular daily talk show, syndicated through the
CBS Television Distribution group; however,
economic troubles in the industry may put his
new program into jeopardy.

Beliefs

Although Jakes was converted and ordained
within Oneness Pentecostalism, he revealed in
an interview with Mark Driscoll in 2012 that he
affirms the Trinity , although Jakes did not affirm
the eternality of the individual persons of the
Trinity which is denied by Oneness churches.

Jakes is a strong advocate of
abstinence [citation needed] and has made
appearances on the subject ranging from Good
Morning America to Dr. Phil .

Awards and accomplishments

Jakes has received numerous honors, including
13 honorary degrees and doctorates. He has
also received Grammy and Dove Award
nominations for Gospel album "Live at The
Potter's House." PBS Religion and Ethics
Newsweekly named Jakes among America's
"Top 10 Religious Leaders." Time magazine
featured Jakes on the cover of its September 17,
2001 issue with the provocative question, "Is
This Man the Next Billy Graham?"

Personal life

When he was 24 in 1981, he married Serita Ann
Jamison. [1] They have five children: Jermaine,
Jamar, Cora, Sarah and Thomas Jakes, Jr.
On the PBS program African American Lives ,
Jakes had his DNA analyzed; his Y chromosome
showed that he is descended from the Igbo
people of Nigeria .[6][7] According to his family
history, it was suggested that he is also
descended from them through his grandmother.

Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._D._Jakes

Um... this is kinda really old news.

And the whole DNA thing has been shown to be rather misleading.

In case you can't read the long epistle, just go straight to personal life, the source is also there between; i be Yoruba boy before una start to tribalize the thread.

Radoillo:
Um... this is kinda really old news.

And the whole DNA thing has been shown to be rather misleading.

How so?

RandomAfricanAm:



How so?

Have a look at this clip:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHjJJfhfRgs


The bald black guy there (I can't remember his name) works (worked?) for the company that did the DNA test on T D Jakes, Ben Carson, Quincy Jones and all the other guys that featured on Skip Gates' "African-American Lives".

Here he admits (after being pressed by the interviewer) that DNA testing only provides very, very, very little information about the region of Africa a tested African-American's ancestors originated from. Less than 0.1%, actually.

In other words, T D Jakes could be 99.9% Ashanti, and less than 0.1% Igbo and Hausa, and only the 0.1% Igbo and Hausa would be detected in the tests. That is so minute as to be meaningless.

Granted, T D Jakes has said that there were stories of Igbo ancestors in his family. But who knows how large that Igbo ancestry is, and (after centuries of interbreeding with other slaves and slave-descendants from all over West and Central Africa) to what extent that Igbo ancestry has been diluted?

Before I reply further is this the totality of your argument/premise?

This isn't enough?


PS: Ignore the rubbish at the end about African-Americans being Native Americans. It isn't part of the interviews. The guy who put this on YouTube added that part.