Fixing America's Failing Families: An Interview with T.D. Jakes
Bishop T.D. Jakes is one of America's most prominent religious leaders and pastor of The Potter's House, a 30,000-member congregation located in Dallas, Texas. But Jakes is far more than a preacher. "I cannot be pigeon-holed," he told me in our interview this week.
Since 2008, he's been working as a producer and writer of feature films through a partnership with Sony Pictures. His movies include the box office hit "Jumping the Broom" and the remake of "Sparkle" starring Jordin Sparks and the late Whitney Houston. He's the bestselling author of numerous books including, most recently, Let It Go: So You Can Be Forgiven. In October, Jakes' new talk show, "Mind, Body, and Soul", debuts on BET.
Though his projects are varied, the theme of family connects many of them. Jakes intends to uplift families with his books and films, and he speaks to family issues through his sermons. In two weeks, more than 40,000 will attend his MegaFest conference in Dallas where he hopes to bring a special word to America's many flailing families. Here, we talk about what he believes is causing the breakdown of American families and what he plans to do about it.
JM: A lot of Christians talk about how the "breakdown of the American family." As a pastor, you deal with family problems all the time. Do you think the American family is in serious trouble?
TJ: Absolutely. There’s no question about that, and the stats bear it out. It has hit the minority community hardest and first, but first means it won’t be last. It’s spreading to the general populace as well.
JM: You’ve got your MegaFest conference coming up in Dallas. I know you hope to draw families, not just individual attendees. How do you hope to use your platform through that conference to build up and encourage American families?
TJ: I’m so excited about it. First of all, people of all colors are buying tickets and that puts black families and white families in the room where we can attack the problem together. It is our shared problem. Our problem is your problem, and your problem is our problem. We are on the same boat.
One of the things I hope to do is to point out the fact that fatherhood is seldom modeled to men. And it is hard to be what you cannot see. You and I can walk down to any department store and find a figurine of a mother holding a baby, but we’d have to work hard to find a picture of a man holding one. We're not modeling fatherhood in art or film or in our own homes.
The fact that we are male enough to produce a child does not make us man enough to raise a child, especially when we are asking men to play a role for which they have no script. My solution is to show men that it is not as much about showing the bad job some have done but lifting up men who do a good job, so we can see what we’re trying to be. Until fatherhood is modeled, our men will continue to shrink away from it and the stats will continue to worsen.
The real power of MegaFest is in the car ride to the event. It’s in the hotel after the event is over. It’s dads taking their kids out to get something to eat and spending quality time without work getting in the way. Because family is in little things. Having raised five children, the things they remember are not the things I paid the most for; they were the little silly things. They were the times I cut up their steak or pancakes in a restaurant. So I’m calling families to a big event so they can have little things together.
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