A Preacher and a Writer--and Woman’s Best Friend

Outside the Eso Won bookstore in Baldwin Hills, women hid under their flowered hats for close to five hours, determined to outlast the heat wave and be first to meet T.D. Jakes. A Pentecostal minister with a 16,000-member church in Dallas and a television program, “Get Ready With T.D. Jakes,” that reaches nearly 3 million viewers worldwide, Jakes recently launched a third career as an author. “The Lady, Her Lover and Her Lord” (Putnam) is his 14th book in five years. In it he writes to women who have been abused and comes away sounding like a close confidant.

Television has made him more image conscious. He has lost 100 pounds in the last year. A diamond chessboard pinkie ring is the first thing you see when he enters a dining room, and all through lunch the monogram on his shirt cuff peeks out from beneath his jacket. He has it figured out--his talent for listening and his honest advice made him the favorite televangelist in Texas. Not the accessories.

“I’ve been all through the criticisms about material possessions,” he said. “If you’re into serving the Lord and being an entrepreneur, I say go for it.”

Jakes, 41, lives in Dallas with his wife, Serita, whom he describes as his best buddy, and their five children. The TV show airs nationally on the Fox Family Network and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, as well as in Western Europe and South Africa.

There is no perfect world between the covers of his books any more than there is in the slice of life Jakes sees at the drug and prostitution rehabilitation programs he offers at the Potter’s Field, his nondenominational Christian church. That work taught him to appreciate honesty, however indelicate.

With Bible in Hand

Rather than spare sensitive feelings, he writes that a woman in a bad relationship probably got there because she grew up without a father or with one who didn’t do a very good job. That doesn’t make it all right to spend a lifetime “looking for someone to save you,” he writes.

This sort of thing, combined with a knack for dispensing practical solutions rolled in feisty humor, has rocketed Jakes from obscurity to fame in less than five years. It seems likely he wouldn’t be doing things any differently if he had stayed at the 10-member storefront church in Montgomery, W.Va., that he opened in 1980.

He can sound like an advisor to the lovelorn at times, but he keeps a Bible in his hand to back up his suggestions.

“I take Scripture and my counseling experience and put them together in the book,” he said.

Among his suggestions:

* Women ought to leave their troubled past behind--”stop by the well, and let Jesus Christ rid you of those ghosts.”

* Move on--”rise up and walk.”

* Get a job, be financially independent--”maximize your assets.”

* And don’t say you can’t because you never went to college. “Turn your little mop into a cleaning service. Then you can buy your own glass slipper.”

Put your talents to work. “God doesn’t hand out checks. He gives thoughts and the gift of creativity; what you do with them is your gift to Him.”

* Don’t lower yourself to go out looking for a husband. Get yourself together, and he’ll come to you. “Pampering yourself helps you stop waiting for Prince Charming to come along.”

He talks like a man who grew up in a world of women. Actually, he lived with both parents and helped his mother take care of his father, who had diabetes. It taught him to identify with people’s pain.

“I was counseling married couples and started to see that behind the perfect exterior were a lot of women dealing with the same problems of oppression,” Jakes said about the days leading up to his first book. “I called them all together. Part of healing is knowing that others have been through it.” One meeting led to four. By then the church was crowded with people who heard about the gatherings from friends. “I realized we were facing an epidemic.”

His first book, “Woman Thou Art Loosed!” (Destiny, 1993) came from those counseling sessions. It sold more than 1 million copies, with his 13 others published by Christian book publishers. Nine of the books made the Christian bestseller list. Some were written for men, more for women. Then came videos of his preaching engagements and gospel CDs with his choir that made Billboard’s Top Music Video chart and the Grammy nominations list.

One month after “The Lady” was published, more than 100,000 copies had been shipped to stores.

“I saw how his earlier books affected people’s lives,” said Joel Fotinos, who brought Jakes into publishing’s mainstream by signing him with G.P. Putnam’s Sons. “His readers crossed every line--age, sex and color.”

Fotinos was managing a religious bookstore when he discovered Jakes.

“People would come back and buy extra copies for family members and friends having difficulties,” he said.

A Fresh Perspective

Last year, when Fotinos was named director of religious publishing for Putnam, he swung into action.

“I’d heard other New York publishers were trying to sign T.D. Jakes, so I flew down to Texas to meet him,” he said. “When I saw him preach, I knew he was the one.”

Anything but mystified by all of this, Jakes can dissect his success.

“I bring a fresh perspective to women’s problems,” he said. “Women have women friends to talk to, they go to women’s seminars, read women’s books. But their problems are with men. I tell them what men are all about.

“We men treat you women like you treat yourself. The way you present yourself teaches us what standard of life you want to live. As for women, I tell them as a man that there is no Mr. Right. The ideal man does not exist. It’s not Mr. Right, it’s Mr. All Right you want. Eventually, you’ve just got to make a decision to love somebody.”

He calls himself a coach for the brokenhearted--and not all his trainees are women.

“There are as many abused men as women,” he said. Tens of thousands of them, he said, attend his weekend conventions aimed to set men free from past troubles. “It’s not the gender I’m sensitive to, it’s the pain,” he said. “Men are hurting; that’s why we hurt women. We might feel like crying, but we bury it. It comes out in all kinds of illicit behavior. Men have PMS. It stands for power, money and sex. That’s our way of letting loose the volcano inside.”

Jakes speaks for both sides and, remarkably, they both trust him.

“Men and women come hear me speak because I tell them what to do about their pain,” he said. “If I am counseling a couple, most of what I do is translate what they’re saying to each other. Women are raised in a house without a man and they go looking for male affirmation. They get married and find out they really don’t understand men. That’s where I come in.

“The greatest gift you can give to a person is a resolution, so they can move on. Getting over the past has nothing to do with the person who hurt you way back when coming back to ask forgiveness. I try to help people take the past in hand and say, ‘It’s over, I’m moving on.’ ”

At Eso Won, most of the 200 or so fans who waited in line to meet Jakes already owned a collection of his books and tapes. A network of buying and lending ran through the crowd like a sturdy thread joining mothers, daughters, husbands, wives, grandmothers and grandchildren.

Among the few men at the store was Edward Jordan, 33, who first saw Jakes on television at his mother’s house.

“He speaks to issues that are key to African Americans,” Jordan said. “Don’t wallow in victimhood and the things that happened in the past.”

Paulette Anthony, 50, passes her books along to her grandsons and her videos to a drug rehabilitation center. Last year she took 10 women from the center to hear Jakes speak in Pasadena.

Deirdre Clark, 31, and her mother, Evelyn Holliman, both tune in to Jakes. “The issues T.D. Jakes deals with--rape, battered women and how to find healing--make him different,” Clark said. “He has answers a lot of people don’t get in church.”