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T.D. Jakes
The Pentecostal Media Mogul: Even in a profession peopled with multi-taskers, Bishop Thomas Dexter (T.D.) Jakes stands out. Last year the African-American preacher's R-rated religious movie about sexual abuse, Woman, Thou Art Loosed, cracked the box-office top 10. His self-empowerment book: Even Strong Men Struggle was a best seller. And his record label Dexterity Sounds/EMI Gospel won its first Grammy. Jakes' teachings of faith, family and financial prosperity reach far beyond the Potter's House, his 35,000-member suburban Dallas church. This year he has two more movies in the works and plans a business-networking cruise to Alaska, a leadership conference in London and the second annual Mega Feast, a gathering for families that is expected to draw 200,000 people to Atlanta in August. A master of pop psychology, Jakes, 47, represents a new wrinkle for Evangelicals, the neo-Pentecostals, who combine intense spirituality with a therapeutic approach. Dealing with critics of his popular style has taught Jakes a few lessons of his own: his latest book is titled Ten Commandments of Working in a Hostile Environment.
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Joyce Meyer
A Feminine Side Of Evangelism: It is the stories from her personal life and her abuse as a child, her failed first marriage that resonate with Pentecostal Joyce Meyer's predominantly female audience. Based in Fenton, Mo., Joyce Meyer Ministries teaches Bible to a virtual congregation. She is a traveling road show with a multimedia connection to followers. Meyer, 61, offers a gospel of prosperity that promises that God rewards tithing with his blessing. But her own conspicuous prosperity which, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, includes a multimillion dollar home and a private jet concerns some Christians.
Meyer's spokesman says 93% of the money her ministry takes in each month goes to more than 150 charities worldwide, but the Christian watchdog group-Wall Watchers has asked for an IRS investigation into the ministry's finances. Meyer says an investigation does not worry her, and she continues to deliver her uplifting message on more than 600 TV stations and 400 radio stations as well as in 70 books and scores of stadium-filling appearances.
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Billy and Franklin Graham
Father and Son In the Spirit: He has had the ear of Presidents for five decades, but except for his public disapproval of racial segregation, Billy Graham, 86, has stuck to soul saving and left the political proselytizing to others. He explained his self-imposed seperation of church and state in the language of a Gospel preacher: "It's not what I was called to do."
His son Franklin, 52, the anointed successor to the Graham evangelical empire, has no such reticence. "As a minister, I have every right to speak out on moral issues," he says. And he has, frequently and freely opining on subjects ranging from homosexuality ("I don't believe in the lifestyle") to the Iraq war ("I don't advocate war, but it's important to support our government"). Some suggest the difference in approach is the result of temperament and target audience. "Dr. Graham, having [ministered] to many Presidents, is more private about his counsel than Franklin, who speaks more to average Americans than their leaders," says Rod Parsley, pastor of the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio.
"But we're thankful he's raising his voice on issues central to our faith."
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Rick Warren
America's New People's Pastor: These are heady times for Rick Warren. His book-The Purpose Driven Life, which says that meaning in life comes through following God's purposes, has sold more than 20 million copies over the past two years and is the best-selling hardback in U.S. history. When he took the podium to pray on the final night of Billy Graham's Los Angeles crusade at the Rose Bowl in November, the 82,000 congregants cheered as if Warren had scored the winning touchdown. And on the eve of the presidential Inauguration, Warren, who pastors the 22,000-member Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif., delivered the Invocation at the gala celebration. Later he met with 15 Senators, from both parties, who sought his advice and heard his plan to enlist Saddleback's global network of more than 40,000 churches in tackling such issues as poverty, disease and ignorance. And when 600 senior pastors were asked to name the people they thought had the greatest influence on church affairs in the country, Warren's name came in second only to Billy Graham's. Although Franklin Graham is heir to the throne of the Billy Graham organization, many believe that Warren, 51, is the successor to the elder Graham for the role of America's minister.
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Tim and Beverly LaHaye.
The Christian Power Couple: In his role as minister and organizer, the Rev. Tim LaHaye, who will turn 79 in April, somehow never achieved the name recognition of, say, Jerry or for that matter of his wife Beverly LaHaye, 75, founder of Concerned Women for America, one of Washington's most influential antiabortion and anti-gay marriage organizations. But it is a measure of Tim LaHaye's reach that his role in founding Falwell's Moral Majority is only his second most notable venture. (Falwell was inspired to start the group in 1979 after seeing how LaHaye had organized scores of fellow pastors to work for conservative political causes in California in the '70s.) It wasn't until 15 years later that LaHaye got the idea for a novelized account of the Second Coming. The result, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (1995), launched a literary empire. The book and its 11 sequels have sold more than 42 million copies (not counting spin-offs like kids' books, CDs and greeting cards) and set the image that many people have of the rapture and the end-time
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Kenneth and Gloria Copeland
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Tommy Tenney
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