Juanita Bynum, founder and President of Juanita Bynum Ministries in Waycross, Georgia, is a gifted vocalist and minister of the Word. Dr. Bynum is the best-selling author of My Spiritual Inheritance, Matters Of The Heart, No More Sheets, and several other books as well as her newest worship CD, A Piece of My Passion. Dr. Bynum is fueled by a passion to fulfill God’s mandate for these turbulent times. Her thrust on character building by merging spirituality with everyday living provokes people to pursue a life of integrity. Wherever she goes, Bynum exhorts and encourages her listeners to deepen their intimacy with God and arise to their divine calling and destiny. Dr. Bynum spoke with Fresh Outlook recently about her ministry, which is marking its 10th anniversary this year.
Fresh Outlook: Congratulations! This year, marks year ten of your ministry — at least to the magnitude it is known today. I believe it was about ten years ago that you ministered to over 30,000 people at the invitation of Bishop T.D. Jakes. Before this time, your ministry as a whole was much different. What do you think happened to accelerate your ministry’s growth?
Juanita Bynum: Are you referring to why do I think that all of a sudden it went from where it was to being on Bishop Jakes’ platform? Actually, I am the same person today that I was before Bishop Jakes’ platform.
For my ten year anniversary, some old friends of mine over at Paula White Ministries that have known me for more than 20 years presented me with a gift. They simply said, “There is something that we want to give you.” And when I opened it up, there it was — they had made a DVD out of the video of my first conference in 1992. When I spoke at the conference, there were about 30,000 people there. I looked at the video footage and I am really able to say that I was the same person on those tapes that I am right now. Therefore, I think that it was just the timing of the Lord that He would expose my ministry to the nation. When I got to Bishop Jakes’ platform, I wasn’t ministering any differently than I was when I was ministering to churches I had ministered at before. I don’t think anything changed. The Lord called me to prayer — 5 AM prayer in the morning — and I became consistent in that. And if I were to attribute God exposing my ministry to the nations, I would have to say that it would be attributed to me because I have a consistent life of prayer. But the ministry part of it, I believe was just the timing of the Lord.
And the way that it happened is what people would call a fluke — when I know it was all timing. I know this because I was asked to come to minister to a class of 500 women for two days in one of the classrooms of the auditorium. I ministered that morning and by that afternoon Bishop Jakes’ office called my hotel room and said Bishop Jakes felt lead of the Lord to have me preach that night. And I had never preached to a crowd that large. It was almost like an overnight thing that happened.
FO: That’s what God does, isn’t it.
JB: Yes, absolutely.
FO: People don’t see all the steps before. Success appears to people to be overnight; but on the contrary, as you say, you hadn’t changed one thing — you did all the same things you did from the very beginning.
JB: Exactly. Oh yes, and people were asking me,“weren’t you afraid to stand in front of that many people?” Of course you have the jitters because you are standing in front of 36,000 people. But remember the movie, The Karate Kid? Just as the karate master told the young karate kid as he was training him to fight — “wash on, wash off” — it wasn’t just about cleaning cars, but about training his arms to position themselves for some arm motion that was going to be needed in the heat of battle — so it was with me. First I started doing what I was doing at 5 AM prayer... And preaching when it was hard…when there was five people in the audience, then ten people in the audience...when there was 50-100 by the time I’m on that platform: It’s like “wash on, wash off” — it was what came natural to me. I didn’t have to drum it up to try to make something happen to convince people that the Hand of the Lord was on my life. It was just what I had already been doing, behind the scenes.
FO: I know that you battled with anorexia, a bad marriage, and a mental institution — things that would have caused most people to turn away from God. Yet you turned to God. How were you able to turn to God when you must have felt like giving up?
JB: Well, I believe that there are times that happen in your life where you may encounter a bad situation that may be considered an isolated event. But I believe that there comes a time in the lives of certain people when you get to one of those moments when every single thing in your life and every part of your life, physically and mentally and emotionally, has been devastated. You know, the Bible says that a three fold cord is not easily broken. And I believe that it works the same with the human body — the mind, the body, and the spirit. When you get wounded emotionally, you can’t separate yourself physically from it. When you get wounded physically, you can’t separate yourself from that. When you get wounded mentally, you can’t just cut off your emotions, and cut off your physical body because you are going through something mentally. You almost stand as a representation of the three-fold cord. And I believe that when a person gets to the point where all three of those cords are affected, or all three of those cords are damaged, you will have no other choice, but to number one take your life, or turn to the only thing that can heal all three at the same time. And that is the love of God — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
And so, that really became the explanation that the Lord gave me. That when all three are damaged then it is an automatic sign that this job is a job for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That this is not a job that is done just by counseling and it’s not a job that is done just by saying, “You know what? I am going to sleep my life away and just not get out of the bed.” You really need God. I had those choices to make: Either kill myself, or turn to God. And so I turned to God out of desperation as an end result. I had come to the end of the line. And so my whole concept behind it was, “God if you don’t do it, then it will never be done.”
FO: Can you expound on that?
JB: When a person has been affected and damaged emotionally, number one, mentally, number two, and physically, number three to the extent that it damages all three parts of the human makeup at one time, it becomes too devastating for a mere human being to say, “You know, I hurt physically, but I will be alright emotionally.”
For example, if I get wounded and my leg gets cut off, because of the physical injury, there is no way that I can say that that has not affected me emotionally and mentally. And whenever there is a situation in a person’s life where all three of those entities of a human being’s life have been affected to the level of devastation, there is no other recourse but suicide or God. There is no other recourse: You can’t turn to a person and say, “Make me feel better;” you can’t order a pizza and say, “This will make me feel all right;” because that won’t bring back your leg. It would certainly change how you feel about yourself, as an incomplete person because you are missing a limb. You have been affected by a situation that only the power of God can resolve. It’s going to mean that you have to make what I call the final decision and the final decision becomes, “Is it going to be God or am I going to take my life, because at this point, I have nothing else to lose or gain.”
FO: You have an awesome testimony and I know it will minister to our readers — how you came through it with you and God alone. Now, today, I understand that you’ve got some exciting new things coming up. You’ve got a new program coming up on BET. What is in your heart to accomplish in that program?
JB: Well, there is so much; it’s all new to me, and it’s very exciting. What I expect to accomplish, the task of trying with everything that I have within me and everything that I have been gifted to do from the Lord, is to bring about the kind of talk show that addresses every day problems in every day situations in which you are affected. We have a lot of talk shows that I feel bring guests with different situations in their life that the show sometimes appears more an extortion of the person, more so than a way to help resolve the issue. I know I won’t be able to resolve everybody’s problem or have an answer for everything, but at least I can offer a spiritual suggestion to the point that by the time the program ends the person has been literally and spiritually led into a direction of some hope. If not led to the answer, led into the direction of the hope or be given some spiritual encouragement even if I didn’t have the total answer for her situation. I want to let the guest know that I think they can make it ... to help them think they can make it.
FO: Sounds like a great show. And it is to begin in 2007, correct?
JB: Yes, in 2007.
FO: And beyond that, I understand that you have launched your own record company, Flow Records.
JB: Yes, that kind of started the same way that my ministry did with Bishop Jakes — I think it was just the timing of the Lord because I had tried to shop my record when I first knew that the Lord wanted me to do the CD and I shopped it and I shopped it and I shopped it and everyplace that I went to get a deal it seemed as if we were just headed in two different directions. I really couldn’t get anybody to really see what I was wanting to do. I wanted to produce a product of ministry that when the listeners got alone by themselves, they would use my CD as an experience with God. I think alot of places that I went, they just wanted good music. I don’t think they wanted the intensity of the way that I ministered. And so I became discouraged; I kept looking and looking and nothing was coming through. And one day I was driving down the street in my car and the Holy Spirit said, “Start your own record company.” And I was like, “What?!” “Start your own record company,” God said. And I said, “I can’t do that.” And the Holy Spirit was like, “Why not?” And so I drew up all the papers and did it: I just released my own record on my own label. And in 59 days, it went gold, and became number one on the Billboard Gospel chart. That was just the favor of God. Sometimes things happen for me that I can’t even imagine, I think I am like a dog that gets wet in the rain, you know you just come in the door and just shake yourself until the water just splatters everywhere. Sometimes that’s how I feel. I just have to shake myself because of the things God does for me!
FO: Flow Records is solely for the production of your records?
JB: No; I have started a record company and we are accepting demos from any and everybody because we are looking for ministries and we are looking for people that just have a real heart for ministry, have a real heart to touch God’s people, and who are looking for that piece of something that gives that person that “aha” moment in the spirit. So, we are accepting projects; we’ve got four releases that have been slated for 2007 and are going to produce very, very powerful projects. And we are really getting excited about that.
FO: Oh, I bet you are — and our readers will be very excited to hear that as well.
JB: It will be all nationalities, all kinds of music — Spanish music, whatever will touch God’s people in the culture it will touch them in. So, it is not labeled as an African American label and I don’t want people to get that perception of it. It is a label that we are after the flow of the Spirit — that’s why it is called Flow Records. Flow Spanish, Flow Caucasian, Flow Italian, we are looking for whatever God wants.
FO: Now, you, I have found, are known for many, many things — for your music ministry, for hosting a revival as the only female, for “The Essence of a Woman” in Houston; but you personally, Juanita Bynum, what would you most want to be known for?
JB: I would want to be known for a woman that absolutely loved God, and a woman who has a prayer life. That would be the ultimate for me. I don’t say that to sound good. But I know being one who only went to high school, who didn’t go to theology college, I came into an arena attempting to do things that only men in the gospel did. You know, I was told not to attempt to do auditoriums, that what I needed to do was keep my ministry geared toward hotel ballrooms and the whole nine yards. And the time that I stepped out and made the decision that I wanted to go to an auditorium, I got all kinds of resistance — an African American female had not done that before. In my first year, 7,000 people attended; then I went back to the same people and had 10,000 attending by the next conference at the Ice Palace, then 26,000. We went back there again and had to turn people away and rent the 5,000 seats across the street from the Ice Palace. We went to the St. Louis Dome with another 42,000 in the audience, and then finally we ended up at the Georgia Dome with 58,000 attending. I just kept my focus on what God said for me to do.
And so, I figure in that respect, my bottom line answer to you, none of that could not have been done without prayer. You just don’t do that. If you don’t have all of the means that you need, to accomplish your own record company; you write your book and your book hits the New York Times’ best seller list, selling more than 600,000 copies. All the things that God has done, I am telling you, I shake myself like a dog in the rain because I just say to people that this is a result of prayer! It is nothing else but prayer. That is the only thing that could have allowed all of this to happen. I don’t have connections, and I am not that smart; you know, I look alright, but I don’t consider myself the most beautiful woman in the world. It’s just the favor of God.
And when people talk about the favor of God, they think that it is something that is a gift that God only gives to one person. It is a gift that I believe God gives to people who want a relationship with Him. And I think that I had to go through the process of proving that to the Lord — that I didn’t just want His Hand, I wanted His heart. I wanted to know God, and I wanted a real relationship with God; that if He didn’t give me all the money in the world, if He didn’t give me fine cars and fine houses, that I am content with knowing that I have You everyday that I can come to and talk to. And when I started out on that kind of relationship, everything else just started falling in my pathway.
FO: Do you think that’s one of the problems in people’s prayer lives — that they are just praying for things?
JB: I know that’s the problem. I know that that is one of the major problems in the kingdom; because right now it’s about the money, it’s about being a big hit. I run into people now that are coming up behind me in ministry, and it breaks my heart because they will back stab anybody for that next platform. They have no lead and no alignment to anybody but themselves. I just look at them and I shake my head because I am trying to say to them, “If you are trying to get attached to a person because you think that person is your next hit, the person may not be the next hit for tomorrow. But if you make your next hit as a relationship with God and you make that your permanent place and the place that you have committed yourself to be, then when others have come and gone, you will still be here.”
It took over 20 years for me in ministry; it took me 10 years in national ministry, and I have watched people come and go and God has blessed me to still be here. And it’s not because I got the hookup, not because I rub shoulders with a lot of famous preachers in this country; it is because I rub shoulders with God. It is my relationship with Him. And when He sees things in me that please Him, I haven’t come to a place that is so big in the eyes of the kingdom, that I forget who I am to God. And I am not afraid to deal with those areas, and I don’t mind sharing those areas with the people when I get up to preach because what I am trying to show them is that all of this will vanish tomorrow, but you’ve still got to make it into the kingdom.
That is what I keep first and foremost in my mind. When my ministry is not big, when my name up in lights is gone, and the next powerful ministry superstar is on board, I still have my relationship with God, and if I still have that, then I haven’t lost anything. Because then I would have accomplished everything that God has allowed me to accomplish, and I have done and run the course that He wanted me to run, and that’s how I see my ministry. I don’t see my ministry as “Juanita Bynum got the New York Times’ bestseller, she can pack up auditoriums, when she’s on TBN, you know the ratings are high.”
I don’t look at my ministry, I look at it that I am accomplishing that assignment that God has given me. That when the assignment is over with, then I shift and I move with God.
FO: So, what’s the thing that’s closest to your heart? It sounds like it is your relationship with God.
JB: That’s what it is. It’s all that it’s cracked up to be and more. Whatever people look at me to see, I want them to know that Juanita Bynum has a relationship with God or she prays or whatever. I tell people all the time that the best way I can describe myself, I don’t fake prayer, I pray for real because that’s the only way I can survive. And I say that because those particular demons that tried to destroy my life, the spirit of insanity, and the spirit of anorexia, and the spirit of low self-esteem, the spirit of suicide, those demons, though they have been cast out of my life, they do not cease to follow through a reentry in an opportunity. When you know that, and you know that the enemy is just waiting for when you think you are somebody, he will step back in.
And so I have to lead a life of prayer. To walk in the peace of God in my mind, I have to lead a prayer life. Because even to this very day, if I am not careful the enemy will say to me, “Look at you, don’t you look fat? You are really fat.”
I can walk into a dressing room and get ready to try on an outfit, something in a size 12 and it doesn’t fit me, and it could be that it is not even cut for my body type, and the enemy will say, “You see how fat you are, you see the fact that nothing in the store will fit you, do you know what, you ought to stop eating again.”
And I have to stand right there in the dressing room, and say “Satan I rebuke you right now.”
So, it doesn’t mean that the spirit of the tormenter doesn’t try to follow you. The more you do in the kingdom, and the more you work for God, and the more you surrender to God, the more angry the enemy is. So, he doesn’t have to try any new tactics, all he needs to do is just go back and get the old ones and just wait for a more opportune moment.
FO: That’s true. Now, let’s talk about what’s ahead for Juanita Bynum Ministries.
JB: We are getting ready for our Women on the Front Line Conference, November 1-4, 2006, and I will be kicking off my music tour, which is coming up September 22nd. I am going on a 8-week tour and the tour will be centered around the story that Martin Luther stamped his 25-page thesis on the front door. And it’s going to be taken from that era. Micah Stamply, myself, and Myron Williams will be doing that tour, and telling the story about the revolution of worship and reviving the spirit of worship.
At the end of February 2007, I will be touring the play, “No More Sheets,” which was a message that sold over a million copies. And it’s still our number one seller in our ministry. Next year we will also offer a reunion revival called the Weapons of Power, a summit for a limited number — 5,000 attendees. I kept it small because I wanted to make sure that we are not just gathering crowds, but that we are also impacting lives; so I cut the registration down to 5,000 women only.
Also, I will be headed back to Africa next year. I will be touring in Africa and in Europe in ministry. We just left Kenya in August, which was the greatest experience that I have ever had in my life with over 750,000 attending. According to the Prime Minister, it was the largest gathering of any crusade that has ever hit Kenya. It was an amazing experience with the Lord when we prophetically spoke in Kenya and even changed some things in the government with the prophecy that was given all over the country. So, my schedule is really out there for next year.
FO: It sounds like it.
JB: Yes, it’s out there for next year. We are also launching the Country Spa, a women’s spiritual spa retreat of more than 30 acres, with 15 acres of water front. And all of that is in the making, along with my new spa line release, the Mount Olive line, which will be based on olive oil. I told you, I’m like a dog in the rain, just shakin’ my head!
FO: In all your spare time...
JB: In all my spare time…[laughing]…I try to take a nap, but other than that in all my spare time I get a chance to hang out with my husband and go to the mall and just kind of take a moment. But the way I look at it right now, during this season I am in a window. You have to understand, when you are in a window, you know when it’s time to play and when it’s time to work. I don’t take off and play when I am in a window of work. Right now, when I get a few moments to take off and go do something fun — play tennis or something like that — it’s just a moment, because by the time I come and pick up the tennis racket, my email is loaded with messages because I’ve got all these things cooking at the same time.
FO: That is so true! Thank you for sharing your heart with us; we have been honored to talk with you.
