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| Pastor Mack Louallen |
Bishop Jakes |
Pastor Mack: Hello, This is Pastor Mack Louallen.
Bishop Jakes: How are you?
Pastor Mack: I’m doing wonderful. It’s a privilege to get to interview you today for Fresh Outlook. We are so pleased that you let us have this opportunity and I know a sliver of your time is very valuable to you.
Bishop Jakes: No problem, I’m glad to serve.
Pastor Mack: My wife and I are pastors of Solomon’s Porch Church here in Dayton, Tennessee. Kim Potter, the editor of the magazine, attends our church; she is adding a “Pastor to Pastor” department to Fresh Outlook, and it has begun with you. We appreciate you very much, sir. The first question that I wanted to ask you is when did the Lord first give you the vision for “MegaFest?”
Bishop Jakes: At the end of the Woman Thou Art Loosed and ManPower for 2003, I really began to pray about it. I felt like it was time to transition MegaFest into more of an event to where all of the family could come. We began to pose a question to the crowd: If we were to bring them together, would they be supportive of that? And they responded affirmatively.
Pastor Mack: With it being a family event, is that part of the reason you chose the location of Atlanta?
Bishop Jakes: That is primarily the reason. Atlanta is one of the few cities that has the infrastructure to accommodate that size crowd. It was very important to us that we provide an event that was user friendly and that the participants could, if they register early, get a hotel close enough that they could walk the street and it still be a safe environment. We’ve had as high as 86,000 women to attend an event — Mama’s and Grandmama’s, and what have you. You want it to be safe, and you want it to be as accessible as possible.
Pastor Mack: That is a fabulous way to look at it, from the attendees’ prospective. What did you do during the waiting period — between the time the Lord started speaking to you in 2003, until you saw the vision manifested? Generally, the Lord gives us a dream or a vision or He shows us something, but how would you encourage people to keep it alive until they are able to see it?
Bishop Jakes: You know, I think you measure the distance between where you are and the destiny that God has for you and understand that small steps will get you there. It’s not any one step. The Bible says the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. There was a lot of steps that we had to make as a staff and as our volunteers began to organize in our local church, while we were waiting, we were working. I encourage people who have a vision to work while they wait.
Many times when we talk about waiting, people think that they are going to sit down and just wait on angels to come in and you know, the Lord’s going to send a mighty wind and blow away the opposition; but really, you have to work while you wait, and it really took incredible amount of work to organize a meeting of that magnitude and see it go as smoothly as it did last year.
Pastor Mack: Where do you see MegaFest in the next five to ten years down the road?
Bishop Jakes: Whooah! That’s a hard question. [laughing] Life is so unpredictable and following God causes me to be in a cautious mode about projections. I try to make plans as if He weren’t going to interrupt them, while understanding that He may take us down a different path without any notice.
I think that MegaFest will be an international, world-wide gathering of believers from all colors, cultures, and kind. To come together and worship the Lord in a country that promotes freedom of religion and worship. I think it’s exciting that America would host an international event and it is already international in that we have had, I think, 70 different countries represented in MegaFest. Thousands and thousands of people outside of the United States come. I think it’s gonna continue to become somewhat like the Olympics is to sports: For Christians to come together to have an opportunity to have a conference, to have the opportunity to have a festival, to get education on very practical things like investments and business. It will range from money management to spiritual things. It’s all a part of our life and who we are.
Pastor Mack: Let me take this moment to say something to you, Bishop Jakes: One compliment that I have appreciated hearing about my own pastors is this, “they are real.” Everybody that speaks of them says, “they are just real.”
I must say the same about you. I appreciate your realness and how genuine you are even in the answers that you are giving. You are just who you are, that’s why you are so used of the Lord. I can tell you’re real in just talking to you over the telephone and I praise God for that.
Bishop Jakes: Thank you, thank you for that very much.
Pastor Mack: With all the messages and tools that are available at MegaFest, the speakers and the information, the impartation, the wisdom and the word that comes out, how do people jump in at different levels? I realize you have people that maybe have never been to a Christian organization or conference meeting and then you have those who are seasoned and have walked with the Lord for years. How do you separate that?
Bishop Jakes: One of the great challenges of MegaFest is there are so many great speakers that are speaking simultaneously. So the first thing that I would recommend is that if you come with a family, or come with a group of friends, split up, attend different things, take notes on the meetings that you go to and then come back to your hotel rooms and restaurants and discuss what happened at each event. Because it is not physically possible to be in on everything that is going on. The young people are having events that are geared to children under 12, teenagers are having their events for 13 – 21 year olds, and the adults, both men and women, are having things going on all the time, so split up so you can get as much out of it as you can.
The second thing is, I think it is important that you take notes also, because sometimes as you take notes, you write down things that weren’t really said, but were impressed upon your spirit, inspired by what was said. And as you take your own notes, you are able to jot down little things that were significant, that leaped out to you from what the speaker shared as well as what the Holy Spirit impressed upon your heart.
The third thing is to get the tapes of the messages, because I guarantee you every time you hear the message you’ll hear something that you didn’t hear before.
Pastor Mack: That’s exactly right. That’s being seasoned with salt, so that it’s there when you are ready for it. With my wife and I — we have been in full-time ministry for over a year — tell us, how do you and First Lady Serita maintain the balance with ministry and family?
Bishop Jakes: In all honesty, I’m not sure that we do keep the balance. I think it’s very important for all busy people to realize that sometimes you are going to get out of balance. And what you do is you live in a constant state of correction, where you just see that you’re going and spending too much time in this area and you just correct it by balancing it out to the other way. At the end of the day, you know that you have not done enough to be sure that it is your efforts that cause you to have abundant life. That’s why we have God and God’s grace that makes up the difference for what we didn’t get done that day. It is an ongoing effort to be balanced, but I’m not sure that we’ve ever mastered it, because to him who much is given, much is required.
Pastor Mack: What advice would be one of the priority pieces of information that you would give to new pastors starting out?
Bishop Jakes: Jesus said it all when He said to His disciples, “have faith in God.” You must have faith in the God that called you. That He will qualify you. And that He knew who you were when He called you.
Secondly, have faith in yourself and that means, be yourself. Avoid trying to be somebody that you’re not. But just be yourself, because the Holy Spirit will anoint you the more transparent you are. The more you are just real in terms of how you respond to situations.
