Joan
The Season of Marriage For God's Chosen Women
Now, of course, it’s worth mentioning Joan’s story doesn’t
end well. Answering God’s call comes with absolutely no guarantees. Evangelist
Juanita Bynum might be the textbook model of both right and wrong turns.
Bynum’s ministry exploded after she divorced in 1997. The very
model of God's chosen woman, Bynum preached effectively with
power and authority, touching the lives of tens of thousands and
eclipsing her own pastor in terms of her reach and fruitfulness.
Bynum's un-sugar-coated, tough, no-nonsense, No More Sheets
ministry, tailor-made for black women, mined a long-ignored vane
in ministry, a territory previously left almost exclusively to
Bishop T.D. Jakes, one of Bynum's mentors. Very quickly, Bynum
became the most recognizable and well-known and sought-after
black female evangelists in the country.
However, as her
ministry prospered, her ego seemed to balloon to the point where
she began referring to herself as “Prophetess,” and engaged in a
disgraceful squandering of her followers’ tithes and
offerings—to the tune of a reported million dollars—on an
over-the-top, utterly ridiculous and self-indulgent wedding,
complete with idiotic-looking giant tiara, for
a second marriage that lasted less than five years. This was the
ultimate in Church Folk Nonsense, you people (yes, you) writing checks to
this person who has clearly and obviously disconnected from God.
This is why you have to know God for yourself. Thousands of
"silly women" [2 Tim. 3] got caught up in this obscenity: a
million
dollars. Look at me! Look at me! Bynum made an absolute
fool of herself and perhaps deservedly so. This person, running
around calling herself "prophetess," as "Dr." was no longer a
big enough title as "Evangelist" was before it. This is a woman
completely lost in self. How many hungry people could she have
fed with a million dollars? How many naked clothed? What is the
work of the Gospel? She's profiteering off the Gospel, whoring
out the Gospel for her own selfish nonsense. And far too many of
you sisters look up to this terribly lost person, which forces
me to question how well my sisters know Christ.
A minister who's been divorced is crippled in the eyes of many
believers. Her ability to be taken seriously becomes gravely at
risk as people wonder what's wrong with her. A pastor is
supposed to have his house in order. If God does not reign in a
minister's home, in a pastor's house, people simply don't take
them seriously. A divorce is a body blow to any plans you have
for God. The fifteenth qualification for a prospective bishops
says, "One that ruleth well his own house, having his children
in subjection with all gravity; For if a man know not how to
rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of
God?" Pastors usually have the most ignorant, irresponsible,
selfish and ungodly children whom the congregation ends up
tip-toeing around out of deference to the pastor who should not
be the pastor since the conduct of his children, even his grown
children, tell the story of what goes on at home behind closed
doors. God does not reign in this man's house. He cannot
introduce his own children to Jesus, he cannot keep his brassy,
ignorant, mean wife in check—which is like erecting a
billboard in the sanctuary declaring he does not show her enough
attention. Nasty "first" ladies are like little children acting
out for attention, which makes it obvious there are problems in
the marriage, in the home. Yet you folks are falling over
yourselves fawning over your "pastor."
A minister who's been twice divorced is a complete joke. Only
the die-hard cultists will follow her, but nobody takes her
seriously. It's over. Pastors and ministers into their third or
fourth marriage send the message that they lack discipline and
control, as Paul's pastoral advice advocates marriage only for
those men who "cannot control themselves" [I Corinthians 7]. I
doubt God is asking ministers to be celibate, but I believe He
does require us to have self-control. A married pastor's first
investment is his wife. Then his children and their children,
with his flock being, at minimum, third on his list. Our churches
traditionally shun unmarried or divorced pastors because mainly
of our ignorance about 1 Timothy 3 where Paul lists one of the
qualifications of the pastorate as being, "...the husband of one
wife..." from which our churches interpret a pastor must be
married. This is faulty and ignorant exegesis. If Paul, who
disdained marriage and who, himself, was not married, intended
that scripture to mean, "A pastor must be married," he would
have said a pastor must be married. Why on earth would Paul have
said a pastor must be "the husband of one wife?" and why do we
assume it's just the archaic King James, when most every other
translation reads the same? If being married is what the verse
means, why does the Catholic church—from which all Christian
tradition stems—require their leaders be unmarried and
celibate, like Paul, like Jesus?
Paul wasn't talking about a church elder being married. He was talking about a church elder having no more than one wife. It was about limiting an elder's distractions. During the early church, polygamy was the order of the day, and a man could have as many wives as he could afford dowries for. A man could also engage a woman he was prohibited (by class or tradition) from marrying as a concubine. Such men usually had many children and many headaches and distractions.
The “million-dollar” wedding of Dr. Juanita Bynum, well-known
evangelist and author of the best-selling
Matters of the Heart,
to Bishop Thomas W. Weeks III featured a wedding party of 80,
all friends and family, 1,000 guests, a 12-piece orchestra, and
a 7.76-carat diamond ring. The black-tie wedding cost “more than
a million,” the bride said, and included flowers flown in from
around the world. “My dress,” she says, “took nine months to
make. All of the crystals on the gown were hand-sewn. The
headpiece was sterling silver, hand-designed.”
Why did she spend so much time and effort on the wedding?
“This,” she said, “was my once-in-a-lifetime wedding, and I did
it this way because I plan to stay married.”
This foolishness could not possibly have been inspired by God, nor was it God-breathed. It was all about self, Dr. Prophetess Bynum having succumbed to self long ago. This is an occupational hazard for Joan, whom this dear sister most assuredly once was before she allowed self to rule her. But this is the trap so many of our sisters fall into: wallowing in their vanity and placing emotion over intellect.
For every Joyce Meyer or Gloria Copeland there are probably a half-million committed female laborers in the Gospel who live in obscurity and die in poverty or of some terrible disease. We wonder where God is in this. Where was God for Joan of Arc, whom the British eventually captured and burned alive at the age of nineteen? Where was God for the Apostle Stephen who was stoned to death? For Paul himself, who died alone in prison? Where was God for my grandmother, who suffered indescribable agony for years before finally dying? This is the mystery of God. People reject Christ because they don’t like the puppet show. They accepted Jesus and they still lost their house. A life without challenges is not what Christ’s promise is all about. He promises us an abundant life—meaningful, productive, worth living—all things we compromise when we hitch up with somebody the minute we get an itch. Misery is subjective. It is, more often than not, self-inflicted. I know a lot of married couples. Of those, I can count the number of happily married couples on one hand. The rest, to one degree or another, have some lonely sister putting on a happy face on Sunday while spending most of her week alone—either literally or emotionally—staring out a window, wondering what happened.
