The Potter’s House is the Voice and the Hand that encourages people to change their lives with hope, comfort and peace. Multiracial, nondenominational and operating 50-plus active outreach ministries, the organization has dominated church growth records since its inception in 1996, growing dramatically from the 50 families relocating from West Virginia with the Jakes family to more than 30,000 members to date. Christianity Today has called The Potter’s House “one of America’s fastest growing mega-churches.” Rivaling many corporations, the ministry employs nearly 400 staff members, including full-time finance, human resources, information technology, materials distribution, public relations, publications, and television production departments. The Potter’s House is fiscally sound, retiring within four years the financial debt incurred by the 191,000 square feet, $45 million sanctuary construction. For more information about Bishop Jakes and the ministry, visit www.thepottershouse.org. (See The Potter’s House Ministry Facts for individual ministry descriptions.)

Local Ministry Initiatives

The Metroplex Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) is the most immediate example of the ministry’s impact on community business development. Endeavoring to remedy social and economic disparities, Bishop Jakes founded the MEDC in 1998 to bridge socio-economic voids existing in urban America. A nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, MEDC works to impact the lives of individuals and families residing in historically underserved communities through the implementation of programs established under the umbrella of its core initiatives. The MEDC has sponsored home ownership conferences and youth mentorship programs, and in April 2005 launched an entrepreneurial training series.

Clay Academy was founded in 1998 by Bishop Jakes, and has since grown from its small beginnings to its new 70,000 square-foot campus in the heart of South Dallas. On October 10, 2006, Bishop and Mrs. Jakes and The Potter’s House church family formally dedicated the school’s recently constructed $14 million learning facility to the memory of his late mother, Mrs. Odith P. Jakes, an educator and mentor. The first of seven structures in a planned $80 million campus, the white-columned, red-brick school building sits atop a hill at 3303 Potter’s House Way in Mountain Creek about half a mile west of The Potter’s House church. Clay Academy is the crown jewel of an advanced “new urbanism” model, Capella Park. More information about Clay Academy can be found by visiting www.clayacademy.org. More information about the MEDC and Capella Park can be found by visiting www.medc-dallas.org.

The Potter’s House, working in tandem with a federally sponsored government program, currently administers The Texas Offenders Reentry Initiative (TORI) program, operating in Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. These cities were chosen because they are Texas’ five primary “reentry points,” cities where former offenders reenter society after serving their sentences in Texas prisons. TORI is the ministry’s after-care reentry program providing intensive case management services, including HIV/AIDS awareness and substance abuse recovery counseling and education, and other wrap-around services such as family and marriage counseling, and pre-employment counseling.

Bishop Jakes and The Potter’s House have also invested more than $500,000 in outreach to prison inmates. The church’s New Creation Prison & Jail Ministry develops programs and services that equip, empower, support, and restore offenders and former offenders. To help them with their journey, this support is also offered to families of offenders and correctional staff. Local churches are provided training to better embrace and support former and current prisoners and their family members. The ministry’s Adopt-a-Prison program has meaningfully impacted the day-to-day lives of inmates, and contributes significantly in reducing the recidivism rate of program participants through spiritual support and a network of churches sympathetic to the plight of inmates re-entering the system. Every major ministry conference, including MegaFest, is broadcast live into prisons around the country.