A Tennessee megachurch pastor believes America needs a dose of hope, so Allen Jackson will launch a weeknight TBN program Monday with just that message.
Mr. Jackson, the senior pastor of World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro for 35 years, is known for his television and radio outreach through the eponymous Allen Jackson Ministries. Those broadcasts are largely teaching programs, offering weekly sermons preached to the 15,000 members of his suburban, non-denominational Nashville congregation.
The new half-hour program, “Allen Jackson NOW,” will air at 7 p.m. Eastern time and be more of an interview format. TBN officials say the program aims to be “a guiding hand for those who want to find a way past the negativity before things get worse.”
In a video interview, Mr. Jackson said that instead of sermons, “we’ll take the issues that are in play in culture, whether it’s antisemitism or what’s happening on our college campuses.”
He said the show’s focus will be on offering solutions.
“I think we need a pathway towards a better future,” Mr. Jackson said. “We’re not going to get healthier by just wishing we would be healthier. Our colleges and universities aren’t going to become places where the truth is told more clearly unless we kind of chart a path towards that. So we want to acknowledge where we are and see if we can understand what it would look like to get to a better place.”
The Tennessee native’s path to the pulpit and nightly broadcasting is a bit different from that of many of his peers.
His father, George, is an equine veterinarian who expanded a home Bible study group into the massive World Outreach Church congregation. The elder Mr. Jackson and Betty, his wife, now spend part of the year in Jerusalem in charge of the Derek Prince Ministries branch there.
Working with his father in the veterinary practice — something his two brothers also did — taught important lessons. “I’m happy I grew up in a barn,” he said.
“It gave me a love for science, gave me an understanding of the diagnostic process,” Mr. Jackson said. “It also kept me grounded and rooted with people and the outcomes of hard work and just some fundamentals.”
He earned an undergraduate degree at Oral Roberts University and originally thought he would attend the ORU’s medical school. Instead, the influence of the late evangelist — “still very much involved with the school when I was there,” Mr. Jackson said — offered spiritual formation and “God kind of redirected my profession.”
Mr. Jackson helped with the start of World Outreach Church and went to Vanderbilt University’s seminary to see “what a bit more technical theological education was like” and because the school’s Nashville location made it convenient to attend.
“To be honest, it was a pretty godless place,” he said. “But it was a wonderful peek behind the curtain of critical thinking and biblical criticism. The things now that are in the public square, they were training ministers in Vanderbilt two or three decades ago.”
He said further studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary near Boston rounded out his educational experience.
Mr. Jackson credits his church team, “about 200 volunteers and several staff people,” with supporting his ministry and a TBN executive producer with “a very strong background in news production” for making it possible to “go sit in front of the camera.”
Also in his plans, he said, is a book on “Jesus, his friends and politics, which really [is] just trying to encourage people that we have to engage our culture.”
“The goal,” he said, “isn’t to advocate for parties or candidates, but to recognize that a biblical worldview needs to be a voice in culture.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.