I had just settled into my seat in the sanctuary, already awash in klieg lights, when one of the ushers, dressed in a burgundy sport coat, sat down beside me. I had made the mistake of chatting with the women at the welcome booth and, in the process, disclosed navely that I was in town to write an article about Jimmy Swaggart Ministries ten years after his celebrated-and very public-downfall.
You've got to keep the people's attention." Throughout a raucous and controversial career now in its fourth decade, Jimmy Swaggart has rarely had trouble keeping people's attention.ĭespite the dearth of congregants, my presence at Family Life Center was not entirely welcome. You've got to keep the people's attention. "You have to be loud one moment and quiet the next. Swaggarts son Donnie officially heads and does most of the sermons for the ministry.
"Preaching is like an orchestra," Swaggart told me. Because Jimmy Swaggart went on TV a few days after he was caught. Instead, he bobs and weaves and shouts and cries and spins his own magic. Throughout this 30-minute program, associate pastors Loren Larson, Jim Woolsey, Bob Cornell, and others join Brother Swaggart in discussing biblical genealogy, history, prophecy, and end-time events in a detailed verse-by-verse format. To suggest that Swaggart is behind the pulpit, however, is somewhat misleading he has never submitted easily to the constraints of pulpits-or, for that matter, to any other conventional boundaries. A Study In The Word is a daily teaching program hosted by Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Such a contrast might occasion yet another commentary on spiritual apathy, misplaced priorities, and the false gods of consumerism, until one remembers that the preacher behind the pulpit at the Family Life Center on this Sunday-as well as most Sundays-is a man named Jimmy Swaggart. The parking lot for the shopping mall is burgeoning on a Sunday, while the acres of parking for the Family Life Center are nearly vacant.
The Family Life Center lies on the edge of Baton Rouge just down the road from the newly opened Mall of Louisiana.