Times Staff Writer

Pastor Gino Jennings doesn’t duck controversy.
Nor does he seek it.
It just seems that his interpretations of the Bible are such that they elicit strong reactions from those who hear them.
And the unabashedly frank way he conveys that biblical doctrine can be shocking.
Like the time when, during a televised sermon, he hoisted a hammer and bashed to bits a plaster statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary to demonstrate his belief that the Roman Catholic practice of praying to saints as intermediaries is blasphemous to God. “I tore down an idol. I tore down an image that is important to people so they could see that clay cannot do anything for you,” Jennings said when asked about the act. Or there is his unwavering belief, which he has preached about, that homosexuality is an abomination. “It is not the will of God for men to penetrate men or women to lay on women,” he explained. Such politically incorrect ideals have made Jennings, a diminutive man with a rumbling baritone, a target of hate mail and have led some to label him a religious loose cannon. Yet, despite some negative reaction, there is no disputing that his message has attracted an audience.
In the 20 years since establishing the First Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Jennings has grown the institution from a core of 12 believers who worshiped in the basement of his parents’ Hunting Park home to a denomination that has founded more than 15 satellite churches in the continental U.S.
Today his church, a towering structure more than a century old whose windows are appointed with ornate stained-glass designs, is based at 2431 Frankford Ave. in Port Richmond. It attracts hundreds of congregants at its regular Tuesday and Thursday evening prayer services and Sunday worship.
The Philadelphia location is the global headquarters of Jennings’ Truth of God movement and message.
The movement also counts nearly 200 international sanctuaries in Africa, Asia and Europe as members of the flock.
Through a regular radio program — bounced across the globe on a short-wave frequency of World Harvest Radio International (Web site: www.whri.com) — and a network of regional cable television broadcasts (shown locally each Sunday night at 10 on Comcast Cable’s Channel 42), Jennings has expanded the scope of his ministry to countless listeners and viewers.
That message, an ultra-orthodox strain of Pentecostal or Apostolic Christianity, is what people have been thirsting for, said Jennings, general overseer of the church.
“We base our religion on scriptural truth,” he explained. “The greatest response I get is from people who hear the program for the first time and say, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for.’ I don’t play around with the Bible.
“In most churches, people are used to one of two constant messages: Either God has a miracle with your name on it or God doesn’t want you to be poor,” Jennings continued. “I just stick with the scriptures. Preachers have played with the Bible for far too long, giving people hope for what is not true. The job of the church is for the betterment of people through the Bible. That’s why I stick with the Scripture in what I tell people.”
In the tradition of Quakers who settled this region hundreds of years ago, and storefront “holy-roller” preachers who came to prominence in the 1950s, his message is a mix of fire and brimstone and righteous exhortations.
He contends that many mainstream Christian denominations, and other religions, for that matter, pervert the Bible. As examples, he cites the endorsement of Christmas and other “heathen” holidays by some Christians.
“Many churches sponsor Christmas parties. I don’t remember anywhere in the Bible that it says the birth of Jesus was December twenty-fifth,” Jennings said. “Yet it’s a common practice in churches. If you’re going to tell the people something about Jesus, it ought to be the truth.”
Jennings takes similar exception to Easter — calling it a “long-term myth” that the date of Jesus’ resurrection is also the day to celebrate a rabbit who brings candy — Halloween and Christian rock, which he describes as an oxymoron.
“It is my job to preach what is written. The main thing that’s lacking in the (modern) church is discipline,” said Jennings, who believes that religious leaders have softened their stance on issues like abstinence and the sanctity of marriage to combat the trend of people moving away from religion.
"The will of God does not work in our favor," he added. "The Scripture is totally opposite of our will. The flesh says, ‘Get all you can and can all you get.’ God says, ‘Love not the world.’"
Perhaps that shoot-from-the-hip candor explains why his church continues to grow at a time when many mainstream religions are struggling with declining attendance and interest.
But that message also has created some enmity among his peers.
Jennings admits to receiving hate mail featuring such specific threats as “cutting his tongue out,” and he has been publicly chastised by the Apostolic Ministries of America Inc.
On its Web site — the address is www.apostolic-ministries.net — the denomination expressed dismay at “the fatal direction in which (Jennings) has decided to lead the Church of God; and because of his actions, many shall walk away from him.”
Jennings claims that he dropped the apostolic name from the church’s title to avoid denominational labels.
“God’s religion is holiness,” he noted. “So I pretty much eliminated the term ‘apostolic’ because it wasn’t a scriptural name.”
It is that holiness that Jennings seeks to promote from the pulpit. He preaches against homosexuality and women in the ministry, and in support of a strict adherence to the tenets of the Bible, including an emphasis on abstinence until marriage and the belief that there is only one God.
The church frowns on divorce. It doesn’t favor abortion or the death penalty, either.
Jennings claims that he doesn’t prepare sermons, choosing instead to read passages directly from the Bible and explain their practical applications to life in keeping with his philosophy that Scripture is the true guide.
Women who attend the First Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ are expected to dress modestly, with their heads and bodies covered. Because of this dress code, some initially think the church represents a sect of the Nation of Islam, a black American version of the Muslim religion.
Jennings is quick to refute those impressions, emphasizing that his church is not ethnically exclusive. The congregation at the First Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ is primarily black but counts several white and Latino members as dedicated followers.
Other First Church locations, such as one in North Carolina, have white congregations.
“I believe in only one race — the human race,” Jennings said.
In addition to North Carolina, there are First Church locations in Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, Louisiana, New York, Florida, Minnesota and Oregon.
Jennings travels almost weekly to both domestic and international churches under the First Church banner.
Given its current sphere of influence, it’s difficult to imagine that this church once had trouble finding a roof to keep over its head.
Jennings, who has no formal theological training, became involved in the ministry as a young teen. When Jennings was 16, he said, God revealed himself during a dream and foretold the path that Jennings would travel to spread the word.
By the mid ’80s Jennings was preaching in his parents’ basement.
“In the wintertime the basement was pretty cold, so for heat we would fill a large cooking pot with water and put it on the stove about four o’clock so the steam could heat up the basement. By the time (of the service), the pipes were so sweaty they were dripping,” he recalled.
When attendance outgrew the available space, the church moved to Mount Airy and started the radio broadcast. The next move occurred in 1992, to Port Richmond, where the church still thrives today.
But it was the radio broadcasts of Jennings’ sermons that really spread the word of the First Church and led to its expansion.
“They heard about me one by one. The services were recorded, then somehow or another this one and that one heard them,” he explained of the broadcasts.
Expansion began rather modestly in Stafford, Va.
“I only had one follower down there but I would ride back and forth to Virginia every month, preaching to one (person) every month for ten years,” Jennings said. “And then, through the grace of God, it’s like the bottom just fell out in Virginia and the work just grew.”
Behind the scenes, Jennings and his followers minister to prison inmates and engage in projects for the betterment of the community.
But he has no plans to stifle or even temper his message. He believes it continues to grow because people are desperate for some honest talk about God and religion.
“I eliminate the show business and trying to entertain people,” Jennings said. “I didn’t come to excite, I came to give insight.”••
For more information about the First Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, visit the Web site at www.truthofgod.com Reporter Julian Walker can be reached at 215-354-3038 or jwalker@phillynews.com