ON THIS Fathers' Day, we choose as our cover feature, a man who is the father of three children, but who, more importantly, has made it his business to mentor and influence the lives of other men.
He is the Reverend Glen Samuels, father of daughters Faith, Hope and Charity, but who is known in Adventist circles as the inner-city specialist.
Glen Samuels was born in Burnt Savannah, St. Elizabeth to a teen mom who proceeded to have five others and experienced a tough time raising them. Glen would walk three miles to school and back without even breakfast. What gave him focus he says, was his conversion at age 14 and a preaching career which began at 16 and which has prospered ever since then.
In Maverly recently, perhaps, had the men known who they would be meeting, they would have stayed away. Those who ventured into the tent to be 'entertained' met Glen Samuels, he of the silver tongue, a man possessed of a chain that tugs at the hearts through which a man's blood pours. At least so it appears.
The reverend knows his men.
He told Outlook in a recent interview, "It's hard for a man to leave from the back of the tent (where they love to gather), brave the bright lights and come to the front, to the point of surrender. You take a break to focus on the men, to make them feel that they are very important. It was good to watch the number of young and middle aged men coming forward," Samuels said.
Glen Samuels, who has been a minister all his life, has garnered a reputation among his peers for ministering to men. But, his success we find, has more to do with what he does than the words he uses at the podium.
In 2003, the SDA minister was held up by a gun man in Montego Bay, not far from his home. It was nightfall when he saw the face with hair corn rowed and the gun pointing through his car windows. "Get out," the man said.
He told the man that he would not be coming out of the car and when he reached into his pocket there was no billfold. The amazing thing was that he convinced the man to wait in the same location while he went home for some money to return.
According to Samuels, he did see a police patrol and was tempted to stop, but something prevented him from doing so. He returned with the money and, over a 12-month period became mentor to this man who said that he had a five-year-old child to feed, no job and no money.
Locked up in goal on 13 different occasions, the gunman had walked from job site to job site for the last three weeks, without success. The morning he had left home, there was nothing to eat.
Before daybreak, the morning after meeting Reverend Samuels, Jackson (as we will call him) destroyed his hired gun and buried the fragments in the ground. He had awaken his sister earlier that morning to tell her about the reverend and to say that he had never met anyone like him before.
Jackson, coached by the Seventh Day Adventist preacher who until recently kept their liaison a secret, turned his life around even thought the feat was a hard one.
The former gang member, reports his mentor, was harassed by the men in Rose Heights St. James who he previously run with.
He was chopped on one occasion, and on another the shack that he called home was burnt to the ground. Right after his decision to put down the gun, his most prized possession, his musical system, was stolen.
A construction worker, Jackson was also harassed by others who saw the change in him. He came to Reverend Samuels and stated that he would never betray the trust that he placed in him. After one altercation in which he was cut, he voluntarily went to the police, people who he did not trust and who in the past had made life miserable for him.
What did Glen Samuels do to create the new man before him?
It is more about what he does than what he says, you will find.
"I will be your confidante as long as I am here. Call me," Rev. Samuel's told Jackson.
He came.
He also promised him to share his resources with him. He invited him to his home to eat. His wife did not know who the man was. He also got him a job on a construction site - an effort which would need to be repeated again and again.
The former gunman has also been assisted in rebuilding his room and opening a small grocery shop. But things are slow.
Says Samuel Jackson, "I am convinced that while we cannot provide jobs for everyone, the government has to look seriously at an inner-city project to keep these young men busy. If you cannot help the many who are poor, you cannot help the many who are rich. Until we start to deal with unemployment, we cannot end the scourge of crime. Poverty is not the primary cause of crime, but it is the context in which it can fester."
The veteran of many inner-city tent crusades including in Columbia in South America, Brooklyn and the Bronx in New York , Glen Samuels states that men will do almost anything to achieve greatness in life. This includes being given new things to hope for, where previously they had no hope.
In Jamaica, the men who come into the tents bright lights are bemused and hoping for a new purpose in life.
"One in Maverly told me that he would have killed his father in a few nights. Sometimes you can give them a sense that there is a better side of life, that they can make a contribution. Its amazing what this can do.
"In Maverly, I met men who told me that they had been involved with drugs, guns and robberies. If they trust you, they will talk to you, expressing their hopes and fears. There are many young ones who need leadership, but those leadership is lacking in many areas."
Living in Montego Bay since 1991, his ministry has extended to the communities of Flankers, Rose Heights, Canterbury and has had many close encounters with men who live by the gun.
Still, they are not the only criminals he has encountered. "There are those who hide behind the curtains of middle class respectability, who feed off the proceeds of crime."
The reverend states that the well-to-do need a transformation of the heart which will tell him to use his worldly goods for God. "If a business person would help others around him, he would not need to pay protection money.
"Young people would say, you cannot rob this man, he is helping us."
Glen Samuels says that he is doing nothing that others cannot do. "Part of the conviction I have had is that the preaching of the gospel is not intended to make individuals church members but to create change in their lives. Change them one at a time, because that one can kill 10. If you save one, you have then saved 10."
Briefly tempted by politics, Samuels who is a graduate of West Indies College (now the Northern Caribbean University) and Andrews University in the United States has turned away from this as something that would possibly compromise his faith.
Living in Montego Bay and working in Mandeville, he spends a part of each year searching for the lost souls in places where politicians only go to charm for votes.
"People say that Christianity does not work. It is just that it has not been genuinely tried. When I hear the critics I smile. I know the power."
In Rose Heights, Jackson's neighbours remain astonished at the change in his life, still surprised to see him walking with a Bible in his hand, to see him cut his hair.
Glen Samuels says that he knows many others like him. The man who spent the days after Hurricane Ivan driving around the island's south with food and other items for flood victims, and who hurt his hand while fixing the roofs of others during the period, believes that life must be lived not for the self, but for those around you.
At West Indies College, he was fortunate to have had someone who paid for his education every year for four years. The money was enough, he said, to help with the tuition of others, buy them books and feed them too. Always, he believes, life must be lived unselfishly.
