The Jimmy Jack story is the life journey of the youngest of nine children set against the turbulent times of the sixties, seventies and eighties. His story weaves a powerful tapestry across those chaotic decades, seen through the eyes of a boy dealing with the wounds his father carried from a WW II P.O.W. camp and the consequences of his mother’s leadership in the civil rights movement with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Subsequent mental breakdowns, rejection by the white community and being raised in a black culture led to interracial marriages and a multi-racial family.

Shock treatments and medication left his parents so sedated that Jimmy was left to fend for himself. The home exploded with a combustible mixture of violence and drug abuse. His dad was committed into a psychiatric ward 3 times and his mom 5 times. With no parental guidance, caught in the whirlwind of the Cultural Revolution, the drum beat of protest, Woodstock and the Vietnam War, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys, the entire family tried to escape through drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity. This led his immediate family into 15 divorces, broken dreams, detoured destinies and the AIDS virus that led to several deaths. Jimmy became a hopeless, homeless drug addict and alcoholic.
However, that is not the end of the Jimmy Jack story. The title tells it all – “I Can Dream Again.” On the threshold of death, he discovered a power greater than he had ever imagined.

I am the youngest of nine and was raised in a home full of violence and confusion. I started smoking pot at ten years old to find peace and comfort. At age eleven I was rushed to the hospital with an ulcerated stomach. By the time I enter junior high school, pot led me to alcohol and hard drugs. When I entered high school I had five felonies and the reputation of a “helpless trouble maker”. Having been kicked out of my home, I lived in my own apartment for my last year of high school where partying was my priority.

I met and moved in with my girlfriend, Miriam and for the next eight years we were evicted out of home after home. Finally I ended up living in cars or any home that had a bed or couch available. I began to use heroin at this time. Realizing I needed help, I entered a drug program only to get kicked out and told I was hopeless.

My best friend, Billy, and I went to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and bought four bags of heroin. I snorted one bag. Then I held Billy’s arm as he injected three bags. Billy overdosed and fell out of the van. I tried everything I knew to help save him but to no avail. The only thing left was to call out to God. So I cried out to God and paramedics came out of nowhere. They began to inject neutralizers to counteract the heroin and administer oxygen but no response. I heard them say, “He’s gone”. I begged them to keep working as I got on my knees on the side of that van and cried aloud, “Oh God, save Billy and I will commit my entire life to you”. Suddenly Billy came alive! I knew it was God.

After a course of life threatening events, I entered Brooklyn Teen Challenge on November 4, 1984 and Jesus instantly set me free. I married my girlfriend, Miriam, and together we entered the Teen Challenge Family Ministry. Six months later Billy entered Teen Challenge and eventually became an ordained minister.

Miriam and I went on to Central Bible College; graduated in 1989; came back to New York and founded Long Island Teen Challenge and Freedom Chapel Assembly of God. We have established a 30 bed men’s home on a large estate located in West Babylon and a 15 bed ladies’ home in Centereach. We have also pioneered one of the largest Teen Challenge outreaches in the United States (Freedom Outreach) ministering to over 600 people per week.

Society labeled Jimmy Jack an outcast but God called him to be a Pastor to the Outcast.

 

“In the nearly 36 years I’ve worked with substance abusers, I have never seen a family more devastated by drugs and alcohol than the Jack family! Nor have I ever seen more miracles take place in one family! All seven of the Jack Children became either hard-core addicts or substance abusers. Adele was addicted to pills, and Hugh was an alcoholic. Four of their children also married drug addicts, and the family took in another unofficial adoptee and official heroin addict named Billy. Thus, a total of 14 members of the Jack family were addicts!”

Excerpt From “The Cross Is Still Mightier Than The Switchblade” by Don Wilkerson

“Without God’s intervention through Teen Challenge Jimmy would have been another grim statistic of a drug overdose or violent death. Instead, he is an Assemblies of God minister and founder of Long Island Teen Challenge in West Babylon, New York, one of the largest centers in the United States. The center also planted a church where the majority of worshippers are Teen Challenge graduates.”

Excerpt From Charisma Life & Christian Living February 1998 Issue