Farmer for Life - Pastor preaches listening, love and cows

Written by JACKIE KENNEDY | Photographed by BETH NEELY

The Rev. Lowinston Jackson, 79, lives on Goldmine Road in Grantville and farms three miles from there, at family property on Charlie Fuller Road, which he’s worked most all his life.

It comes naturally to him – like breathing – to cut hay, harvest vegetables and pull calves.

The only thing that comes as close to natural for the almost-octogenarian is preaching.

Ordained in the late 1980s, Jackson has pastored at Total Faith Missionary Church of God, a nondenominational church in Luthersville, since founding it in 2002. The church’s vision, he says, “is to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and – the most important part – to introduce God back into the family at home.”

A Hereford cow named Gertrude keeps a close eye on her newborn bull calf, less than a day old.

His own life is an example. He’s led his family in a Christian home “26 hours a day, 8 days a week,”
says Jackson.

“First thing, you have to have love in your heart,” says the preacher-farmer. “Love in your heart has to be overflowing to connect up with someone who doesn’t have love in their heart. You have to be able to listen instead of talk, and talk when you need to. You have to be able to share that, to live that, to love. And love is an action word: You have to put it into action, and that’s what I love to do.”

He learned it as a little boy, says Jackson, recalling how his father killed a hog at the end of harvesting season each year and gave food to those who helped with the crops.

“I watched that and said I want to do that,” he recalls. “The scripture says, ‘Give and it shall be given back to you, pressed down and running over.’ God gave me what I didn’t have, and that’s why I have what I have now. He made it all possible.”

A recent sermon, he notes, was on just this subject: It’s more blessed to give than to receive.

“I teach my children and nephews that it’s not about money, it’s about God,” he says.