EVER since his mother dared death to usher him into this world it has been his stage. And it has been a stage he has used to declare the God who defied cancer just to make him live.

British by birth but with strong Jamaican roots, Bishop John Francis has been making waves in his homeland and the world over, even though his radical approach at one point set many sanctified tongues wagging and branded him an outcast.

“I’ve always been radical. I was never accepted, and I took the flak for it but now people see for themselves,” the lithe-bodied dynamo told the Observer before the start of his “Order My Steps” conference in Kingston last week.

He tells his story with a quiet assurance, letting the force of his words convey the tenacity and firmness which marked his entrance into life.

“My mother had cancer. The doctor gave her over to die but she got healed. She couldn’t die yet because I wasn’t born yet. I was the child that was born after cancer and I was always told that I was a special child,” Francis said firmly.

But the delivery process did not stop with his first cry, Elfreda Francis kept pushing because she knew she had given birth to someone powerful.

“My mother, wonderful, powerful, excellent woman of God. She was the one who released me in ministry because my dad Bishop T G Francis was very strict, and she was the one who saw it first and asked him to release me,” Francis told the Observer.

That determined push from the first woman in his life saw him momentarily laying aside his successful music ministry to begin pastoring at 20 years of age.

“I have come from a legacy of preachers, I started preaching at the age of 16, but started pastoring my father’s church at the age of 20. After that I felt the Lord moving me to do something completely different and that’s when I started Ruach Ministries in Brixton, South London, somewhere around 14 years ago with 18 people. And then, after that, we ended up having 5,000 plus people coming to our services,” Francis said.

Ruach, he explained, is the Hebrew word for spirit. It also means the breath of God, the wind of God or life.

“I came across the word while doing a message and the Lord said to me call the name of the church Ruach. God said ‘there are two things you can do, you can either go with the wind or you can go against it. If you flow with me I will carry you where you need to go,” Francis said.

He went with the flow and from then on, the globe was his – Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Americas have witnessed his ministry personally and via a worldwide broadcast ministry, even though his own countrymen held him at a distance initially.

“It was quite difficult when I started pastoring. Everybody knew me as an artiste and not as a preacher so when I started preaching I didn’t do any singing for a while because they were saying, ‘people are only joining your church because they want to be in choir’,” he recalled.

“It took a little while but. it is when America started saying ‘wow’ that everything started to blow up from there,” Francis said, adding that the fact that he was by now a married minister helped locals accept him.

He was birthed against impossible odds and his ministry was no different.

“Most of my life has been a challenge, but I believe my life is to help, to coach people, to father people. I’m quite clear on what my destiny is and what I should be doing. I’m very clear as to who I am in the Kingdom of God. I don’t believe in failure, I don’t believe in ‘I can’t do a thing’.

“If you tell me I can’t do it, that’s the fuel to make me do it because I want to prove you wrong,” the bishop said.

With such a large church, the father of three daughters is no stranger to the issues confronting modern societies, and he

has not turned a deaf ear to the raging debate on homosexuality.

“Homosexuality is something that is in the church. Don’t let’s pretend it’s out the church; and most of it stemmed from abuse,” Francis said. But he noted that the role of the church is not to condemn nor expel but to deliver and then counsel the embattled individuals.

And even though some ‘churches’ have accepted the lifestyle, it is a no go with this Apostolic bishop.

“I’m not into that. First of all, I am governed by the word of God and the Bible is very clear about homosexuality… and if we can’t live within the confines of the word of God then we are living in sin,” he said.

On the matter of divorce he is no less forthright.

“Churches need to understand that they have to counsel people. I tell some people who come to me for counselling, ‘I don’t think you are ready for marriage yet’,” he stated.

Not a stranger to the waters of controversy, Francis also waded into the debate on the role of the church in matters of the state.

“It’s always been a difficult thing. In my area, we were the first church to have then British prime minister Tony Blair to any church. Why did he come? Because we set up an organisation called The Power of One. We decided that we were tired of people in government doing or not doing stuff. We then took people from our church and put them in the political arena so now the government was forced to look at our agenda,” he said.

According to Francis, the Church in Jamaica needs to understand that those in power “are not going to look at our agenda because they are not saved”.

“In the Bible, whenever a king or a governor needed to do something they would consult the prophet, they would consult the priest to see what the Lord was saying about the situation before they moved. And those days, if the prophet said you were out, you were out. If God says your time was up, it was,” Francis said.

“Jamaica is a Christian country, we have so many churches. Why aren’t we rising up and declaring the agenda? Why aren’t we speaking ‘thus saith the Lord to them’ and tell them listen, ‘if you do not lead according to what God is saying you won’t last’. I know we are scared of that, but that is what’s supposed to happen…We have a responsibility,” the bishop said.

With Jamaica on the verge of what is expected to be a fiercely contested general election, Francis said this was the cue for the church to flex its muscles.

“If God is saying a change in Jamaica, it will happen. Right now your present leader is Prime Minister Simpson Miller and as articulate as she is, as great as people are thinking about her, she needs the backing of the church and the church needs to stop thinking she can do it on her own,” Francis said.

Added Francis: “I believe that we have not flexed our muscles as the church because if we had done that we would have seen a difference in the country already. We have to understand that we have the power of God behind us and we can change the culture.”

“There is a mirror between Jamaica and where I am in London, and if we fix the challenges here it will benefit me there,” Francis added.

Author of four publications, Francis is also renown for his music ministry which has released some four albums.