Pastor James Edwards, the founder of Transforming Faith Christian Center in Houston, Texas, has overcome incredible odds to find his true calling in life. Edwards grew up in poverty, with his father killed when he was young and his mother battling a drug addiction. Forced to live with his grandmother as a child, Edwards faced physical, mental, and verbal abuse. After his grandmother passed away, he turned to a life of crime, becoming a drug dealer in order to support himself.
Edwards was eventually arrested and sentenced to 96 months in federal prison. But it was during this time behind bars that he had a profound spiritual awakening. After reading a book that taught him about the power of vision, Edwards says he experienced an encounter with God that forever changed the course of his life. What followed was a series of visions and dreams that convinced him he was being called to preach the gospel.
After his release from prison in 2011, Edwards faced further challenges as a local church was initially skeptical of his transformation. But he persevered, taking on roles as a motivational speaker and pharmaceutical salesman before eventually founding Transforming Faith Christian Center in Houston.
Today, Edwards' church has grown into a thriving community dedicated to "reaching the lost, training the reached, and releasing the trained." Edwards is now focused on spreading the message of a "new life in Christ" to as many people as possible, believing that the power of transformation can change lives.
(We invite you to listen to the conversation between Jalon Caldwell and Pastor James Edwards in the podcast below.)
Edwards' traumatic childhood experiences, lack of parental support, and desire for belonging and financial security ultimately led him down the path of drug dealing, which he saw as his only way to survive and thrive.
"My father was killed when I was four and my mom was addicted to drugs and crack cocaine until I was 17. I had two grandmothers that raised me. My mom's mom raised me. When I was 10 years old, she started having massive heart failure. At 12 years old, my grandmother died. I was forced to move in when my mom. She was facing this drug addiction. Every single day I faced verbal, mental, and physical abuse on so many different occasions. She told me I was the worst mistake that she ever made. It felt like I was being rejected, abandoned, and neglected, not only by my mom, but by her other sisters that were playing a part in raising me also.
My grandmother died in December and I stood over her casket with my head hanging in the air saying to myself, 'Lord, what am I going to do without my mama?' And I wasn't talking about my biological mom, I was talking about my grandmother. I said, 'nobody loves me, nobody likes me. Everybody hates me, Lord, I want my mama.' When they lowered the casket into the ground, I got inside of the funeral car going back to the church, and I made a decision right then. I said, if I can't make it to the NFL or the NBA, I'll just sell drugs for the rest of my life. So at that point, I was looking for an opportunity to figure out how could I take care of myself. How could I be the sole provider for myself?
By the time of 15, I dove directly into the streets and sold my first piece of crack cocaine. When I was 18, I was traveling back and forth from Florence, Alabama to Detroit, Michigan on the Greyhound bus with drugs. At that point in my mind, I'm becoming a drug dealer in order to live the life I want to live. By the time I was 20, I had accelerated in the streets and become this big time drug dealer in Florence. Four years later, I'm running a major cocaine ring from Houston, Texas to Alabama. One day, I went to get $85,000 worth of cocaine. To my surprise, a guy whipped a gun out in my face. He pulled the trigger but the gun didn't fire. He almost killed me. At that point, that was my fourth time facing death on four separate occasions."
The key turning point was Edwards' time in prison, where he was forced to confront his past and make a decision to change the trajectory of his life through a spiritual confession.
"On Aug. 1, 2005, I was 26 years old and the FBI and the DEA had enough of me. They indicted me to stand charge of conspiracy, to attempt to deliver in conspiracy, to attempt to possess 50 to 150 kilos of cocaine, 2,000 pounds of marijuana. When they wrapped me up in this 36-man conspiracy, they were trying to give me a life without parole sentence. They were trying to put murders on me. They were trying to write me off for the rest of my life. And by the grace of God, on April 17, 2006, Judge Sharon Blackburn sentenced me to 96 months in federal prison. I'm away from the streets. I'm away from my people. There are no distractions, no interruptions, no interferences, and I'm put in a position where I cannot run away from my thoughts. I cannot run away from my choices. I cannot run away from me. And so I started facing the reality that if I go back to society, selling drugs the same way I was selling them before I got locked up, I would get caught and get 20 to 30 years or possibly a life without parole sentence. I started entertaining the questions of growth Jalon, I started asking myself, who am I? What am I created for? Where am I going? Why am I here? What can I do with my life? How can I change my life? I was really entertaining those questions when I got in prison.
There were a group of guys who were paying prison guards to leave the prison and come back. I found out that that was going on and I got in the midst of that group. I started paying the guards to leave prison also. One night, we left and they pulled the fire alarm inside of the prison so they could have a mandatory prison yard count. When they pulled the fire alarm, the correctional officers came in to have a count. When they counted, they noticed that me and a lot of other guys weren't in our cells at that point. When we came back in, they threw me in the special housing unit. It's called The Shoe. 2:34 a.m. in the morning, Oct. 8, 2006, I'll never forget it. They threw me in a one-man cell naked and the door slams. It felt like the walls started closing in instantaneously. I can't explain it, but it felt like I was about to get crushed, and on that night I made the plea and I prayed the most powerful prayer that I've ever prayed in my entire life. I said, 'God, I'm tired. I'm tired of the street life. I'm tired of all the ups and downs. I'm tired of this life.' I said, 'God, I'll make a deal with you that if you show me what I'm created for, you can have my life.' I woke up the next morning, picked up a Bible, tried to read it, didn't understand what was going on, threw the Bible against the wall, and kept praying for God to show me what I was created for."
Edwards' undergoes a radical shift from a life of crime to one of purpose, service, and deep spiritual transformation facilitated by an encounter with God.
"My auntie just so happened to send me a book in the mail by Joel Osteen entitled 'Your Best Life Now.' What the writer was saying in Chapter 1 was that if you can never see yourself doing something on the inside, you'll never be able to experience it on the outside. At 27 years old, for the first time in my life, I heard the concept of vision. If I can't see it internally, I can't be it externally. I closed the book and I said these words, 'God, I've never seen myself doing anything except for selling drugs. If you show me what I'm created for, you can have my life.' Jalon, at that point, I felt something inside of me say these words, 'Keep reading this chapter.' I kept reading the chapter. I tried to go to chapter two, 'Bloom Where You're Planning.' For some reason, it kept drawing me back to Chapter One. I kept reading. I kept reading it. Then all of a sudden, something happened within me. I had an experience and an encounter with God that forever marked me for the rest of my life.
As I'm reading the chapter, it felt like my spirit and soul left out of my body. My body went to a place where a sea of people were in a massive coliseum and I could just see people just looking at me. I looked down at myself and I had on all white. Then I looked to my right. I was looking at my mom, my dad's mom, and my auntie. They had on all white. I looked to the left. I saw my two uncles in all white. I looked back at myself. I'm in all white. It appeared that I was standing at a podium and everybody was looking at me with looks on their faces saying, 'What are you going to say?' At that point, boom, I snapped back and I'm back in the cell. Now I think that I'm hallucinating, so I jump up and run to the cell door and start banging on it. I call for the orderly to go get the correctional officers to come open the door and put somebody in the cell with me because I think I'm losing my mind. I've had this experience with God that I couldn't articulate. I didn't know what it was at the time. Well, the correction officer came, opened the door, looked at me, laughed at me and told me, 'Yeah, this is what happens to people who go to the special housing unit. They lose their mind.' The door slams. I'm crying. I'm hysterical. I'm terrified.
About seven hours later, they cut out the lights in the special housing unit at 9 p.m. It's so black inside of the special housing unit that you couldn't see your hand before your face. Now I'm terrified. I lay down on the bed and I go to sleep. I wouldn't sleep for five minutes and the exact same thing that I saw in that trench that day when I was awake, this time I saw it in a dream. People are going crazy. I have a microphone in my mouth walking down the aisle as if I'm preaching. I couldn't hear myself talking. My auntie was hitting me on the back screaming, 'Boy, you better preach. Boy, you better preach. Boy, you better preach.' I jump up out of my sleep, sat to the edge of the bed, and I said, 'God, are you calling me to preach? If I'm going to preach, what am I going to preach? Who am I going to preach to?' A voice come to me and said, 'What is the thing about you that everybody hates?' I said, 'I don't know.' The voice comes back and says, 'It's your mouth.' Instantaneously, I remember three instances in my life where my mouth had gotten me into extreme trouble. The voice came back to me right then and said, 'There's nothing wrong with you talking too much. You're just talking about the wrong thing.
I woke up the next morning, picked up the same book, 'Your Best Life Now.' Read it. But then I picked up the Bible and for some strange reason, the Bible wasn't a book anymore. The same type of experience that I had in the dream, I could find myself in the story with Abraham and Isaac as Abraham had taken Isaac up to Mount Mariah to sacrifice him. It seemed like everything I was reading was sticking to me like glue at that point. I'm in a one man cell for the next 100 days, so to speak, and I'm reading the word of God from sunup to sundown. It's not a book anymore. It has become an experience. For the next six years. I turned prison into my seminary. I said to myself, 'I'm not going to waste any time. I'm going to invest my time.'"
Following his release from prison, Edwards recounts the numerous doors God opened, allowing him to share his uplifting story with others, and how his work in pharmaceutical sales brought him to Houston, where he eventually met his wife and established his ministry.
"I walked out of prison on Aug. 2, 2011 saying that I'm going to be an asset to my community, not a liability. I went to the local church in my hometown and they shunned me because they remembered who I used to be. They didn't know that I had really changed, had an encounter with God, transformed my mind, and was ready to add value to people's lives. All I wanted to do was serve for the church. Then God started opening up supernatural doors for me to step into motivational speaking. I didn't even know what a motivational speaker was. I got out of prison on Aug. 2, 2011. On Nov. 26, I found myself standing in front of the Houston Texans, giving them their motivational message the night before they played their Sunday game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Jalon, my story got tracked. The local newspaper got the story of me being with the Texans. They put my story on the front page of the newspaper and before I knew it, nonprofit organizations, high schools, universities, churches and other places started calling me to tell my story. I got on the Steve Harvey Mentoring Circuit to be a speaker with the Steve Harvey Mentoring Weekend. We went to Detroit back in 2013, and that's when I saw Bishop Marvin L. Winans at the same mentoring weekend. He heard me speak and asked me to come do an interview with him. I interviewed with him when he was doing a radio show. After that, he let me preach on his stage.
A couple of years later, I got a job doing pharmaceutical sales. I was speaking in Dallas. A man who owned 38% of a pharmaceutical company was in the building. He heard my story, walked up to me, and told me, 'God told me to fund your ministry.' I said, 'I'm not a pastor.' He said, 'Yes, you are. God is telling me to fund your ministry.' I said, 'I'm a motivational speaker.' He said, 'Well, I feel like I'm supposed to have you around me. How about this? I'm going to allow you to work for me. I'm going to pay you $65,000 a year plus commission and you can continue doing your motivational speaking.' I said, 'What's the job?' He said, 'I want you to be a pharmaceutical salesman on my sales team.' I said, 'Did you just hear my story? I'm a convicted felon. There's no way I can do this.' He said, 'I own 38% of the company. You can do whatever I tell you to do.' He put me on the sales team. Now I'm doing motivational speaking and pharmaceutical sales.
Seventeen months later, Obamacare kicks in. He comes to me and says, 'I got some good news and some bad news.' I said, 'Tell me the bad news first.' He said, 'The bad news is we have to shut the company down because private insurance companies don't pay anymore because Obamacare has kicked in and killed our business through private insurance company.' He said, 'But here's the great news. I'm taking 60 salesmen with me. We're starting a new company. I'll pay you $100,000 a year plus commission if you commit to going with me.' I said, 'Ok, where are we going?' He said, 'We're going to Houston, Texas.' I said, "No. I can't go to Houston, Texas. Houston is the place where I almost lost my life at. I'll never go there.' He said, 'You have 24 hours to make a decision. I want to pay you $120,000 a year plus commission come to Texas.' To make a long story short, I ended up going to Texas. I started doing pharmaceutical sales out here. I met my wife a year and a half later. I started teaching her about the Holy Spirit. We started a bible study with about eight people. Eight weeks later, it blossomed into Transforming Faith Christian Center."
Edwards details the mission of his church is to "Reach the lost, train the reached, and release the trained," equipping people to spread the "new life in Christ" that Edwards experienced himself.
"Right now we are building Transforming Faith Christian Center and it's a nation of transformation. I'm thoroughly convinced and fully persuaded that I'm called to go back and get who I used to be in order to and fill them with the wisdom that God has given me in order to live a successful life connected to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. At this point, the mission for our church is to reach the lost, train to reached, and release the trained. The one thing that I know about transformation is this, in resurrection and transformation, the essence of it is new life, I believe that everybody in every area, in every season of their life, are all yearning for new life. Some of us are yearning for new life in marriages. Others are yearning for new life in their personal life. Others are yearning for new life in their financial life. Others are yearning for new life in their emotional life. Others are yearning for new life in their spiritual life.
We believe that God is creating us to be an institute, to build up a nation of people that honors, accepts, and has an appetite for new life because if new life comes into me and I can spread this new life to you, new life is intoxicating. You can spread it to another person, and pull people back to the original purpose of why we were created and be sons and daughters of God to advance the kingdom of God on Earth as it is in Heaven. That's our assignment. We have another thing that we are doing called "Grace And Truth." It's a relationship podcast where we're putting new life into broken relationships, new life into dysfunctional relationships, and new life in marriages. I told God this, 'if you give me my purpose, you can have my life,' and one of my purposes in this season in life is to spread the new life in Christ that I have onto everybody that I come into contact with because new life is contagious, new life in Christ."
You can reach Transforming Faith Christian Center at www.tfcchouston.com
You can reach Pastor James Edwards on Instagram and YouTube @PastorJamesTFCC