Oklahoma Pastor Sacrifices Her Salary to Help Underprivileged Women
A woman in Oklahoma has made it her mission to take every dollar she earns as a pastor and gives it to women in need.
Pastor Ilinda Jackson refuses to use her salary on herself and, instead, puts it all towards her charity, Raising the Standard Ministries.
Raising the Standard has six transitional houses that are homes to women who were victims of abuse, homelessness, and were incarcerated.
The ministry is funded solely through Jackson's salary and donations from others.
"I originally looked for ways to fund the project," Jackson told CBN News. "And I found it difficult to hone in the kind of funding I needed and wanted. I felt it was the responsibility of the church and I began to model what that looked like by taking monies that the church would actually give as salary and use that to take care of the transitional living for those women who are coming through that process, regaining life, and getting back on track."
Lillie Armstrong attends Jackson's church The Secret Place Community Church.
"She'll go into her pocket and use her own resources to make it happen, and I'm sure she does that a lot," church member Lilie Armstrong told KFOR. "It tells me that she's a person for God and she cares about the people."
Right now, 25 women live at the transitional home where they have access to job training, food, free clothing, and Bible classes.
"In each of these homes the women live as a community," Jackson described.
Anita Whorton is one of those women.
"I was incarcerated for seven years," Whorton explained.
She said she met Jackson through her prison ministry at the Mabel Bassett Correction Center.
But it was until years later that Jackson would serve as a life-line.
"I basically became homeless," Whorton told KFOR. "She was the one that my mind always came back to, was Pastor Ilinda Jackson."
Whorton has received much assistance along with other women. Through Jackson's ministry, they all have the chance to receive real healing and change.
"I have been delivered of the mental health issues, the physical pain..we have managed to get that under control," Whorton said. "She's led me deeper in God."
Jackson said she shares a message of love with every woman she encounters.
"The real message is that we can do all things through Jesus Christ and that he loves us perfectly and completely without any fail," she explained. "That He completely loves us regardless of what has happened in our lives and what is happening in our lives."
Jackson leads The Secret Place Community Church in northeast Oklahoma City.
She named the church after : "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."
"In this journey, I have discovered ways to love that I believe are scriptural. I didn't know I had the depth to love until I was required to love and sometimes it is the idea of loving the unlovable, loving those that don't know how to say thank you yet.
"I love serving, I love helping Oklahoma families," Jackson told KFOR. "This work is very rewarding, to help women, to recover, to be restored. I do it from a position of love, so it's nothing I get paid for, it's nothing anybody gives me but it meets a tremendous need of those that are in trouble in one form or another."
