Rev. Jasmin Sculark to be Installed as Permanent Minister at Jericho City of Praise

For nearly four years, Jericho City of Praise, one of the largest churches in the Washington area, has been the object of a power struggle between the son of the sanctuary’s late founders and elders who took control of the church after the second of the two founders died in 2010.

Since then, the church has been without a permanent leader, as the founders’ son, Bishop Joel Peebles, and thousands of his followers have worshipped in public-school auditoriums, sponsored programs and filed lawsuits in hopes of returning to the 100-acre campus in Landover. In the schism, all but of a few hundred of Jericho’s estimated 19,000 members left the church.

Leaders at Jericho hope they can begin writing a new chapter on Sunday. The Rev. Jasmin “Dr. Jazz” Sculark, an evangelist of national standing who is known as the “Daughter of Thunder,” will be officially installed as the pastor of Jericho by Bishop T.D. Jakes, the Rev. John K. Jenkins and a host of local and national pastors.

While Sculark, a native of the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, is accustomed to preaching to large congregations across the United States, for the past six months at Jericho she has quietly built a flock that is now numbers about 1,000. The goal has been to restore the sense of pride and community that was a hallmark of the church before the death of Betty Peebles’s in 2010. Her husband, James Peebles, with whom she founded the church, died in 1996.

Sculark said she hopes to continue the church’s grand tradition of being a mandatory stop for nationally known speakers and a site for gospel recordings, and to move the church beyond its recent troubles. Joel Peebles has waged a legal battle to gain control of the church, which is run by a board comprising some of his late mother’s closest employees.