Jimmy Swaggart Dead At 90. World Class Speaker Wowed mMllions

TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, dead at age 90. You haven't heard much of Jimmy Swaggart in recent years. He is or was 90 when he passed away in the last 24 hours. But in his time, he was one of the foremost public speakers and evangelist in the world. We're going to dive deeply into his methods, his techniques for speaking. Watch more at one of his most famous presentations right here. It very, very famous moment of Jimmy Swaggart, probably from his standpoint, the low point of his career. He was caught in a prostitution scandal that didn't completely destroy his career, but brought him back to the point where he, he never really got back to his full stature. Hello and welcome. This is the Communiverse with TJ Walker. This is the show where we look at business, tech and cultural news through the lens of communication to boost your personal development in the spotlight today. Jimmy Swagger. Now, I'm not here to endorse him, but I can tell you he was a real role model of mine growing up as, certainly As a young man, 70s and 80s, he was a consummate public speaker. We're going to look at some of his fiery sermons right here today to see what we can learn. Now, some of you may be thinking, well, T.J. he was a bit of a con man. He was a TV evangelist caught with money and prostitutes. Why should we listen to him? Well, I'm here to tell you, regardless of your beliefs of TV evangelist religion, his particular religion, he was a master, master craftsman when it came to the ability to speak in public, to move people and to motivate people so you don't have to endorse all of his tactics. We're going to look at a basic, I'll call it a stump speech, a basic sermon of his. And I want to share with you what I think he did so well. I mean, you heard from that first introductory clip, the emotion in it. I mean, he seemed like, you know, Robert Duvall. He seemed like a powerful, powerful Hollywood actor. In fact, he had a lot of Hollywood in his blood. Jerry Lee Lewis. Other famous singers were friends of his and relatives, cousins, growing up. He was also an excellent singer and piano player. But where he really distinguished himself was on the stage in front of people. And again, those of you thinking, well, D.J. it sounds like you're endorsing him and his methods and his ministry. No, I'm not a fan, believe me, of his ministry, but I am a fan of a true craftsman when it comes to public speaking. The ability to connect with people, the ability to own the stage. So let's take a look at exactly what he did and how he did it. This is one of his sermons, I believe, from the 1980s. Let's take a look. So the theatricality in his voice. He's certainly not someone just standing behind the pulpit the way a lot of ministers did. He was filled with movement and action. He owned the stage. He's clearly not reading a teleprompter. He's clearly not reading a written speech. So his speaking tone, the structure, if you were to analyze that sentence, does not look like something was written out as a speech for posterity. He says something, he asks a rhetorical question, he follows up. There's a lot of back and forth, the way people do in real conversation, and yet there's a passion in his voice. Sometimes it can get to the point of yelling, and sometimes he whispers. He was a master at using the full range of his voice. Take a listen. Notice the expert use of pause. He says something, races upward with speed, with volume, with pitch, and then pauses for dramatic effect. He did this routinely. Again, I was not a fan of his particular religion or his ministry, but certainly I would sometimes wake up early on Sunday mornings to watch his ministry because I felt like I learned so much about the craft of public speaking. Let's watch more. The musicality of his voice. Listen to it. It goes like this, like this, like this. There's waves, the waves of emotion, the power, the growing power of his voice. Now, it should be pointed out, this is sort of a pre television style. This is a style that works best when you're in a giant stadium with thousands of other people. It didn't translate quite as well to the small screen, the TV screen, the way someone like a Pat Robertson. It was very genial and just conversational talk show format. It's a little bit different in some ways, similar to Anthony Robbins. Anthony Robbins, not in an official ministry religion, but a lot of the same techniques. They're both masters in the craft of speaking. Let's watch more. The hand motions. Few other people in the world. Every hand motion means something. It's all consistent. Although it is interesting, he uses that mic because when he wants to whisper, it has a more powerful effect if he wants to shout, pulling it away. In that sense, his use of the microphone for dramatic effect is right up there with some of the top comedians in the world. The best comedians in the world can just have a lot of mic, but they like the handheld because they understand it's so much more powerful using the full emotional tonality of your voice for impact when you do have a handheld mic. And he typically did use the mic. So what he does so well that a lot of people just don't get right is he brings in this huge level of theatricality, and yet he still sounds conversational. It doesn't sound scripted. It doesn't sound like, I am giving you a Broadway show script that a playwright wrote. And yet his actions, his movements do have a level of theatricality. And certainly for his supporters, it really, really resonated. Now, let me be very careful about what I'm going to say here, because I do not mean to suggest that, well, anybody who speaks and gets a lot of money, even if they're a con man, that makes them a good person. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is it takes a highly specialized degree of skill to speak to people and have them say, you know what? That guy's making so much sense. Let me reach into my back pocket here, pull out my wallet, call a number and give these people a credit card and not get anything in return. That's what he did. I mean, that's what all TV evangelists do. Basically. Any TV evangelist at some level is a great communicator, because you go out of business instantly if you're not at his peak. Jimmy Swaggart was bringing in $500,000 a day, a business day. People just giving him money because they liked the way he speaks, they liked his message, they liked his ministry. That put him, if not number one, certainly within the top three of TV ministers in the 1980s. I'll leave it up to you if you think that's a good distinction or not, but it's not easy. At his peak, Jimmy Swigert brought in $150 million a year to his ministry. He got caught with a prostitute. It brought him down. He was out for a while, but he did get back. He still had the private planes and the private mansions and the luxury cars because of his ability to speak. Let's watch more and learn from what he does. Foreign. So now this is seven minutes into this particular recording. So now he's working up. He's building. It's coming up to a crescendo. He's. He's great at really taking people on a journey. When he speaks, it's not just, Here are the facts. Here's a Bible verse today. Be nice to people now. He brings you on an entire emotional journey. Every time he spoke, you're hearing the passion, his body Language is getting more animated. There's a little more volume. But he's not yelling, he's not screaming at people, but he's using his voice in such an extraordinarily powerful, powerful way. A lot to learn from. Again, it's not that I want you, when you're giving a new business pitch to a venture capitalist, to try to mimic his style. I wouldn't start yelling at people. And that's why you must give me your investment of $2 million for my new app. That's. I'm not suggesting that, but I do want you to learn what he's doing. Well, that worked for him in his context. Given the large audience, there's no one perfect way of speaking. But I happen to believe, and it's a big premise of. Of this show communiverse, that you can learn from great speakers in every industry, in every genre and every aspect of life not to steal from them, but to incorporate little pieces of what they do to make yourself a better speaker. Let's watch more again, note the pause. Average speakers don't pause. Boring speakers don't pause. Great speakers like Jimmy Swagger pause. They pause a lot. It makes things more dramatic. It lets it sink in. It underlying. It's bolding the preceding thought. So he was a master of the pause and constantly changing the speed, the pitch, the tempo. There was tremendous variety in how he used his voice, and that's why he could captivate an audience. People were not walking out and checking their watches at 45 minutes into a Jimmy Swaggart speech or sermon. They just weren't. And I don't mean to offend anyone, I'm using the terms sermon and speech interchangeably because a sermon is. Is a particular type of speech or presentation. When he doesn't just say those who climb to the highest heights, he's looking up to the highest heights. So he is acting out as many parts of his message as possible. That's what makes it interesting. That's what great Broadway stars do. That's what great comedians do. That's what Jimmy Swagger did so successfully. Notice that high is high. Low is physically low, low depths. He's acting it out. He's visual. He's not just abstract. He's not just giving platitudes. Be nice to people. Blessed are the me. No, he's acting out in ways that you can see his message, whether you agree with it or not. I should point out he does walk a lot more than what you're used to seeing. Certainly these days, when a lot of TV evangelists are just sitting at a desk and trying to look like a newscaster or a talk show host. He was feral, like just all over the stage, almost like a wild animal. You never knew where he might pounce next. And if I can find it later in the split, I'll show it to you. What I. I liked about him, what made him difference is he would get into such a lather, he would visibly sweat, he would undo the button and his tie would become loose. I mean, you got the sense he was giving you every single ounce of his strength and passion when you saw him present. And it was in fact magnetic. So it's the exaggeration. Give anything to experience. He is in front of thousands of people. So his tone, his pitch, his volume is larger than life, which works especially well when you are seeing someone from a distance on stage these days. It tends not to resonate as well when you're watching someone on TV or on a little screen or on a cell phone, because it can seem overly theatrical. It can seem in some ways a little bit phony or fake. And you may be looking at this guy saying, wow, he really seems like a con man. I can tj believe me, I wasn't sending him any money. But I'm here to give you unbiased, unvarnished analysis of what is important to help you in your career. That's the premise of the communiverse is we analyze business, technology and cultural news through the lens of communication to boost your personal success. That's what it's about. And I do believe, regardless of your religious beliefs, whether you like his religion, other religions, no religion, think there's a God, don't think there's a God. You can learn from this master of communication. Let's watch more. Notice the repetition. Great speakers do that. Average speakers, boring speakers say, well, I said it once. And they edit out their draft and they're afraid to repeat themselves. Great speakers repeat themselves. Repetition makes it sink in. They got drunk, they imbibed an alcoholic beverage. Again, there's an artificiality to it. There's a little bit of archaic language, but it's almost funny. And indeed, a lot of people did watch him and think that he was funny. I certainly wasn't the only one to watch him. Not because of shared religious belief, but just because I viewed him as a consummate performer. He said something once. They're drunk, imbibed alcoholic beverages. Almost comical the way he. He uses that phrasing to restate it. The use of repetition, the use of different words makes it more interesting, in some cases funny and more memorable. Listen, here's where he starts to get more theatrical. He's acting out elements of dialogue from his story. Please, Pentecostals, listen to me. This is where he's really pouring it on. Now if he did this right from the beginning, it would be too much. But like a great chef, he puts the right amount of spice. Not enough salt, not tasty, too much salt, it ruins it. Putting in this act out of the dialogue and the over articulated emotions, just the right amount makes it a spicy brew and makes it interesting. It's smart here. He's always reaching out for new people, for new donors, for new congregants. He's aware that most of the people watching this are not in that stadium with thousands of people. He was broadcasting to tens of millions of people around the globe in virtually every country in the world. Huge, huge reach. I mean, at the time, tv, TV preachers had larger audiences than virtually anyone in the world. There was no CNN or there was a cnn, but it didn't have a wide reach. There were Certainly, no MSNBCs and foxes and things like that in the mid-1980s. And CNN did not have that big of an audience at that point. It was still somewhat niche to even have cable tv. So this is what he's doing. He's thinking about how to have a larger audience now. He was a master at using technology. By raising money, asking for donations, he was able to buy time on TV channels throughout, not only the United States, but in countries around the world. No different than people who paid for infomercials these days. That's not really the way it's done because anyone can communicate with their own YouTube channel, social media channels. But it was very different back then. And only the elite, a tiny, tiny percentage of people, got to speak to worldwide audiences. He was one of them. Because of his adaptation to new technologies of using television, using the satellites and the ability to share his message around the world. And if he senses people are going to applaud, he's going to pause and let them. He gives the audience space to react. Sometimes the space is simply time to think about what he just said. Sometimes there it was to actually applaud. He doesn't step on it. He pauses another second or two and allows time for the audience to participate back. Very masterful. Get bad speakers, average speakers, nervous speakers rush through. They don't even notice that the audience is applauding. They want to hurry up and finish their presentation. When you see Jimmy Swaggart speak. And this is true, I believe, of all great speakers. When you see him on stage and speaking, he exudes the sense of there's no place else I'd rather be than right here. He like a great Broadway star, a world class musician. He's on the stage, he is loving it. And that is contagious with audiences. It really is a very powerful thing. Let's watch more. This is classic Jimmy Swagger where all getting close to 10 minutes in about hit the nine minute mark. And he's got everything in sync. The energy, the voice, the volume, the speed is going up, the hand motions are going up, the body motions going up, the leaning forward. And so it's, it's, it's whipping the audience into a frame frenzy, more or less. And he understands you have to level things out. He does that. Then he maybe slow down. There has to be an up and down. There has to be a balance in the way it comes across. Most people are balanced by trying to be professional when they speak. And even keel, that's boring. He's balancing it by sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes louder, sometimes screaming, sometimes, sometimes whispering. That's how he balances. That's what makes him fascinating to listen to and to watch. And he did. He was very aggressive at reaching out to people who were not just already his followers. Good communicators do that. They try to open doors, bring more people into their message. He was constantly reaching out to more people, more followers, more financial contributors, more donors. And that's part of what made him wildly successful on his terms. Did you hear the way he said that just a moment ago? He was yelling and louder and louder and then he said, you have an obligation. A whisper of the voice is also a way of bringing attention to it. Again, masterful use of voice. That's not the sort of thing you get by reading a script. That's not the sort of thing that people can do reading a teleprompter typically, unless they really are world class pros and have rehearsed a bunch of times. So listen to that constant variation of voice and what he's doing with it. See how he brings in the dialogue. He's putting himself in the shoes of the audience talking back to him. Hey, Jimmy, I don't see, you know, people getting struck by lightning. By God, he's voicing the concerns people have in their head. All great speakers do that. If you are a startup founder and you've got some pitch and you know the, the investor listening to you is thinking, well, how does this company actually make money? You can say, hey, you're probably thinking to yourself, this seems like a cool app, but, you know, how's C.J. actually going to make money from it? It's a great technique of letting the audience know you think about them, you care about them, and you're with them on their playing field where they are. You're not just handing things down from above. Very masterful. Now, he did occasionally have notes up on a stage, but as you can see there, this is not someone who looks like everything was scripted out, but it was definitely planned out and prepared. And as someone who had been speaking from a very early age till late at night, he was so good at it, he didn't have to work off of a script. And that's part of what made him so powerful. You got the sense that he was, you know, to use his words, filled with the spirit when he spoke. And I would contend all great speakers are like that. They could be talking about business, finance, economics, new devices for electronics. They seem like they're just so excited about the good news they have of their product, their business, or their service or their startup, or in this case, his particular vision of a religion that he just can't wait to share it with you. It's not about scripting, it's not about teleprompters. It's not about writing out the perfect turn phrase. It's taking his message and fusing it with his passion in a way that makes it come across as very authentic, at least to his fans and his audience members. So now this is interesting. I mean, he was. This was used for one of his TV sermons that were distributed all over the world. By today's standards, you're thinking, wow, these are kind of lame special effects of images and graphics. That was never why anyone turned into a Jimmy Swaggart Sunday morning sermon. They were coming for him. So the fact that his images and the B roll wasn't great, I don't think hurt him at all. Blood from sacrificial offerings. If I say it, it sounds really weird and cheesy and fake, but. But when Jimmy Swaggart said it, there was just something magical. It was. He had a voice as good as any Broadway star, as good as any Morgan Freeman movie star. The way he used it to fuse passion and message together in a compelling way. The musicality of his voice, up, down, loud, soft, and to never go out. That's very difficult to teach someone. Now, I do believe anyone can learn this by speaking enough. And he's Someone who spent, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of his life speaking. It's like anything else. You do it all the time. You get better at it. Let's go to a different section of his presentation of his sermon. Part of his appeal was he did come across as the everyman. Even though he was wildly rich and famous, he did come across like a guy who wasn't that stuff. You got a sense that this was a bad boy. Even before he got caught with the prostitutes, the singing, the entertainment, the lifestyle of hanging out with his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis. And in fact, Jimmy Swaggart married a 15 year old himself. So he had some similarities with his cousin. Things that these days would be looked at oddly didn't seem to hurt him back then, but that was a part of his appeal. He seemed like the kind of guy, if you weren't listening to him preach on Sunday morning, he'd be a fun guy to hang out with on a Saturday night. And that was a part of his appeal. Now, you saw right there, I told the my church in Louisiana, that's really the first time I noticed anything that seemed like a stumble. But note what he did when he made that stumble and mistake. He did nothing. He didn't go, oh, I didn't mean to say that. Oops. He didn't say, I'm sorry. He kept on going. Nobody noticed the mistake. If you were to to analyze and diagram that sentence, it doesn't make sense. He started one way, didn't finish, went to another. But he realizes that's not how he's being judged. He's being judged by the poise, the movement, the musicality of his voice. You have all those other things going. Well, no one notices if you make an occasional mistake on any one word, getting some applause. Apparently in the 1980s, girls playing softball with shorts was a bit of a controversy. And he uses his Bible as a prop very effectively. He's holding it up. He's not just sitting there reading in a monotone the way many preachers and many heads of many religious organizations do. He's using it as a powerful prop to accentuate his message. So let's skip forward to another section because you can see everything's a little bit different and yet everything is the same, that he's always interesting, he's always changing, he's always using the full range of his voice, his face, his body and his movements. By the way, There is an 800 number up there. I'm not asking you to call and give a donation to me. Or to Jimmy Swaggart. I don't think that one's likely active anymore. This is a video from the 1980s. So on the one hand, he sounds like the common man and a guy you could go out and have a beer with on a Saturday night. But then every so often, to mix it up, he'll say something like, there's more spiritual declension. I have no idea what that even means. I seriously doubt most people in his audience know what the word declension meant in that context. Again, it's variety. He's not using archaic language on a regular basis, but every once in a while to mix things up, to make it more interesting, he does again, the finger of God. And he puts his finger out there. Everything is perfectly timed to accentuate the words out of his mouth, consistent with the tone of the voice, consistent with what his hands and body are doing. Everything is in sync, and that's what makes it interesting. That's why he was able to get tens of millions of people to not only watch him, but. But to send him money. He's been gone for weeks and he gets down. This guy I could watch all day long and I have not seen him in a number of years. He's been out of the spotlight in his declining years and latter ages. As you know, most people, 90 generally do slow down. He. The news is today. He's just passed away. Today is July 1st night, excuse me, 2025. As I'm recording this, the day of the news came coming out that Jimmy Swaggart has passed away. So I'm hoping that this gives you a little better sense of who he is. Many of our younger viewers have never heard of Jimmy Swaggart. And believe me, there was a time when this was one of the most famous people in the world, in part because of his ability to buy time on TV stations around the globe. There was no Internet, believe it or not, or not much of one to speak of. No popular Internet in the 1970s or 80s for most people. And in most towns, including the one I grew up In Charlotte, North Carolina, there were three TV stations, plus PBS. So anyone who was on TV was pretty quickly famous because a third or 25% of the people were watching you at any one point. And he could buy time on Saturday mornings on major networks, affiliates around the country in the United States, cbs, abc, NBC. And then in his later years, he was able to buy time on stations across the globe and on cable networks as well. So today, people often think of someone like a Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen has a very different style from a Jimmy Swagger. Joel Osteen is a more TV friendly, modern. He doesn't yell as much. It's more like he's talking to just one person, one on one. Jimmy Swaggart is more of an old school style and that he's speaking to a whole room of thousands of people and oh, the TV audience, that's one more. These days, the most successful TV evangelists are really treating the TV audiences their main audience, and they're talking like it's one on one. So what do I want you to take away from Jimmy Swaggart? If you are a typical executive, whether you're in finance, whether you're in government, whether you're in energy insurance, I'm not suggesting that for your next zoom call you start walking around and waving your hands wildly and talking about sin and damnation. That's not my message to you, but my message to you is if you want to be a world class communicator, always learn from others who have excelled. Always be on the lookout for the masters of the craft. You may look at Jimmy Swaggart and say, that guy was a gunman. I can't believe anyone would give money to a guy caught with prostitutes that obviously involved with fakery. That may be your opinion and you're entitled to that. And yet I want you to look at him and think, you know what? The way he paused after making a big point is something I could do in my next PowerPoint presentation to my own board meeting. You may realize you've been rushing too much. You've been too much like a conveyor belt just throwing off fact after fact after fact. And great communication transcends subject matter. There are things that Jimmy Swaggart does that you can do too. And again, plenty of things he does that you might not want to do if you're doing a zoom call, you probably don't want to be walking 30ft around and, you know, bending down and jumping up the way he does or sweating. That's okay. But people who are good at one thing typically are good because they look at everyone else in their field. Paul McCartney is a good musician in part because he didn't just listen to musicians who did music exactly like his. He listened to music in every other genre. World class novelists do not just read their own works. They do not read books that are just like their niche. They read widely. They read non fiction fiction, they read fantasy. They read mystery. They read even if those are not their genres. If you want to be a great communicator? I urge you. Look at Jimmy swagger. Do a YouTube search, look more at it, learn from him, and figure out how you can be the absolute best communicator you can be in every aspect of your life. I'm TJ Walker. This is Communiverse. Quick Program Note. This is a new show. We're doing sample versions, test versions, pilot versions for the next six weeks or so, right after Labor Day 2025 will be coming to you daily right here. So it's going to be a lot of fun. If you haven't subscribed yet, go ahead and subscribe to this channel. Like it? And leave a comment, too. Let me know what you think. I'm not interested in whether or not you happen to think Jimmy Swagger was a con man. What I'm interested in is what you thought of how he communicated. If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, disagreements with what I said, please post your comments below. Thanks so much. See you next time. But my message to you is, if you want to be a world class communicator, always learn from others who have excelled. Always be on the lookout for the masters of the craft. You may look at Jimmy Swaggart and say, that guy was a gunman. I can't believe anyone would give money to a guy caught with prostitutes and obviously involved with fakery. That may be your opinion, and you're entitled to that. And yet I want you to look at him and think, you know what? The way he paused after making a big point is something I could do in my next PowerPoint presentation to my own board meeting. You may realize you've been rushing too much. You've been too much like a conveyor belt just throwing off fact after fact after fact. And great communication transcends subject matter. There are things that Jimmy Swaggart does that you can do, too. And again, plenty of things he does that you might not want to do if you're doing a zoom call. You probably don't want to be walking 30ft around and, you know, bending down and jumping up the way he does, or sweating. That's okay. But people who are good at one thing typically are good because they look at everyone else in their field. Paul McCartney is a good musician in part because he didn't just listen to musicians who did music exactly like his. He listened to music in every other genre. World class novelists do not just read their own works. They do not read books that are just like their niche. They read widely. They read nonfiction, fiction, they read fantasy, they read mystery, even if those are not their genres. If you want to be a great communicator, I urge you, look at Jimmy swagger. Do a YouTube search, look more at it, learn from him, and figure out how you can be the absolute best communicator you can be in every aspect of your life. I'm TJ Walker. This is Communiverse. Quick Program Note. This is a new show. We're doing sample versions, test versions, pilot versions for the next six weeks or so, right after Labor Day, 2025. We'll be coming to you daily right here. So it's going to be a lot of fun. If you haven't subscribed yet, go ahead and subscribe to this channel. Like it? And leave a comment, too. Let me know what you think. I'm not interested in whether or not you happen to think Jimmy Swagger was a con man. What I'm interested in is what you thought of how he communicated. If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, disagreements with what I said, please post your comments below. Thanks so much. See you next time.