ML: Specifically, what is the mission of Joe Simon Ministries?
Simon: My mission is very simple and very short. My mission as a minister is to represent the kingdom of God in sincerity and in truth, always glorifying our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
ML: You mentioned something about the youth. What are some of the things that you’re doing with the young people since you’ve been in the ministry?
Simon: In my ministry, we record young people and we’re going all over the nation getting young choirs together. We record them trying to give them a chance to enter the art form. We make sure we are spiritually based with that. That’s why we use the group out of Florida called the Avenue D Boy’s Choir. The Avenue D Boy’s Choir is a group of young people who come from broken homes and many of their parents are on drugs. We raised $125,000 to take them to Italy under the Joe Simon Ministries. The purpose was to exchange culture with children in Italy, and they [the children of Italy] came back with us to America.
This is one of the reasons we are very upset with Jay-Z, Rocka Fella Records, Island Def Jam, Memphis Bleek, and universal music group because they morally injured my name and ministry by putting my voice in a rap form with them, and they’re cussing out women, downing preachers. They are selling drugs through talking about drugs, and they have my voice in the background. We think that’s very disrespectful…. I don’t need them to make me famous.
ML: How were they able to legally do that and profit from it?
Simon: Well, you have to understand; you don’t need to be legal to be evil. Evil is just evil. That’s the truth because they could have taken the time and found out about me. Even if they had a right, they went too far. Out of respect, they could have called me. They know where I am. I’m on the Internet about 10,000 times.
ML: An article in the New York Christian Times reported that you reached out to the group and wanted them to sit down and talk about it. Was that to no avail?
Simon: I wanted to find out where they get the audacity to hurt me like this? Because that is painful, for this reason: they don’t understand what I had to do to come from rhythm and blues. I didn’t just walk out of rhythm and blues. I had to pray, fast, and sacrifice. I left that and they put me back in that atmosphere. It’s just not right and we don’t like it.
ML: I know you’re in litigation with that right now. Are you at liberty to talk about that?
Simon: We’re in the process of trying to find out what can be done about it and teach them they just shouldn’t be disobedient like that.
ML: Also I recall the presiding bishop of your church is quoted as saying that he’s hoping that even out of this evil some good will come if no more than some of these young rappers will change their lives like you did.
Simon: We’re hoping and praying for that. We are because you have to understand the record business and since I used to own two record companies I understand the record business. The record biz is really set up from the distribution standpoint and most of these rap groups if they don’t rap nasty the distribution people won’t use them. So we want to keep all that in mind when we’re going after these guys for being so disobedient.
Next week concludes the Bishop Simon exclusive series with his thoughts on the present and past presidential administration, as well as an announcement regarding one of his most recent achievements.
For more information of Bishop Simon Ministries, log on to www.joesimonministries.com
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