Evangelist Clayton Jennings Steps Down From Ministry After Sex Scandal

Dec 05, 2016 10:00 AM EST

After several women have come forward who confessed to being his sex partner, evangelist and spoken-word poet Clayton Jennings is stepping away from ministry. He has discontinued all his speaking engagements to focus on his family and his restoration.

It was Polemics Report that released the confessions in a series of blog posts, of several women who have admitted that Jennings, who became popular due to his movie "Strayland", wooed them into having intimate relationships with him by promising marriage. As many as six women have come forward to admit their relationship with Jennings. They claimed they were manipulated by Jennings into committing sexual sin. Jennings reportedly gave the women alcohol and used his authority as a minister to seduce them.

One of the women said that it was Jennings who contact her after seeing several photos of her on social media. He reached out to her, and in a span of several weeks was already promising marriage, telling the woman that she would be meeting his family soon enough. In the digital files detailing their relationship, Jennings would even ask the woman to send nude photos to him, but she did not comply. When he invited her so stay at his house, he gave the woman alcohol which lowered her inhibitions and she gave in to his demands for sex.

The next morning, despite the young expressing her remorse over what happened, Jennings gave assurances but told her that she needed to take the Morning After pill because if she got pregnant it would hurt his ministry. But after that, Jennings stopped communicating with the woman. After the woman confronted him, he then claimed to be having health problems and that because of his success, he needed to focus more on his ministry, but the woman claimed that Jennings wanted to have a "friends with benefits" kind of relationship with her.

Several more women came forward after her, all with a story of how Jennings deceived them into being intimate with him despite having no plans to wed them.

In his Facebook page, Clayton Jennings's spiritual mentor Tony Nolan said that Clayton had come to him in repentance for his sins of the past. Nolan said that Clayton was now in the process of restoration. The video then shows Jennings giving a spoken-word performance of "Confessions Part 2".

Jennings' ministerial license has also been revoked by his home church, Harbour Shores, where his father, Don Jennings is the senior pastor.

In his confessional video, Jennings says he has never claimed to be perfect or sinless.

"I am the chief of sinners and I've come to end of myself," Jennings states. "And the only thing that saved me was putting down my pride and picking up the Bible off the shelf. I wanted to find verses where Jesus called me forgiven and new, but God kept taking me to verses that showed me how bad my sin was and what He wanted me to do, and this is it (to confess)."