Bishop Masters, a media relations consultant, is rejoicing over how much his life has changed during 2012. So are Stephanie Andry, Lynnette Mitchell, Olivia Taylor, Keith Terrell, Rod Holland and nearly 1,000 others who effusively endorse an innovative, spiritually-based health and wellness process called “The Journey” that has transformed their lives.
The Journey is a 45-day process of mind, body, and soul transformation that was founded by Atlanta’s Dr. Joseph Williams in 2011. Williams is the dynamic 35-year-old son of the legendary preacher, the Rev. Jasper Williams, and together they pastor Salem Bible Church East and West. Dr. Joseph, as he prefers to be addressed, is a Morehouse Man who has a Master of Divinity from the McAfee School of Theology and a Doctorate of Homiletics from Mercer University in Atlanta.
“It is a transformational process that appeals to the total consciousness of all humanity — physical, emotional and spiritual,” says the charismatic Williams, who is also an author, singer and a civil rights public policy proponent. “That’s something that transcends culture, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, religion, race, everything!”
The components that comprise the compelling transformative combination, asserts Dr. Joseph, are mind, body and spirit. That consists of a disciplined diet, emotional detoxification and spiritual recalibration. It is a demanding, sobering and substantive experience.
“I’ve seen people lose 40 pounds in 40 days,” Williams reports. “I’ve seen people rid themselves of medications. I’ve seen hypertension dissipate in a week. I’ve seen marriages saved. I’ve seen individuals who were on the verge of suicide reverse course. I’ve seen people who have issues with substance abuse, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes become clean. I’ve seen people become more engaged in local ministry.”
As a result of these remarkable results, people of note are taking notice.
“Dr. Joseph has thought through a number of things that allow him to offer his congregation and the world some different ways of looking at the human experience,” says the Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). “His invention and the program he has put with it empowers and educates on how to remain healthy in the world we live in that is so polluted with chemicals that contaminate our food supply. He changes the daily lives of people by making them stronger both spiritually and physically.”
“I look upon ‘The Journey’ the way Dr. Vivian and Dr. King and the civil rights leaders viewed the Civil Rights Movement,” Williams says. “It was a strategy. They identified a need, which was social injustice. And the strategy they constructed to address that need was the Civil Rights Movement. So I look upon the need of people today as being the need to live holistically. And the strategy is ‘The Journey.’ It works for all people and that’s why I think it is powerful.”
Dr. Joseph says he is merely teaching people the prescription of how he lives everyday and the often painful process it took for him to transform himself into a new and better being.
“It’s something that God gave me,” he says reverently. “This is something that I lived first and then took my platform and shared what had been given to me. I had issues physically — I had unhealthy relationships with food. I was addicted to food, and didn’t realize it. I had emotional issues. I would feel certain ways, stemming from issues that I had that I wasn’t aware of. And spiritually I wasn’t in a place where I needed be. I was a leader of people, but spiritually I wasn’t where I needed to be to handle that position. So it is something that I did within myself that has become my lifestyle. It’s not just something you do for 40 days, but it is a process that recalibrates your life so you can live it the rest of your days.”
Bishop Masters was cursed and crippled by an alcohol addiction and childhood traumas that derailed three marriages and damaged a high profile career. “Dr. Joseph and ‘The Journey’ saved my life and rescued me from my demons,” Masters admits. “I have been rebooted and reborn.”
The men that graduate from the six-week curriculum are called “Legends”; the women become known as “Butterflies.”
“I figured out who I was inside,” recalls Stephanie Andry, the very first Butterfly. “My personal transformation did amazing things for my life, for myself, for my marriage, for me being a mother, for me being a worker. It just totally revolutionized who I was.”
Before her Journey, Olivia Taylor was an unhappy, overweight insomniac who was taking several different anti-depressants, sleeping pills, two different pain medications and blood pressure medications. “In the six months since I started it, I have lost an average of about six pounds per month,” the 60-something Taylor beams. “My energy level is great. I am off of all of my prescription medicine. I am feeling happy. I don’t even feel my age.”
The clinical data gathered points to “The Journey’s” organic process transforming one’s mind, body, and soul. The translation: emotional healing, new eating habits, and consciousness-raising. It also translates into losing 10 or more pounds for participants. That’s why Dr. Vivian, and others, believes Dr. Joseph’s “Journey” has the makings of a mass movement. In fact, it has become so popular by word of mouth and personal testimony that “The Journey” is sweeping the country with hundreds and hundreds of potential participants anxiously asking to join.
“Every city, every state, every organization, every church that hears about ‘The Journey’ they are all excited, they’re engaged and they are looking to see when can we start,” says Williams, a recipient of the Informer Newspaper’s coveted ‘America’s Top 40 Pastors Under 40’ award. “They are able to identify that it is something that they need and want for the betterment of themselves.”
Dr. Joseph and “The Journey” Legends and Butterflies plan to expand the process to children in 2013 … and call it, “Camp Journey.”
For more information go to www.formyjourney.com.
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