Brother Jed
| Jed Smock | |
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Brother Jed preaches at Speaker's Circle on the campus of the University of Missouri in October 2014.
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| Born |
George Edward Smock January 4, 1943 Brookings, South Dakota |
| Occupation | Campus evangelist |
| Years active | 1972 – present |
| Spouse(s) | Cynthia D. "Cindy" Lasseter Smock (m. 1983) |
| Children | Charlotte, Evangeline, Justina, Martha, and Priscilla |
| Website | www |
| Religion | Brother Jed Christian |
| Writings |
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George Edward "Jed" Smock, Jr. (born January 4, 1943), better known as Brother Jed, is an American evangelist whose open-air preaching ministry is concentrated on college campuses. He has preached at major universities in all fifty US states, and in some other countries. As an itinerant preacher, he usually only spends a few days on each campus, visiting the northern campuses in the fall and spring and the southern campuses in the winter months. In 2004 he relocated to Columbia, Missouri where he often preached at the University of Missouri and other colleges throughout the Midwest. In the summer of 2013 he relocated his ministry and residence to his hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana.
Brother Jed draws from many experiences in his early life while preaching. His self-described lifestyle of "drunkenness, dissipation, and debauchery" began while he was a freshman in high school. Older friends exposed him to alcohol, which became a regular part of his life. Smock began attending Indiana State University in 1960, studying social studies and English. By his second year he had established himself as the heaviest drinker in the fraternity. Smock states in his autobiography that, despite his lifestyle, he graduated near the top of his class.
Smock attended graduate school at Indiana State University, where he earned a master's degree in history and wrote a thesis on "the personal effects of smoking seven straight joints of marijuana" while he was a research assistant in psychology for the Institute of Research into Human Behavior at the school. Smock served as a history professor for one year at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.
He converted to Christianity after being preached to by an Arab carrying a cross in Morocco. Smock began preaching to students at Indiana University in 1974, and was joined by a University of Florida student soon after she had seen him preach in 1978.
Smock formed Campus Ministry USA, a para-church organization, in 1984. In 2004 the group moved its operations from Newark, Ohio to Columbia, Missouri, where he often preached at the University of Missouri on Speakers Circle.
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Wikipedia