DESCRIPTION:
This is track 6 from the 2002 album "Speak For Me".
BY REQUEST
Written by V. Michael McKay
Born December 24, 1947, Rev. Arthur T. Jones grew up singing in choirs and going to church in Tampa with his grandmother. By 1974 he was a member of the Tampa Mass Choir and, with friend Milton Biggham, set out to form the Florida Mass Choir. Rev. Jones is credited with bringing the Gospel Music Workshop of America to Tampa for the first time in 1976. That group honored him in 2011 for his lifetime achievements in the gospel music industry.

The East Tampa native graduated from Middleton High School and United Theological Seminary. He also received training at Harvard and Oxford universities. He worked as a marketing executive for 24 years until retiring from IBM Corp.

He founded the Bible-Based Fellowship Church as a Bible Study in his home in 1988. Under his leadership, Bible Based has become one of the largest predominately Black congregations in Tampa.

He and a friend, the Rev. Earl B. Mason, bought 6 acres off Ehrlich Road where they built the church. What started as a Bible study out of his North Tampa home grew into a church with more than 5,000 members, and five congregations and two schools in Africa.

A noted lecturer and teacher, Jones also wrote three books, Four Words for Tough Times, When You Don’t Know What to Do and Just Let God Be God.

Jones, 65, died May 4, 2013 from complications from multiple myeloma, a type of cancer which he had been fighting since 2010. He left a wife of 43 years, Doris Jones, four children and a large, thriving church that loved him.