
About Us
Pastor Joe Jacowitz

Joseph Jacowitz is the founder and Chairman of the Board of FirstLove Ministries. Raised in a conservative Jewish home in Brooklyn, New York, he came to faith in Christ in 1976 while serving as a rifle instructor in the U.S. Marines. Since 1990, he has served as pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California. Joe has ministered for more than forty years through pastoring, Christian radio, counseling, and conference speaking, helping people overcome addictive behavior and indwelling sin. He and his wife, Sherry, have been married since 1978 and are grateful for their five children and eight grandchildren.
The Bondage Project
Dear Brothers,
I am writing to you plainly because the situation in our churches demands it. Sexual sin is not a fringe problem among the men in our pews. It is a silent epidemic running through the heart of the church, and the silence surrounding it has often allowed men to remain trapped for way too long. Men sit under faithful preaching Sunday after Sunday, lead their families to the table, and go home to a private war they have never told a single soul about. The shame keeps them isolated. The isolation keeps them bound. The bondage quietly hollows out everything the gospel is supposed to produce in a man.
The damage is visible. Men disqualified from ministry. Marriages destroyed. Children raised by fathers present in the home but absent in the soul. Consciences so calloused by years of hidden sin that the enemy clouds the mind and the heart grows deaf to the Word of God. This isn’t a data point in somebody's national survey. It is a crisis.
The Bondage Project exists because we believe the gospel is sufficient for this, not as therapy but as a working reality. We are not offering a self-help curriculum. We are bringing men to the cross, specifically and deliberately, with this sin named and this shame answered by the grace of God, trusting Christ to do what only He can do. We move from the anatomy of the slave to the finished work of the cross to sons of God whose desires are being restored toward Him and away from the counterfeit, in community, because no man was meant to fight this war alone in the dark.
If you are a man in the struggle, come as you are. If you are a pastor, as shepherds entrusted with the care of Christ's flock, we know that you share the desire to see men experience the freedom found in an informed faith united to Christ. You know which men in your congregation are carrying this burden. Please place the flyer in their hands (see below).
The chains are real. So is the Deliverer.
In Christ,
Pastor Brandon Renfro
Bethany Baptist Church, Stockton, CA
Vice President, Bondage Project
“For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” — Hebrews 2:18


