Hello World,

This is not a Christian topic per se, but I thank God for my flavorful Jamaican heritage! That’s why I was elated to hear this news!!! A major movie about the life of the reggae legend Bob Marley has finally been made! See the details below…

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE celebrates the life and music of an icon who inspired generations through his message of love and unity. On the big screen for the first time, discover Bob’s powerful story of overcoming adversity and the journey behind his revolutionary music. Produced in partnership with the Marley family and starring Kingsley Ben-Adir as the legendary musician and Lashana Lynch as his wife Rita,BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE is in theatres January 12!

Doesn’t that movie look like it’s going to be epic?!!! I remember Bob Marley and other reggae artists coming from my father’s stereo as he washed his car on Saturday mornings. That is one of the ways that I knew that the weekend had truly arrived…

Below is a message from Bob Marley’s oldest son, Ziggy, about the upcoming movie…

 

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A post shared by Ziggy Marley (@ziggymarley)

Paramount Pictures Presents

A Plan B Entertainment / State Street Pictures / Tuff Gong Production

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE

Executive Producers

Richard Hewitt, Orly Marley, Matt Solodky

Produced by

Robert Teitel, Brad Pitt, Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner,

Ziggy Marley, Rita Marley, Cedella Marley

Directed by

Reinaldo Marcus Green

Starring

Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Tosin Cole, Anthony Welsh, Michael Gandolfini, Umi Myers, Nadine Marshall

OneLoveMovie.com

#BobMarleyMovie

#OneLoveMovie

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Are you as excited about this upcoming movie as I am?

Any thoughts?

The post BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE | New Trailer and Poster Available Now! appeared first on After the Altar Call.

Hello World,

I was already a bit of a germaphobe anyway, but I felt kind of bad about the fact that I generally don’t like to touch people’s hands unless I know them like that. But now, I don’t care if we’re in church, I’m waving “Hey” from a safe distance and blowing air-kisses. And on top of that, I’m putting on hand sanitizer like it’s lotion.  Finally, if you look like you may be sick with anything, I’m giving you the screw face and heading in the opposite direction. Don’t judge me unless you’re Jesus. This  coronavirus is something serious – so serious that President Trump jammed up already heavy traffic on a Friday afternoon no less here in the A to meet with Centers of Disease Control (CDC) officials to discuss the outbreak.

And likewise, churches, one of the many places where large numbers of people gather on a regular basis, are responding as they should. According to The Christian Post, local pastor Jamal Bryant of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church recently met with his church about how they are responding to the issue.

“You’ll notice that we have, proactively here at your church, as of Sunday we now have at every exit, every entrance, we now have hand sanitizing stations because we want to be mindful and we want to be proactive,” he said.

The megachurch pastor also urged his church to start checking more frequently on their older adult family members since they are among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

“This is where we have to start functioning and operating as family,” he told his church.

Read more HERE. 

Catholic churches in Atlanta are changing the way they conduct communion. According to CBS46, this statement below came from the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Given the ongoing concern over COVID-19, also known as the Coronavirus, we have decided to suspend distribution of the Precious Blood for the time being. We feel we would eventually have to take this action and hope that taking it early will allay any fears people have now and demonstrate our concern for the health and safety of our congregations.

Individual pastors can decide whether or not to suspend the exchange of peace. Many pastors have already taken these precautions to prevent the spread of flu in their communities.

Read more HERE.

And finally if you want to just stay home and not even go to church, that’s an option for some churches…Pastor Andy Stanley, who leads North Point Community Church, Buckhead Church, Browns Bridge Church, Gwinnett Church, Woodstock City Church, and Decatur City Church, disseminated a letter titled “Permission to stay home!” to his members, according to WSB-TV.

“If you’ve been exposed to a person with the coronavirus or the flu or have recently traveled to a CDC Level 2 or 3 country (China, Iran, Italy, South Korea, Hong Kong, or Japan), please take a couple of Sundays off. If you or your family members are experiencing or have recently experienced symptoms associated with the flu or the common cold (fever, persistent cough, headache, chills, or unexplained rash), we ask that you take a couple of Sundays off as well,” Stanley said in his email.

Read more HERE.

And on the other hand, some religious leaders have taken a bizarre approach to the coronavirus issue…Reportedly, former televangelist Jim Bakker is selling a fake coronavirus cure…SMHH (Shake My Holy Head)….From The Huffington Post, check out this headline — “New York AG Warns Televangelist Jim Bakker To Stop Selling Fake Coronavirus Cure.” An article excerpt is below.

How do you feel about these churches’ responses to coronavirus? (I’m not even getting into what Jim Bakker is doing…Wow…)  How are you changing your behavior? (This is some Walking Dead stuff, right?)

Any thoughts?

The post New Birth Missionary Baptist Church & Other Churches Change Practices, Educate Due to Coronavirus… appeared first on After the Altar Call.

Hello World,

The world lost one of its greatest evangelists when Billy Graham passed last Wednesday, Feb. 21, at 99 years old in his North Carolina home. He wasn’t perfect, but none can claim that accolade except for the Trinity. And through his worldwide ministry, Graham faithfully pointed to the Trinity for most of his life. As this blog is entitled “After the Altar Call,” I was intrigued when I saw this article about Graham “Billy Graham’s Altar Calls Were More Than Moments of Decision” by David Neff, a former editor of Christianity Today on its website. If you’ve ever wondered why I named this blog “After the Altar Call” beyond the About Jacqueline J. Holness page where I explain my reasoning, read this article. Below is an excerpt:

“First appeared on christianitytoday.com”

An evangelist came to town when I was just a freshman in high school. He needed an organist. So my pastor made arrangements for me to help out.

“When I get to the end of my sermon,” the evangelist told me, “I’ll start to move my fingers like this.” He wriggled his fingers like a mass of night crawlers in a bait can. That was the cue, he explained, for me to begin to play some comin’-to-Jesus music very softly and tenderly—and to gradually increase the volume as he turned up the emotional pitch of his invitation.

I had sat through many altar calls before. But now that I was part of the team, I learned just how well engineered these invitations were. We carefully followed a precisely formulated sequence designed to move people out of their seats and down the aisles.

In 1969, Billy Graham came to Angels Stadium in Anaheim, California, when I was a fresh-out-of-college youth pastor. I decided to take a dozen or so teens to hear Graham preach.

When we eventually found our seats, Ethel Waters was giving her testimony just before singing her trademark tune, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” I remember very little about Billy Graham’s sermon, but his altar call burned itself into my memory.

Read the rest at christianitytoday.com.

Also, Zondervan Publishing released “A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story,” by William Martin, Ph.D., Harvard,on Feb. 20. Graham himself requested Martin, the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Emeritus Professor of Religion and Public Policy in the Department of Sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas, for the project. Graham granted Martin unprecedented access to the Billy Graham archives and team members, lending this work the authenticity and transparency of no other.

“As I have written in this book, I have constantly examined what I have said in an effort to make sure that I was neither shading the truth in Graham’s or his associates’ favor out of gratitude for their helpfulness, nor taking an inappropriately negative slant as a way of emphasizing that I had not been taken in by slick manipulation,” Martin writes. “But since Billy Graham and his associates – like all humankind – have weaknesses, I determined not to gloss those over.”

Martin begins the work with a short introduction to evangelicalism and the revivalist movement starting with John Cotton’s messages to the settlers of New England in the 1600s. Other names to follow include Solomon Stoddard, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield through to Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Mordecai Ham, the evangelist under whom Graham came to faith in Christ as a teenage boy in 1934.

Fans of Graham’s autobiography “Just As I Am,” will recognize many of the names, places and events chronicled here, but “A Prophet with Honor” goes further behind the scenes to explain the conditions that made it possible for Graham to achieve his spectacular success and to reveal how sometimes he succeeded in spite of himself.

As Graham explained when approaching Martin about writing the book, “There are no conditions. It’s your book. I don’t even have to read it. I want you to be critical. There are some things that need criticizing.”

The post Christianity Today Remembers Billy Graham’s Altar Calls… appeared first on After the Altar Call.