For generations, the Black church has passed the offering plate to keep the lights on, pay the preacher, help the poor and carry the Gospel beyond its walls. But what happens when the preacher leaves the sanctuary, takes a popular Christian podcast on tour — and charges admission?

That question has placed Pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell, founder and lead pastor of Atlanta’s fast-growing 2819 CHURCH, at the center of a heated social media debate.

Mitchell and Tim Timberlake, senior pastor of Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida, host “Street Preachers,” which its official website describes as a “raw, unfiltered podcast” committed to spreading the Gospel.

‘A brood of vipers’

The controversy began after ticket prices for the podcast’s 2026 tour circulated online. General admission tickets reportedly cost about $60 before fees, with premium options, including a VIP meet-and-greet package, priced at $200. Critics questioned whether ministers should charge people to hear the Gospel.

Others defended the pastors, arguing that Christian events require venues, transportation, security, equipment and staff.

Mitchell answered critics from the pulpit last month, calling them “a brood of vipers.” He said the podcast is a separate, personal project and that neither his church nor Timberlake’s is bankrolling it.

“Now we have decided to go on a tour to take the gospel to cities, and because that’s not funded by 2819, and it’s not funded by Celebration Church, Tim and I gotta do that with our own pockets,” Mitchell said. “It’s why there is tickets. We have to pay for venues and security and productions and staff from our own pockets.”

Mitchell called some critics “ignorant” and said they did not know that a child was healed through faith during one of the events.

“And you want to complain about a 60 ticket?” he said. “So hate on!”

Worship service vs. media event

Mitchell maintains that “Street Preachers” is an independently produced podcast tour, not a worship service, and that ticket revenue helps cover production costs.

Yet the presence of pastors, Scripture and Gospel language makes the distinction less clear to some believers.

The official tour website lists all eight 2026 stops as sold out. Promotional material announcing additional dates promised, “Better ticket options. Same Gospel. Same move of God.”

Corporate prayer gathering

The language gets to the heart of the dispute. Some Christians argue that no one should be kept outside because they cannot afford a ticket. Others say the Gospel remains free even when people pay for the venue and experience surrounding its presentation.

The paid podcast tour, however, is not Mitchell’s only large-scale gathering. On Oct. 10, 2819 CHURCH will host “ACCESS — That Powerful Hour of Prayer” at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Admission is free.

2819 CHURCH has said 80,000 free tickets were claimed before registration reopened.

The contrast raises another question: What makes one Gospel-centered event a ministry supported by donors and another a production supported by customers?

Unfiltered preaching, youth appeal

Mitchell’s congregation, composed largely of young Black adults, grew from fewer than 200 weekly worshippers in 2023 to about 6,000, according to the church. Some worshippers arrive before sunrise to secure a place inside.

His appeal rests partly in an intense, vulnerable and raw preaching style.

“I’m preaching without watering that down, without filtering out things that we think might be too controversial,” Mitchell told The Associated Press.

That visibility has also brought scrutiny of his theology, associations, travel, security and the businesses surrounding his ministry.

But the controversy reaches beyond Mitchell and Timberlake. Christian music concerts charge admission. Seminaries charge tuition. Religious publishers sell Bibles, books and devotionals. Churches pay musicians, media teams and guest preachers. Money becomes particularly uncomfortable, however, when an event is presented simultaneously as ministry and entertainment.

Ministry vs. entertainment

Supporters should not assume every dollar collected becomes personal profit. Critics, however, question whether lower-cost seats, sponsored tickets or free admission for people who cannot pay should be part of a Gospel-centered event.

The Black church always has required resources for ministry. It also has carried a sacred responsibility to make room for people with little or nothing to give.

The sold-out “Street Preachers” tour shows people are willing to pay to attend. The free ACCESS gathering offers a different model. The challenge is preserving that open door as Christian ministry increasingly adopts the machinery — and economics — of popular entertainment.

The post Should you have to pay to hear the Gospel? appeared first on St. Louis American.

Based on reporting by St. Louis American.

This Saturday N.C. Central University will kick off its 89th Ultimate Homecoming Experience — a week-long celebration bringing thousands of students, family, friends and alumni to campus.

This year’s festivities include the Homecoming Countdown, parade, Miss and Mister NCCU Coronation, concerts and the football game.

The number of visitors to the football game on Saturday, Oct. 10 is expected to reach at least 10,000 — O’Kelly Riddick Stadium’s capacity, with NCCU’s recent enrollment increase of more than 10,000 students.

The Eagles will face William & Mary after playing against the Campbell University’s Fighting Camels on Oct 3.

Students are already expressing excitement for the upcoming festivities.

“I’m excited for homecoming because I can meet alumni and go outside and party with my fellow eagles,” Digital Filmmaking junior Rhese Gardner said. “I’m also really looking forward to the Greek Bowl because there’s a lot going on.”

He added that even though he’s disappointed this semester’s Oil Spill was canceled, he’s still excited for the other events like the parade and concerts.

Here is a list of the week’s on-campus events:

• Oct. 3 – Homecoming Countdown

• Oct. 4 – Gospel Concert

• Oct. 5 – Coronation of Miss and Mister NCCU

• Oct. 6 – 10:40 Break

• Oct. 6 – Homecoming Experience Showcase

• Oct. 7 – Fried Chicken Wednesday

• Oct. 7 – Festival Block Party

• Oct. 7 – Late Night Breakfast

• Oct. 8 – Back to the Nest Young Alumni Mixer

• Oct. 8 – Old School Greek Stroll Off

• Oct. 8 – Hip-Hop Concert

• Oct. 9 – Step Show

• Oct. 10 – Football Game

The post NCCU ramping up for the 89th Ultimate Homecoming Experience first appeared on Campus Echo Online.

Based on reporting by North Carolina Central University – Campus Echo.

Former Dallas police officerAmber Guyger has been granted parole seven years after she was convicted of murdering her neighbor,Botham Jean, inside his Dallas apartment.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles approved Guyger’s release Thursday (October 1), seven years to the day after Guyger was convicted of Jean’s murder, according to NBC News.

In 2019, a jury convicted Guyger of murder and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for Jean’s 2018 death. Her conviction and 10-year sentence were upheld on appeal in 2022.

Geyger’s first parole request was denied in 2024, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported.

The Dallas Police Department fired her after the shooting. During her trial, Guyger testified that she mistakenly entered Jean’s apartment after returning home from work, believing it was her own apartment one floor below.

She said she saw Jean inside and fired her weapon because she believed he was an intruder, according to NBC News.

Jean was a 26-year-old Black man from St. Lucia who worked as an accountant. He was inside his home eating ice cream when Guyger entered and shot him, NBC DFW reported.

The parole board cited Guyger’s prison record in approving her release. According to NBC DFW, officials said she did not have a documented pattern of violent or assaultive arrests or convictions, maintained a satisfactory adjustment while incarcerated, and completed programs intended to help her obtain and maintain employment.

Jean’s family opposed the parole decision and had asked that Guyger serve her full 10-year sentence, according to NBC DFW.

Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who represents the family, told NBC DFW that the decision was deeply disappointing.

“They stood up again and again to ask that the full sentence be served,” Merritt said.

The Dallas Police Department told NBC DFW that the parole decision was outside its authority and that the department had no role in determining whether Guyger would be released. The department said its thoughts remained with Jean’s family and others affected by his death.

Guyger’s conviction and 10-year sentence were upheld on appeal in 2022.

A civil jury ordered Guyger to pay Jean’s family $98.6 million in damages in 2024, according to NBC DFW.

Guyger’s release date has not been announced. NBC News reported that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will determine when she is released.

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Based on reporting by Michigan Chronicle.

Morehouse School of Medicine held its 42nd Fall Convocation and White Coat and Pinning Ceremony on September 18, and it featured strong ties to Nashville. Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice is completing her 12th year as president and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM). The school boasts 355 students seeking degrees and certificates in the medical field.

“This entering class represents the future of medicine, science, public health and health care leadership,” said Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, and FACOG. “As these students begin their journeys at Morehouse School of Medicine, they join a community grounded in excellence, service and our shared commitment to advancing health equity. We look forward to supporting their development as leaders who will transform the health and well-being of the communities they serve.”

Infectious diseases physician and scientist Dr. Barney S. Graham, MD, and PhD, served as the keynote speaker. He serves as the director of the David Satcher Global Health Equity Institute, professor of Medicine and Microbiology, Biochemistry and Immunology at Morehouse School of Medicine. He is an inventor of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies approved for human use to prevent or treat RSV, COVID-19 and Ebola. He joined MSM in 2022. He served in various positions at Vanderbilt University for 21 years.

Dr. Graham told the audience to “Embrace the Unseen” and focused on three points: Do the Best You can with what’s in front of you, Do what makes you come alive and Do the right thing even when no one is looking. He added, “Anything you do to improve mental and physical wellness and promote disease prevention will reduce health disparity by reducing the resources needed for treatment.”

His remarks commanded a roaring applause from the audience, which included his wife, Dr. Cynthia Turner Graham, and the former First Lady of Tennessee State University, Mrs. Edwina Hefner, a close friend to the family.

Based on reporting by Tennessee Tribune.

“From Accra to the Vatican” appears in The Ghanaian Envoy Special Edition on UN Resolution A/RES/80/250 — the first time a sovereign state has carried the Reparations Presentment to the Holy See into its official record

ACCRA, Ghana / CHICAGO, Illinois — October 7, 2026 — The Global Circle for Reparations and Healing today announced that its submission to Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “From Accra to the Vatican: A Call for a Global Plan of Action on Catholic Church Redress”, has been published in the Special Edition of The Ghanaian Envoy, the official newsletter of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ghana. The 175-page edition, titled “Creating A New World,” documents the Ghana-led campaign that culminated on March 25, 2026, in United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/80/250, which declared the trafficking of enslaved Africans and the racialized chattel enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity.

The Global Circle’s submission, authored by Co-Convener Kamm Howard, appears in Part V of the edition, “What Repair Must Now Mean,” at page 161. It shares the volume with statements by President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, President Joseph Nyuma Boakai Sr. of Liberia, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah of Namibia, President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye of Senegal, President Carlos Manuel Vila Nova of São Tomé and Príncipe, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, African Union Commissioner Amma Twum-Amoah, CARICOM Reparations Commission Chair Sir Hilary Beckles, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Dr. Julius Garvey, and Congressional Black Caucus Executive Director Vincent Evans, among others.

The submission traces the Global Circle’s delivery of the Reparations Presentment to the Holy See in Vatican City on July 18, 2022, the document’s subsequent use by the former Vice President of Costa Rica and the Vice President of Colombia in their engagements with Pope Francis, and the partial response contained in Pope Leo XIV’s May 2026 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. It argues that while three of the Presentment’s seven demands have entered the Church’s official language in diluted form, four remain wholly unmet: rescission of the papal bulls that authorized African enslavement, the Church’s call upon other offending Western nations to make redress, the establishment of a joint Vatican–African Diaspora–African Papal Commission on Reparations and Healing, and a substantial financial commitment to repair. The submission asks Ghana to adopt the Presentment as the reference instrument for a Vatican track within the Accra Next Steps Commitments and to convene a first meeting of Global African reparationists toward a collective response.

“For four years the Presentment has been a civil society document carried by civil society hands,” said Kamm Howard, Co-Convener of the Global Circle and Commissioner of the National African American Reparations Commission. “Ghana has now placed it in the official record of a sovereign state, in a volume that opens with a President’s address to the General Assembly and closes by asking what repair must mean. That is not a courtesy. It is a signal to every government, every reparations commission, and every African Catholic that the claim against the Holy See belongs on the state agenda, and that the state which broke the deadlock at the United Nations is prepared to see it there.”

The significance of the publication extends beyond the Vatican file. The Presentment was created as a legal claims instrument by Howard in 2014 and first delivered to corporations and institutions in the United States, where it secured significant concessions. Its appearance in a foreign ministry’s official publication, translated and distributed in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, establishes the reparations presentment as a recognized instrument of international reparatory diplomacy, one that other states and descendant communities can adopt without drafting a new framework of their own. The Global Circle has described this catalytic potential as the “N’namba Effect,” after the Evanston, Illinois, reparations initiative – led by N’nanba Robin Rue Simmons – that gave municipalities across the United States the model, permission, and courage to act.

“The Vatican told us in 2022 that it moves in fifteen-year increments,” Howard added. “Ghana has just demonstrated at the United Nations that a determined state can compress that timeline to a single vote. We are asking Ghana to do for the Church what it did for the General Assembly, and we are asking Global Africa to organize behind that ask with one document, one voice, and one set of demands.”

The Global Circle has written to President Mahama and Foreign Minister Ablakwa to express its gratitude and to propose that its Vatican and Interreligious Actors Working Group lead the first meeting on a collective Vatican response under the auspices of the Government of Ghana. The Global Circle has also formally advised the Congressional Black Caucus of the publication in connection with its pending request that the Caucus recognize the Presentment as the foundational document for reparations engagement with the Roman Catholic Church and join the Government of Ghana in this global call to action.

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About the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing

The Global Circle for Reparations and Healing was convened in 2022 to help build united global reparations front across Africa and its worldwide diaspora. In July 2022 the Global Circle delivered the Reparations Presentment to the Holy See in Vatican City. It co-organized Accra Summit I in August 2022 with the Government of Ghana and the Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund, and led the organization of Accra Summit II: Centering Healing Across Global Africa in March 2025 in partnership with the African Union. The Reparations Presentment to the Holy See is available in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish at gcrh.org.

Media Contact

Global Circle for Reparations and Healing

Kamm Howard, Co-Convenor

[email protected] 773 520 0369

gcrh.org

Oakland’s public conversation about health care must begin with a simple truth: a doctor’s appointment is not the same thing as access to care.

For a mother juggling work and child care, access may mean a text-message reminder, a bus pass, an evening appointment, or someone who can explain what Medi-Cal covers. For an older patient managing diabetes, it may mean help scheduling a specialist visit and understanding new medications. For a family that has been dismissed or misunderstood in medical settings, access may begin with meeting a community health worker who knows the neighborhood, speaks their language, and treats their concerns with respect.

Community health clinics make that kind of care possible. They are part medical provider, part navigator, part educator, and part trusted local institution. Proposition 44 threatens to narrow the definition of what counts as patient care in a way that could undermine the very supports that allow patients to receive it.

The statewide measure would require covered nonprofit community clinics to spend at least 90 percent of their annual revenue on health care or qualifying program services. The ballot measure directs the Attorney General to establish more detailed guidance on what expenses qualify. Clinics that do not meet the threshold could face penalties for the difference. The Legislative Analyst’s Office reports that affected clinics currently spend an average of about 80 percent of revenue on health care services.

A percentage may look like a clean measure of accountability. But health care is not cleanly divided between what happens inside an examination room and everything that enables a patient to enter one.

Consider the work that happens before and after a visit. Clinic staff maintain confidential patient records. They follow up after missed appointments. They keep information systems secure. They recruit and train employees in an expensive and competitive health care labor market. They coordinate referrals, process claims, purchase supplies, maintain buildings, and make certain that patients are not lost somewhere between diagnosis and treatment.

Oakland families should not be asked to accept the fiction that these functions are unrelated to care.

The danger in Proposition 44 is not only its 90 percent figure. It is that the meaning of “qualifying” spending will be worked out later. A clinic preparing a budget today may not know whether a navigator, health educator, transportation program, outreach worker, technology upgrade, or other patient-support service will be counted the way it expects. Yet the financial consequence of getting it wrong could be immediate.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office says clinics falling short of the requirement could be required to pay the shortfall amount to the state and could seek to recover the money only if they show compliance within five years. The same analysis estimates state enforcement costs in the low tens of millions of dollars annually, supported by fees.

That is a troubling arrangement for organizations that are expected to provide care to people with the fewest alternatives.

Oakland has learned that trust is not built through slogans. It is built when a patient is listened to, when a parent can secure an appointment for a child, when a clinic returns a call, and when a person receives help without being shamed for their income, insurance, language, immigration history, or prior experience with the system.

For Black residents in particular, trustworthy care is not an abstract goal. Persistent inequities in health outcomes and patient treatment are real. Community-centered clinics can help bridge the gap with culturally responsive staff, patient navigators, behavioral-health programs, and partnerships that understand the conditions shaping health outside the clinic door.

Proposition 44 could pressure providers to treat those supports as expendable because they do not fit neatly into a state-enforced formula. That would be a mistake.

Accountability is necessary. Clinics that receive public resources should be transparent, well governed, and focused on their mission. But good oversight asks whether patients are being served well, whether money is managed responsibly, and whether communities can obtain needed care. It should not rely on a rigid ratio that may punish clinics for doing the hard work of reaching people who need more than a brief medical encounter.

A broad coalition of providers and community organizations opposes Proposition 44, including the California Primary Care Association, the California Medical Association, the California Hospital Association, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, and the California Teachers Association.

Oakland needs health policy that expands the circle of care. Proposition 44 risks drawing that circle smaller.

The Oakland Post editorial board urges a No vote on Proposition 44.