Gospel Feature: "I'm In Love With A Church Girl"

Gospel music powerhouse and Grammy Award winner, Israel Houghton, executive produced “I’m In Love With A Church Girl.” A movie inspired by a true story about an ex-drug dealer named Miles Montego, played by rapper Ja Rule, who is trying to change is life for the better. In an attempt to make better choices in his life, he meets Vanessa Leon, played by Adrienne Bailon, who is described as the quintessential “Church Girl.” As to be expected, their differing backgrounds causes conflict, but God’s love proves to be greater than the obstacles the couple faces. Also noteworthy is the film’s soundtrack, which is a double-disc featuring some of the biggest names in Gospel music such as Mary Mary and Fred Hammond.

This film will have a nationwide release on Friday, October 18, 2013, via Reverence Gospel Media (RGM). This company’s goal is to release content via film and music that will glorify God and provide encouragement through themes of faith. RGM also strives to provide industry standard quality in all of the products they release. As I have discussed in this blog previously, the Gospel industry seems to be behind in the standard and quality of products released in many instances. So, I was excited to see another company acknowledge this gap and striving to work against this by vowing to release content that will meet and exceed standards of excellence.

RGM has done a great job of utilizing the church community to spread the word about this film. The cast, crew and musicians associated with this film are on a church tour that is traveling across the United States to promote the project. Just this past week, the tour was at Greater Traveler’s Rest in Atlanta, which is where I am located. Attendees of these promotional dates get to see never-before seen footage from the film, meet and greets with the cast, along with hearing testimonies of how this film was created and eventually received a nation-wide release.

I was very pleased to hear about this project. There is lots of “Gospel/Christian” media content, but often times it is limited to television release on Christian only networks. To have a faith-based themed film be released nation-wide is remarkable. And, this film is not trying to hide or conceal its religious themes. Even in its social media hashtag promotions, classic themes of salvation in Christ are prevalent. The film’s credits uses #Surrender and #ComeAsYouAre to invite people to experience not only this movie, but to open your heart to the love of God, which will be the constant message throughout the film.

I encourage everyone who wants more Gospel/Christian themed entertainment to gather your friends on the weekend of October 18^thand go see this movie. Opening weekend is the most important for a movie. It shows how many people will support the project, as well as give the industry executives a gauge of how profitable that genre of film can be. Which honestly is the bottom line in the entertainment business. We cannot complain of not having Christian entertainment on a national platform if we do not support it when it is available … Now, that is the power of Gospel music.