Southside Baptist Church presented an inspiring and family-orientated opportunity for its church members, as well as the  community.

Brother Herbert Brown from Southside said he had an opportunity to preview the movie, Courageous, back in the spring before it came out in theaters in September.

“It is a powerful family film,” Brown said. “It has some tremendous messages relating to the family and the need for having strong families.”

The movie is about police officers facing the streets on a day-to-day basis but the real struggle is facing their families as fathers. Through the power of faith and God, these men go through several different struggles throughout the film that make them grow as a person and a family.

“There’s something in it for everybody that goes to see it whether it’s mom or dad or the children in the family,” Brown said. “It deals with a lot of issues all throughout the movie that families struggle with like jobs, making ends meet, relationships with children and the struggles that teenagers go through with no father present in the family on a regular basis.”

Originally, Southside Baptist purchased the tickets to the movie for Wednesday, Oct. 26 and handed the tickets out for free to the congregation. However, because so many people wanted to go, the church purchased more tickets for Tuesday, Oct. 25.

“The response was so overwhelming and they went so quickly, we had our folks sign a ‘Want to Go’ list and so we got the rest of those who wanted to see it.”

Along with adding Oct. 25, the church purchased tickets for today’s showing and gave those to the general public for free. This brought the total tickets to 450.

“We wanted to give the general public an opportunity to see it and those tickets are gone,” Brown said.

The church also gave some tickets to Mayor Dexter McLendon, Sheriff Kenny Harden and Chief of Police Lonzo Ingram.

“I thought it was really good, and I thought it was put together well,” Ingram said. “It had a good story line and story plot and the topic was very relevant to start with. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and you’re going to have to have a relationship with God to get you through it. The other thing was the part of the movie is all over the country, we have a lot of kids with out fathers and male influence in their life and it’s just a recipe for disaster.”

The church has also handed out Post-It Notes for anyone who sees the movie to write his or her thoughts down and post it on the board outside of the movie theater.

“It’s important just for an understanding standpoint,” Ingram said. “You’re certainly able to fix something if you understand what you’re fighting. It’s a good tool to listening and understanding about what’s happening in our community, state and country.”

This is the first year that Southside Baptist has done a film like this for the community.

“My self and some of our leadership said one of the things that has been our goals is ways we can connect with our community better,” Brown said. “This is just a good start for us as a church. It’s a good film, but as a church, we wanted to do something with the community.”

Due to the popularity, the church has purchased another round of 186 tickets for Wednesday, Nov. 2. Everyone is welcome to claim the tickets. Southside Baptist will be giving them away starting Monday, Oct. 31 at 8 a.m.