Friday Morning Live

Garland R. Hunt is a proven strategic leader with a dynamic ministry background and extensive experience in criminal justice, religious liberty and race relations. He recently authored "Crisis in America: A Christian Response" (2021). 

His executive leadership spans some 30 years, with the Fellowship of International Churches, Wellington Boone Ministries and New Generation Campus Ministries, which prepared him for an appointment as President of Prison Fellowship in July of 2011 until September of 2013, an organization that partners with some 7,700 churches and 14,000 volunteers.

He has extensive work as an advocate for religious liberty and criminal justice reform. He is co-Founder of the OneRace Racial Healing Movement. He also serves as a consultant with Alliance Defending Freedom and co-founder of the coalition of religious liberty in Georgia. 

Hunt serves on the Board of Directors and as the Vice Chairman of Crossroads Prison Ministries and has served as Vice President of the Association of Paroling Authorities International.

In 2004, he was appointed to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, by Governor Sonny Perdue as a member of an executive board authorized to grant paroles, pardons, reprieves, remissions, commutations and the restoration of civil and political rights for Georgia’s inmates. Hunt eventually became chairman of the board in 2006.

In 2010, he was commissioner of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, overseeing a staff of 4,500 employees, and managed the care of 52,000 youth who were under the supervision and detention of the juvenile justice department. 

In early 2021, Hunt was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp (GA) to the State Housing Trust Fund for the Homeless Commission.

In 1993, he founded the Raleigh International Church; an influential ministry with the mission of racial reconciliation. In March 2015, he was installed as Senior Pastor of the Father’s House in Norcross Georgia. Each week, Bishop Hunt demonstrates his pastors heart through his passionate preaching and vibrant leadership.

After completing a B.A. from Howard University in 1980 and JD from Howard University School of Law in 1983, he served as a judicial law clerk and staff attorney with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. 

Garland and his lovely wife Eileen have been married for 39 years. They have three grown children, Garland Jr., Christa, Jeremy, daughter in laws Melissa and Ky, son in law Brian and six grandchildren.

 Today's America is faced with multiple challenges that are impossible for anyone to escape. I can't breathe. Black Lives Matter. Not my president. George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. COVID-19. Breonna Taylor. Pandemic. Impeachment. Democrat. Republican. Socialism. These names and phrases spark controversy and a range of emotions including rage, hurt, sadness, and sometimes even hopelessness. How can 21st century followers of Christ react the same as nonbelievers? How can they recognize the areas in which God could be calling them into our country's combative culture war? How should they respond to national crises the way Jesus would? What is the Church's role in initiating and facilitating racial healing and reconciliation in the cities and towns across our great land?Crisis in America: A Christian Response answers these questions and challenges Christians and nonbelievers alike to go against the natural tendency to be influenced by the culture and the headlines and develop a God-inspired view to the turmoil of today.  

Rev. Dr. Melvin L. Johnson was raised in a small southern Texas town during the volatile sixties and seventies. He witnessed and experienced much of the cultural changes that were powered by the Civil Rights Movement and the Viet Nam War. He and his two siblings grew up in a home with traditional Judeo-Christian values surrounded by a community where “taking a village to raise a child” was normal as well as acceptable. One unique character trait within him was to see himself as an equal to people of other races who may have considered him inferior and identified racial hatred as being the most important issue of the time in need of solving. With an unquenchable desire to identify and solve the most pressing social problems of our time, Dr. Johnson was licensed to preach the gospel in April of 1988 at Hall Chapel Baptist Church and has been the senior pastor of the Heart of Christ Community Church where he and Sheena, wife of 42 years, have served for 27 years. He has earned a BA degree in Religious Education, MA degree in Christian Counseling and a DM in Theology from Covington School of Theology. He has authored several books such as Junk Food in the Body of Christ, Overcoming Racism Through the Gospel and From Heaven to You.

Dr. Johnson’s most recent book is Understanding Socialism and the Dangers It Brings. He communicates that the socialist movement in the United States has exerted influences throughout practically every aspect of American life, affecting all from the basic family unit to the Oval Office of the President of the United States of America. For this reason, he has written this book for the purpose of helping individuals to understand how dangerous socialism—the forerunner to communism—actually is! He has worked to present eight observations reflective of socialism’s nature and the effects it has had on cultures and nations past and present. He subtitles this book “A Basic Primer” not to demean or speak to the reader in a tone of condescension, but to ensure that the reader gets the message without being pulled within the proverbial tall grass.