Hernando pastor preaches about healthy lifestyles - Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

(WMC-TV) - A Hernando reverend is preaching about more than Jesus from the pulpit - he's also telling his congregation to give up a diet of fried food.

After recently being featured in the New York Times, Pastor Michael Minor of Oak Hill Baptist Church in Hernando is proud of his efforts in the fight against obesity and bad health.  

Now, his church and many others are adopting the National Baptist Congress Health Outreach and Prevention Education Initiative, known as H.O.P.E.

"Our goal is that every National Baptist church will have a trained health ambassador - not just a person who is talking health, but a person who really knows what to talk about," Minor said Monday.

Minor's plan is to inspire people to live healthier lifestyles.

"Sick members can't pay tithes or pay love offerings, so when I started talking about things that hit them right where they were, then it started resonating," Minor said.

Mississippi has always shared a taste of the national spotlight, which often focuses on the grim statistics surrounding the state's high obesity, heart disease! and diabetes rates.

"The church is the perfect place to turn that around," Minor said.

Minor says his church and several others across the Mississippi Delta are trying to put and end to those statistics.  Thus, fried foods are now banned.

"They come to church - the place that should a source of health - for their prayer breakfast, and they got all this greasy, slab bacon and all this terrible food," Minor said. "The church has to lead by example, and what better way than banning fried chicken? It's a 'no fried chicken zone' at Oak Hill."