and By LINDSAY BIANCHI

[email protected]

It's been called the "greatest

story ever told" and starting today, Fayette's movie watchers

will get to see actor-director Mel Gibson's spin on the crucifixion

of Christ.

"The Passion of the Christ"

is Gibson's $25 million epic about the last 12 hours of Jesus'

life and is spawning fervor among the Christian community.

Churches have bought up entire

showings of the movie to show their eager flock and are hoping more people

will be converted to Christianity after seeing the film.

But locally, one of the county's

biggest churches had an extremely tough time in trying to deal with the

local movie theater.

New Hope Baptist Church's

executive pastor Barry Thompson said he contacted Tinseltown at Fayette

Pavilion about buying the theater out for six screenings.

When he couldn't get any

help at the local level, Thompson then contacted the theater's corporate

owner, Carmike, and was disturbed at what he heard.

"They told me I would

have to purchase all 290 tickets for each show, which was fine. But they

also said I would have to purchase a $5 concession coupon for each seat

also," he said.

Thompson said members of his

flock were quite capable of picking out their own concessions and was

then told he would have to pay a $300 rental fee per screening, along

with a $100 service charge.

Frustrated by the theater chain's

lack of response, Thompson decided to seek a different route to enable

members of New Hope's flock to see the film. He went online and purchased

$7,500 worth of movie bucks from Carmike and will hand them out this Sunday

during a Bible study class.

"This movie has spawned

so much talk, we decided to do a six-week study class on it. Anybody who

comes to our study class on Sunday will get $5 worth of movie bucks to

pay for the movie," said Thompson.

Study classes start at 9:15

a.m. at New Hope's north campus on New Hope Road and 10:30 a.m. at

the church's south campus near Starr's Mill.

Gibson's movie opens on

more than 2,800 screens today and has been the subject of controversy

for months. The devout Catholic financed the movie himself and has been

screening it the last few months to groups of evangelical Christians.

The groups have been moved

screenings.

The movie-star director has

taken hits for what is perceived by some as the anti-Semitic tone of the

film. But in one of the early reviews by Newsweek's David Ansen,

the esteemed film critic finds no evidence of the charges.

Ansen did have problems with

the violence in the movie, and does not recommend the film for children.

"Relentlessly savage,

'The Passion' plays like the Gospel according to the Marquis

de Sade. The film that has been getting rapturous advance raves from evangelical

Christians turns out to be an R-rated inspirational movie no child can,

or should, see," Ansen wrote.

But last week in an interview

with ABC News' Diane Sawyer, Gibson defended the film.

"I don't want people

to make it about the blame game," Gibson said. "It's about

faith, hope, love and forgiveness. That's what this film is about.

It's about Christ's sacrifice."

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