'There's no perfect institution': 'Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul' takes on the Black church

If there's one thing audiences walk away with after watching "Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul," let it be to question everything.

"So much of life can be spent on autopilot that we don't regularly question why we think the things that we think, why we follow the things that we follow," says Sterling K. Brown. "If we did engage in that question a bit more, folks may still make similar choices, but it wouldn't be blindly. It would be intentionally."

Having grown up in a megachurch and now portraying a disgraced Atlanta pastor in "Honk for Jesus" (in theaters and streaming on Peacock Friday), Brown knows all about questioning why things are the way they are, especially religious institutions.

Brown stars as pastor Lee-Curtis Childs alongside Regina Hall as Trinitie Childs, devoted wife and first lady of a Southern Baptist megachurch. When the pastor's sexual misconduct scandal takes down their once successful church, the couple goes to desperate lengths to repair their reputation and lure back their congregation for a relaunch by Easter Sunday.

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Filming in a faux documentary style, director Adamma Ebo and producer Adanne Ebo, her twin sister, wanted to explore a more nuanced and complex style of criticism born from the frustration of loving a flawed institution.

"There's so much about it that we really loved and respected and revered even, but then there were the things that didn't quite line up with what church purported to be: how people communicated with each other, how people treated other people and real actual harm that would go on," Adamma Ebo says of the sisters' upbringing.

The comedy-satire/mockumentary lens was the perfect way to tell that story.

"What is truth? What are different people's truths?" Adanne Ebo says. "Where's the gray in between? Where do things converge and not converge when it comes to the truth? Because people tend to take documentaries as fact, as truth-telling vehicles,"

As the pastor and the first lady's relationship with each other and their congregation unfold, we see glimpses of hypocrisy, selfishness, abuse of power and other un-Christian practices.

While the image of church leaders behaving in ways that would make anyone clutch their pearls might seem jarring, Hall says it shouldn't come as a surprise.

"There's no perfect human and therefore there's no perfect institution," Hall says. "It's strange people have this expectation of perfection, whether it be pastors or whatever religious institution. When it doesn't meet that, it's shocking, but the truth is, just because it's a long marriage doesn't mean it's a perfect marriage."

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Ultimately, Hall wants people to have more compassion for each other, despite their differences and situations. It was an emotion both Hall and the Ebo sisters had to invoke for Trinitie, who chose to stand by her husband, a decision many would criticize. But it goes deeper than loyalty to her husband.

"She's standing by her church. She's standing by everything she built. And she's standing by the covenant of marriage, and what she believes that to represent spiritually for her," Hall says. "This has been indoctrinated in Trinite's belief from childhood ... what it means to be a good Christian and stick it out."

There are clearly a handful of issues within the church explored in "Honk for Jesus," which the Ebo twins hope spark open conversation. And though church culture isn't going to reform overnight, if Brown could have it his way, he'd also want the church to reconsider its stance on homosexuality.

"You hear the sermon about the homosexual agenda in the Black church a lot, and with a particular vehemence that you don't hear for lying, or infidelity, adultery, what have you," Brown says. "There is a level of compassion and love and empathy that we Christians cut ourselves off from."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Regina Hall, Sterling K. Brown reckon with church in 'Honk for Jesus'