After Filling AT&T Stadium, Philip Anthony Mitchell Releases His Debut Book, 'Contend'

ATLANTA

One year to the day after his publishing deal was announced, Philip Anthony Mitchell is in the middle of the biggest week of his ministry. Contend, the first book from the founder and lead pastor of Atlanta's 2819 Church, was released Tuesday, October 13, by W Publishing Group — three days after an estimated 80,000 people gathered at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, for a night of prayer that Mitchell led.

If the name is new to you, the face may not be. Mitchell's sermons — intense, unhurried, delivered in the black he wears as a reminder to die to sin daily, as a profile in Premier Christianity puts it — are built to travel: cut into clips, they move across TikTok and YouTube by the millions. The church's YouTube channel alone has nearly two million subscribers. The congregation has grown from fewer than 200 people in 2023 to around 6,000 weekly worshippers, according to Associated Press reporting chronicled by Faithfully Magazine.

The church's name is its mission statement: 2819, for Matthew 28:19, the Great Commission. Mitchell relaunched his Atlanta congregation under the name in January 2023, after his previous church came through the pandemic hollowed out. What followed is one of the most closely watched church-growth stories in the country — young adults lining up before dawn, some arriving as early as 5:30 a.m., to secure a seat, the AP has reported. Mitchell's own biography is part of the draw: raised in New York by parents who emigrated from the Caribbean, he has preached openly about dealing drugs as a teenager and about a 2003 night when he nearly took his own life before returning to the faith of his upbringing, according to Premier Christianity.

Saturday showed what that audience looks like at scale. ACCESS — billed as “That Powerful Hour of Prayer” — filled AT&T Stadium on October 10 with an estimated 80,000 believers, according to The Christian Post. There was no celebrity speaker lineup, no sermon and no concert set: the night was built around a single unified hour of corporate prayer. Even the ticketing underlined the demand — admission was free, and every ticket was booked within eight hours. Pastors including San Antonio's Ed Newton and Lakepointe Church's Josh Howerton were among those in the building.

The book has been a year in the making. HarperCollins Christian Publishing announced on October 14, 2025, that W Publishing Group — an imprint of Thomas Nelson — had signed Mitchell for his debut, in a deal placed by Embolden Media Group's Jevon Bolden with senior acquisitions editor Kyle Olund. “I believe we're living in a tense and pivotal moment of American history where Christianity can tip toward revival or irrelevance,” Mitchell said at the announcement. Matt Chandler wrote the foreword.

Contend is built on the Bible's shortest urgent letter. Across 224 pages, Mitchell works through the book of Jude — a one-chapter warning to a church its author saw drifting — and presses the charge in two directions at once, as he and his publisher present it: outward, against a culture he argues is negotiating the faith away, and inward, at the private compromises believers tolerate in themselves. The subtitle carries both fights: Standing Boldly for Biblical Truth While Winning the War Within. The publisher's description opens with the thesis in a single line: “The call to follow Christ was never a call to passive belief.” Each chapter closes with study furniture — a “Takeaway Truth” to anchor the reading and a “Contender's Charge” designed to move it off the page.

His rise has not been without friction. Mitchell's intensity draws criticism as readily as crowds, and a news analysis in Premier Christianity this year examined the ticketed podcast tour he runs outside the church with pastor Tim Timberlake — a venture he has defended as self-funded — asking whether it amounts to profiting from the gospel. Mitchell denies that. The rooms, so far, keep filling anyway.

Release week has run like one of his events. Mitchell sat for an exclusive interview on The Big Tigger Morning Show on Atlanta's V-103 and appeared on Megan Ashley's In Totality podcast the day the book dropped. The audiobook — seven hours and 48 minutes, read by Mitchell himself, with Chandler narrating his foreword — was already collecting listener ratings on Audible within its first day. The hardcover is $29.99 and the ebook $14.99, and by Wednesday, Barnes & Noble's online listing showed the hardcover out of stock.

The launch is built to outlast publication week. The book's official site offers a 40-question discussion guide, invites pastors nationwide to preach on Jude 1:3 in the same season, and is taking applications for a “Contend Cohort” training that begins in January. Whether all of it converts into a bestseller-list debut is the next data point — first-week charts arrive in the coming days. Either way, the week itself is the story: a pastor most of America met in 60-second clips filled a football stadium on Saturday and a bookstore shelf on Tuesday, in a season when faith stories keep breaking through — including the Vatican story leading our homepage today.