Along about 1987 or so I noticed a ad in I think it was Charisma Magazine for a upcoming conference in Washington, D.C. The theme of the conference was "Racial Reconciliation and the Church" and I had had a burden in this area and when I read the ad I knew immediately I was to attend. I travelled from Fla to Washington and enetered the church and it had a large sanctuary with high ceilings and the usual count on Sunday mornings was about 4,000 attending their services. The church was about 85% black but was pastored by a white man and that is a story in itself. But the service started the first night and the 180 member black choir struck me dumb! I had never heard such powerful and spirited singing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 90 members came down some stairs from one and 90 members came down stairs from the other side and met on the stage. They rocked and swayed and lingered fo a while just imiting the Spirit into the proceedings. And they bean to sing and it was like thunerbolts! Goose bumps stood up on my arm about a inch high. This white southern man was being culturally expanded to say the least. The black culture was opened up to me that night in a new and postive way I had never experienced. Earlier this chopior had gotten so good that they knew it and then God shut the whole thing down and worked on the members and purged and sanctified them and they didn't even sing for about 9 mopnths. Then God resurrected it and they sang for His glory. They sang slow spirituals as they are called and up tempo songs and in between songs and we all had a good anointed time during the whole conference. It was worship and the music and the black choir are part of the black African American expereience more more so than the white side of culture. I'm not trying to draw lines of division or walls of separation again but my I was thinking what us white folks have beeen missing. Dietrich Bonhoeffer visted black churches in New York and Harlem while he was in America and reportedly is to have said he was profoundly moved when he visited these churches and held them sing Negro spirituals. I'm not using that word in any deragatory sense but just because this is the way some of these songs are described. Even when I have visted smaller black churches the choir usually moves me. Music is just part of the way things are in these services and so be it. I think it's a good thing and this singing can touch one deeply in my opinion. It doesn't mean white music is bad but there are two sides to culture and expressions of culture and worship.
One song this choir in Washington sang was titled "The Lord Is My Light and My Salvation." It is a slow ballad of sorts but was electrifying to me. Does anyone know which song I am speaking of? I guess part what I am saying is the historical black expression of worship and the use of choirs is just as legitimate as any other and if music has played a a large part then so be it. I've done nothing but be edified when I have attended black churches.
Maybe I can share more later about some of the messages I heard at this conference by anointed preachers I had never heard of who were black. Black is not a deragatory term to me whatever. I don't even see life and others in those terms really. I'm just using those words to express differences in race that obviously exist.
Below is a link to "The Lord Is My Light and Salvation" sang by a New Jerusalem Baptist Church Choir. If you are inclined to listen maybe you will like it.