Click here to view the original April 10, 2009 story and additional Wintley Phipps videos.

Pastor WINTLEY PHIPPS (singing at National Prayer Service, Washington National Cathedral):  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound . . .”

KIM LAWTON:  Grammy-nominated Gospel singer Wintley Phipps is a familiar voice at big national events. At President Barack Obama’s National Prayer Service following his Inauguration, Phipps’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” brought the entire National Cathedral audience, including the new president and first lady, to their feet. But he says it’s just as meaningful to him when he sings in places like prisons.

Pastor  PHIPPS: There is a sense that you’re giving hope to people who really need it.

LAWTON:  For Phipps, who is also a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, music is a ministry and, he says, one of the deepest expressions of his Christian faith.

Pastor PHIPPS: Music is almost to me an echo of the sounds of the divine world, and when you hear these sounds, it stirs something deeply spiritual within you.  Music also is the most powerful way of impressing the human mind with hope.

LAWTON: Hope has been a hallmark not only of Phipps’s musical career, but in his charitable efforts as well.  In 1998, Phipps founded the Dream Academy, a national nonprofit for at-risk kids. Born in Trinidad, he says hope was crucial in overcoming his own at-risk childhood.

Pastor PHIPPS: I was born to a troubled home, and I used to get away from my parents’ troubles — I had a little red tricycle, and I’d go in the back yard of my house, and I would turn the tricycle on its side and use one of the backside wheels as a steering wheel, and I would sit there for hours, and I would dream that I was flying to faraway places in the world and meeting important people when I was six, seven years old, and then I wanted to be like Tom Jones.  I’d go around the house singing, “It’s not unusual to be loved.”  I just wanted to be Tom. But something was missing to me.

LAWTON: Despite a difficult family life, Phipps says his mother always prayed for him and told him that God had a special plan for his life.  As a teenager, Phipps embraced her faith as his own.

Pastor PHIPPS:  t the age of 16, God walked into my life and said, “I’ve seen your dreams. Give me your dreams, and I’ll let you see what I’ve been dreaming for you.”

Singing at National Prayer Service

LAWTON:  He attended an historically black Seventh-day Adventist college in Alabama, where he met Linda, now his wife of 32 years.  Then, Phipps says, God began providing opportunities for him to sing in national venues such as a 1984 appearance on “Saturday Night Live” with Jesse Jackson.  He came to the attention of Billy Graham’s team and became a frequent performer at the evangelist’s crusades.

Pastor PHIPPS (singing in Washington): “Talk about a child that do love Jesus.”

LAWTON: Phipps also became a favorite in Washington. He’s sung for every president since Ronald Reagan.

Pastor PHIPPS: I’ve never had a manager or never had an agent, and yet some of the most wonderful moments that a singer could ever dream of have happened to me, and I believe it’s providential.

LAWTON: The idea for the Dream Academy came after he got involved with a prison ministry.

Pastor PHIPPS: I did not know that so many young men in prison looked like my sons. , and when I saw it I was shaken. One of every three young black men in America between the ages of 18 and 30 are in prison today or supervised by the court system either on probation or parole.

LAWTON: Phipps then learned that 60 percent of the young people who end up in prison are the children of prisoners. He wanted to break the cycle of intergenerational incarceration. The Dream Academy offers after-school mentoring and interactive academic tutoring to children of prisoners and kids falling behind at school.

Pastor PHIPPS: One of the most exciting things that can ever happen in a child’s life is to know that , “You mean God thinks about me?  Or God dreams about me?”  And he’s got a dream for my life?”  And when you catch a little glimpse of what that dream is, wow, it changes everything.

LAWTON:  Phipps has enlisted the support of some of his famous connections for the project.  One of his biggest benefactors is his longtime friend Oprah Winfrey.  The lesson of faith, he says, is that things aren’t always as they seem and that hardship can be overcome.  In these uncertain economic times, he’s released a new music DVD called “No Need to Fear.”

LAWTON:  It’s a theme he finds throughout the old spirituals that he often performs.

Pastor PHIPPS (singing): “Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home . . .”

The Negro spiritual teaches us that you’re going come up rough sides of mountains, and you’re going to have difficulties.  But faith gives you that ability to weather any storm.

(singing): “I looked over Jordan and what did I see?”

LAWTON:  It’s the core theme as well for the song that has become his signature, “Amazing Grace.”  He finds great spiritual lessons in the history of the song.

Pastor PHIPPS:  A lot of people don’t realize that just about all Negro spirituals are written on the black notes of the piano, and they just keep recurring.  Probably the most famous white spiritual that’s built on this slave scale was written by a man by the name of John Newton who, before he became a Christian, used to be the captain of a slave ship and many believe heard this melody that sounds very much like a West African sorrow chant (hums “Amazing Grace”).  And it has a haunting, haunting, plaintive quality to it that reaches past your arrogance, past your pride, and it speaks to that part of you that’s in bondage, and we feel it. We feel it. It’s just one of the most amazing melodies in all of human history.

(performing “Amazing Grace” on stage): “To sing God’s praise than when we’ve  first begun. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Amen.”

LAWTON: Another lesson, he says, on how hope always triumphs. I’m Kim Lawton in Vero Beach, Florida.

BOB FAW, correspondent: For people of faith, services which acknowledge, indeed commemorate, death can bring comfort or anguish. Thomas Beveridge’s Yizkor Requiem recognizes both. Performed here by the orchestra and chorus of London’s St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the music is emotional and cerebral—suggestive, even, at times, haunting. Conducted by Sir Neville Marriner and recorded for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, the Yizkor Requiem was composed by Beveridge not just to remind listeners of what Beveridge says “really matters,” but also to combine, musically, two faiths.

THOMAS BEVERIDGE (Composer and Conductor): I realized that I could put together a piece that kind of stands on the bridge between the two religions, the Christian religion and the Jewish religion, and takes a look at, simultaneously, at the ritual for the dead.

FAW: Beveridge says he was inspired to compose this piece after the 1991 death of his father, an Episcopal priest and scholar who immersed himself in both faiths. It was, says Beveridge, “a quest for spiritual roots.”

BEVERIDGE: My quest and my father’s quest. My father inspired me to look at the origins of Christian liturgy in the synagogue. I mean, that’s basically what we’re talking about here.

FAW: Was it an attempt to come to terms with his death, or to memorialize him, or both?

BEVERIDGE: I think both. I find it a very cathartic experience to make this effort in his memory, and in the process I learned a lot.

FAW: What Beveridge, a church organist, choir director, and composer of more than 600 works, learned over the two years he spent writing the Yizkor Requiem is that despite profound differences in theology, the two faiths share enormous common ground.

BEVERIDGE: I went through the Requiem Mass and found passages that were almost exactly the same as passages in the Yizkor service or in similar synagogue ritual, and that’s where the Mass came from. It came directly out of the synagogue.

FAW: “Yizkor,” Hebrew for “may he remember,” is a memorial service for the deceased. The Requiem is the music for a Catholic funeral service, seeking eternal rest for the departed. While a Requiem emphasizes comfort, and the Yizkor can be sad, musically they reinforce one another.

Here, for example, as the cantor sings the Kaddish in Hebrew, the chorus underneath sings the Lord’s Prayer in English—each of them a doxology, a hymn praising God.

BEVERIDGE: The Kaddish is a doxology. The Lord’s Prayer is a doxology, though the Yizkor Requiem begins with the Kaddish prayer, which is what every Jew says at the Yahrzeit, the annual remembrance of anyone in his family who has died.

FAW: Another similarity which Beveridge accents musically: the word “holy,” repeated here three times in Hebrew—kadosh, then three times in Latin—sanctus.

But make no mistake: while much of this composition is solemn, parts are also light-hearted, or what Beveridge calls “lickety-split.” “I wanted,” says Beveridge, “to give the impression of a train that gets going and keeps going, going along.”

BEVERIDGE: It’s not all very ponderous stuff. There’s a lot of joy in it—the joy of recognizing that a departed soul may be resting in Eden, in the Garden of Eden.

FAW: Perhaps the most dramatic moment of all in the Yizkor Requiem comes at the end, when a single flute plays a plaintive theme. Finally, with the soft refrain of “Amen” by the chorus, the flute slowly fades away.

BEVERIDGE: The flute player turns around and walks out of the building and disappears, and the last phrase is played over and over and over again until the player can hardly be heard any more. I wanted to depict the departing soul somehow, and the flute playing the melody of the ninth movement, the words of which are “the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God.”

FAW: What Beveridge has done, says one reviewer, is “bring us back to our beginnings—and our endings” in a work which Beveridge says is meant to be reassuring, a peaceful work about the experience of death.

BEVERIDGE: I mean we are the ones who are left. We’re the ones who have to deal with this event in our lives and to try to understand it, try to find a way, through ritual or through musical experience, of coming to terms with it.

FAW: A spiritual lesson in music—bridging traditions which differ, but which also experience the same thing and which here come together as one.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly this is Bob Faw in Washington.

PHIL JONES, correspondent: In the 1950s, Bill Gaither used to turn on his radio and listen to all the gospel music stars. He was a farm boy with a field of dreams.

BILL GAITHER: I kept dreaming of the day that maybe, just maybe, I could write a song that would catch the attention of somebody or sing a song that would catch the attention of somebody. Am I blessed guy? I mean, I’m blessed. What can I say?

JONES: In 1963, his dream came true. He wrote a hit. Elvis Presley recorded it and won a Grammy, but the lyrics belonged to Bill Gaither.

Bill Gaither singing at piano: “He touched me, oh, he touched me” — Jimmy Durante sang this and he’d go “He touched me” — “and all the joy that floods my soul…”

JONES: Since then, Bill and his wife, Gloria, former English and French teachers, have written more than 700 gospel songs. Many of them are in today’s church hymnals.

ROBERT SILVERS (Former Religion Editor, Saturday Evening Post): What would the Christian world, the gospel music world, have been like if we hadn’t had Bill and Gloria Gaither? And I just felt like it would leave a lot of empty pages in those song books.

JONES: The Gaithers have won six Grammys and more than two dozen Dove Awards for outstanding Christian music, plus they’ve sold more than 20 million videos, and they still are packing the house all over the world…

Gaither DVD:  “…our Homecoming celebration in New York’s Carnegie Hall was a unique…”

JONES: …performing homecoming events with their friends, stars of gospel music past and present. When they were named gospel song writers of the century in 2000, it was said the Gaithers are to Christian music what the Beatles were to pop music. They were among the first to introduce contemporary religious music.

BILL GAITHER: In fact, we had a pretty well-known college that banned their kids in ’68 from coming to see the Bill Gaither Trio because they said it’s worldly music.

Concert Singing: “…swing down chariot, stop and let me ride, swing down chariot, stop and let me ride. Rock me, Lord…”

JONES: Where would you say that you fit into the evangelical world?

BILL GAITHER: I’m not sure we really do. I think we’ve been mavericks from the beginning.

Concert Singing: “…stop and let me ride, swing down chariot, stop and let me ride…”

BILL GAITHER: Are we contemporary? Are we traditional? Are we country? Are we progressive? Labels are so dangerous. I’m a follower of Christ. I believe in the message. I believe in redemption, and if I didn’t, Gloria and I would stop today and go to the mountains and retire and rock on a rocking chair.

JONES: Bill and Gloria Gaither have earned enough fame and money to live any place they choose. They have chosen to stay right here in Alexandria, Indiana, population about 6,000. It was picked by the federal government during World War II to use in the propaganda theme throughout Europe depicting small town USA.

GLORIA GAITHER: An awful lot of our lyrics and a lot of our philosophy comes out of being rooted in a small town with real people and real life.

JONES: There was a time back in the mid-’80s that Bill Gaither felt his trio had peaked, but he wasn’t ready to hang it up. He wanted one more shot to make a gospel hit. So he reached out.

BILL GAITHER: You know, and I called a bunch of the old timers and I said, ah, we’re gonna come in and have fun. We’re gonna have the radio days.

JONES: And they came to join Bill and his Gaither Vocal Band—big stars from all over the country. Little did they know that this reunion with the Gaithers would turn into a concert series around the world called Homecoming. The themes—patriotism and religion.

Gaither DVD: I invite you to travel with us as we return to the origins of our faith…

JONES: What the people see on stage reflects the spiritual tone set off stage. Before each night’s show there is a private prayer with the singers.

GLORIA GAITHER: Lord, we love you, and we are always in awe when people come. We pray that we can be the channel that you can use to speak to somebody who is hurting or discouraged or just plain tired.

JONES: Among Bill Gaither’s fans are some who tell him they are not religious.

BILL GAITHER: I think it’s the music. I think it’s a positive message. I think it’s community.  I think it’s them seeing people care about other people.

VERNA FISHER: I’m here because I love the spirit of worship. I love to watch how they—they’re not there to perform. They’re there to honor God.

JONES: For the old timers, hanging out with Bill and Gloria has kept them from fading into oblivion. For some of the younger folks, Bill Gaither has catapulted their careers. Ask the Booth Brothers.

RONNIE BOOTH: I mean, it just rapidly got bigger for us, bigger in that we were reaching audiences that we would have never reached before, all because of his platform.

MICHAEL BOOTH: Let’s encourage each other, let’s love each other, support each other, and that is a summed-up way of the Bible expressing how the family of God is supposed to work, and so it’s a little picture of the way the family is supposed to work is how this Gaither thing expresses itself night after night, on stage and off.

LYNDA RANDLE: What I love that Bill says it’s not–we do a little entertaining because it’s fun and people love to laugh, but then there’s the ministry aspect of it.

Gaither DVD: …from the Wesleyan Campground in Fairmount, Indiana, Bill Gaither and friends welcome you to Down by the Tabernacle…

JONES: Gloria and Bill still live in the house they bought back when they got married.

GLORIA GAITHER: We had a marriage interview one time for a magazine, and they said do you ever fight? To which we said, oh, you could sell tickets.

JONES: Their business world has changed dramatically in the past few years. They have built the Gaither Music Company located along the highway leading through the middle of their home town. They travel like rock stars—huge touring buses, sometimes a private jet.

Gloria Gaither with visitors: We’re so glad to have you, and if any of your want to do a studio tour…

JONES: And they’ve added a gift store-restaurant-reception facility for tourists and fans.

ROBERT SILVERS: I’d say if there’s ever been a legend in gospel music, it has to be the Gaithers.

JONES: Are you a minister or a musician?

BILL GAITHER: Yes. Yes. Next question?  My old mentor-buddy used to say that Jesus must have been a pretty good entertainer to hold the attention of 5,000 people on a hillside at the Sea of Galilee without a microphone.

JONES: In these times when the music world is in constant change, it is a near miracle that Bill, now 73, and Gloria Gaither are still doing what they started doing decades ago. To paraphrase those early Bill Gaither lyrics, the Gaithers have been “touched.”

Bill Gaither singing: “He touched me. Oh, he touched me, and all the joy that floods my soul…”

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Phil Jones in Alexandria, Indiana.

Bill Gaither singing: “He touched me and made me whole.”

TIM O’BRIEN, anchor: Music and religion have some deep and common roots, and some of the world’s greatest musicians have taken their inspiration from a higher power.  Jazz musicians, too, like the legendary Dave Brubeck—still performing at age 88. Our reporter Bob Faw takes a look at Brubeck the man, some of his music, and the faith that makes it all happen.

BOB FAW: For nearly six decades, Dave Brubeck has been dazzling listeners worldwide. With his unique, inventive style, he has become a jazz immortal. What is less known, and just as remarkable, is that for much of that time, Brubeck has also composed religious music like “The Commandments,” which he recorded for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. In his religious scores, Brubeck achieves what he cannot achieve in jazz.

DAVE BRUBECK: When I write a piece, a sacred piece, I’m looking hard and trying to discover what I’m about, and what my parents were about and the world is about.

FAW: You think religious music can change people?

BRUBECK: Yeah, sure!

FAW: Brubeck says his service in World War II convinced him “something should be done musically to strengthen man’s knowledge of God.” In his choral work “Gates of Justice,” also recorded for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, he pleads for brotherhood and invokes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Soloists singing from “Gates of Justice”: ”If we don’t live together as brothers, we will die.”

FAW: In “The Commandments,” Brubeck’s message is strictly biblical.

Chorus singing from “The Commandments”: “Keep my commandments.”

FAW: His masterwork, performed here by the Russian National Chorus, in Moscow:

Chorus singing: ”Alleluia, alleluia”

FAW: Brubeck’s classic is a Mass which Brubeck wrote at the request of a Catholic organization and entitled “To Hope: A Celebration.”

BRUBECK: The priest said, “Dave, I want people to be happy. I’m tired of people coming up for Communion with sad looks on their faces when it should be the happiest day of their week. So will you make it rhythmic and kind of feeling of something to make people move up the aisle, maybe swinging a little.”

FAW: Which explains why, in the midst of something reverential, Brubeck’s quartet launches into toe-tapping, rollicking jazz. For Dave Brubeck, jazz not only embraces, it also enhances religion.

FAW (to Dave Brubeck): How does the jazz magnify the religious message?

BRUBECK: Well, it would go back to the spirituals and the gospel singing that is so wonderful, so rhythmic and so great in certain churches, and you reach that audience if you have that gospel feeling.

FAW: Sometimes, says Brubeck, the music shapes the text. Sometimes, he says, it’s just the opposite.

Iola and Dave Brubeck

FAW: I heard you at one point say “my basic approach is to sing the text until something seems right.”

BRUBECK: Yeah, that’s it: “All my hope, all my hope is in you, oh Lord, you are my rock and my strength.”

FAW: As for those lyrics, it turns out that’s the realm of Dave Brubeck’s wife.

BRUBECK: My wife was driving, and I said, “I’ve finished this.” And she said, “No, you haven’t finished it.” And I said, “Well, what did I leave out?” And she said, “God’s love made visible. He is invincible.”

“God’s love made visible.” So that’s the way it finished.

FAW: Iola Brubeck, his wife of nearly 63 years (he calls her “the brains of the outfit”), chooses the texts for most of his religious scores.

IOLA BRUBECK: After I catch on to what he’s after, then I start reading and thinking about, well, what could apply? He thinks very musically. I tend to think more in forms of the narrative.

FAW: Have you ever had occasion to say, “Ah, dear, this isn’t quite working. We ought to go another direction”? Would you ever say that to the great Dave Brubeck?

IOLA BRUBECK: I don’t think I’ve ever said we should go in another direction. I think I have been bold enough to say, you know, I just don’t think this is quite saying what you want to say.

FAW: Sometimes, though, even a wifely intervention isn’t enough. Listen to Brubeck’s haunting “Our Father” in “To Hope”:

Soloist: Deliver us from evil.”

FAW: All this, says Brubeck, was composed in a dream.

Soloist: ”In your mercy , keep us free.“

BRUBECK: But I did dream it that night, and it turned out pretty good.

FAW: Do you dream in harmony? Do you dream an instrument, or do you dream a melody? What’s the dream?

BRUBECK: Melody, orchestration. It’s a pretty complete thing.

FAW: And is it true that after you had the dream and after you wrote it down you then decided to become a Catholic?

BRUBECK: Yeah, I figured somebody’s trying to tell me something, and go with the flow.

FAW: Whatever the source, whatever the musical framework, this living legend always tries, he says, to convey the same message: love your enemies.

BRUBECK: You go by all kinds of churches, and they don’t seem to know what Christ was trying to tell us.

FAW: You think it’s a very simple message, what he was trying to tell us?

BRUBECK: No, it’s profound. Probably the most profound thing in the Bible is ”love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” This is what, to me, is the essence of Christianity.

FAW: And the essence of the 88-year-old Brubeck, though slowed recently by illness, is that he is still improvising, still composing.

BRUBECK: I didn’t play it that way when you asked me because my hands don’t work.

FAW: Yeah, but your mind still does.

BRUBECK: Yeah.

FAW: Because what Dave Brubeck has learned is that while jazz can energize, even thrill, his religious music can transform.

FAW: You have found music to be a vehicle to communicate God’s command to love one another more deeply. That’s really what it comes down to, isn’t it?

BRUBECK. Yeah.

FAW: You do that through your music.

BRUBECK: Right.

FAW: Through it all his wife says Brubeck has grown, musically and spiritually. In part, he says, because when the composition does succeed, there is nothing quite like it.

BRUBECK: You have a certain idea of what you wrote should sound like. And sometimes it doesn’t sound that good, and sometimes if you’ve got a great orchestra and great conductor, it sounds better than you ever thought it could sound. And that’s when you want to jump and holler and say, “Yeah, man!”

FAW: Dave Brubeck, taking jazz back to its roots, to church. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Bob Faw in Washington, DC.

Pastor WINTLEY PHIPPS (singing at National Prayer Service, Washington National Cathedral):  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound . . .”

KIM LAWTON:  Grammy-nominated Gospel singer Wintley Phipps is a familiar voice at big national events.  At President Barack Obama’s National Prayer Service following his Inauguration, Phipps’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” brought the entire National Cathedral audience, including the new president and first lady, to their feet. But he says it’s just as meaningful to him when he sings in places like prisons.

Pastor  PHIPPS:  There is a sense that you’re giving hope to people who really need it.

LAWTON:  For Phipps, who is also a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, music is a ministry and, he says, one of the deepest expressions of his Christian faith.

“I would dream that I was flying to faraway places in the world and meeting important people when I was six, seven years old”.

Pastor PHIPPS:  Music is almost to me an echo of the sounds of the divine world.  And when you hear these sounds, it stirs something deeply spiritual within you.  Music also is the most powerful way of impressing the human mind with hope.

LAWTON:  Hope has been a hallmark not only of Phipps’s musical career, but in his charitable efforts as well.  In 1998, Phipps founded the Dream Academy, a national nonprofit for at-risk kids.  Born in Trinidad, he says hope was crucial in overcoming his own at-risk childhood.

Pastor PHIPPS:  I was born to a troubled home, and I used to get away from my parents’ troubles — I had a little red tricycle, and I’d go in the back yard of my house and I would turn the tricycle on its side and use one of the backside wheels as a steering wheel, and I would sit there for hours, and I would dream that I was flying to faraway places in the world and meeting important people when I was six, seven years old.  And then I wanted to be like Tom Jones.  I’d go around the house singing “It’s not unusual to be loved.” I just wanted to be Tom. But something was missing to me.

LAWTON: Despite a difficult family life, Phipps says his mother always prayed for him and told him that God had a special plan for his life. As a teenager, Phipps embraced her faith as his own.

Pastor PHIPPS: At the age of 16, God walked into my life and said “I’ve seen your dreams. Give me your dreams, and I’ll let you see what I’ve been dreaming for you.”

LAWTON:  He attended an historically black Seventh-day Adventist college in Alabama, where he met Linda, now his wife of 32 years. Then, Phipps says, God began providing opportunities for him to sing in national venues such as a 1984 appearance on “Saturday Night Live” with Jesse Jackson. He came to the attention of Billy Graham’s team and became a frequent performer at the evangelist’s crusades.

Pastor PHIPPS (singing in Washington):  Talk about a child that do love Jesus.

One of the most exciting things that can ever happen in a child’s life is to know that “you mean God thinks about me, or God dreams about me?”

LAWTON: Phipps also became a favorite in Washington. He’s sung for every president since Ronald Reagan.

Pastor PHIPPS: I’ve never had a manager or never had an agent, and yet some of the most wonderful moments that a singer could ever dream of have happened to me, and I believe it’s providential.

LAWTON:  The idea for the Dream Academy came after he got involved with a prison ministry.

Pastor PHIPPS:  I did not know that so many young men in prison looked like my sons, and when I saw it I was shaken. One of every three young black men in America between the ages of 18 and 30 are in prison today or supervised by the court system either on probation or parole.

LAWTON:  Phipps then learned that 60 percent of the young people who end up in prison are the children of prisoners. He wanted to break the cycle of intergenerational incarceration.  The Dream Academy offers after-school mentoring and interactive academic tutoring to children of prisoners and kids falling behind at school.

Pastor PHIPPS: One of the most exciting things that can ever happen in a child’s life is to know that “you mean God thinks about me, or God dreams about me and he’s got a dream for my life?” And when you catch a little glimpse of what that dream is, wow, it changes everything.

LAWTON:  Phipps has enlisted the support of some of his famous connections for the project.  One of his biggest benefactors is his longtime friend Oprah Winfrey. The lesson of faith, he says, is that things aren’t always as they seem and that hardship can be overcome.  In these uncertain economic times, he’s released a new music DVD called “No Need to Fear.”  For Phipps, it ties back to the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

Pastor PHIPPS:  To know that I can put my faith in someone who walked out of a grave. The Easter message to me is a message of tremendous hope, and if we don’t have to fear death, what else is there that should cause us to fear? Nothing.

(singing at Easter event):  Arise my love.  Arise my love.  The grave no longer has a hold on you.

LAWTON:  It’s a theme he finds throughout the old spirituals that he often performs.

“A lot of people don’t realize that just about all Negro spirituals are written on the black notes of the piano.”

Pastor PHIPPS (singing):  Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home . . .

The Negro spiritual teaches us that you’re going come up rough sides of mountains, and you’re going to have difficulties.  But faith gives you that ability to weather any storm.

(singing):  I looked over Jordan and what did I see?

LAWTON:  It’s the core theme as well for the song that has become his signature, “Amazing Grace.”  He finds great spiritual lessons in the history of the song.

Pastor PHIPPS:  A lot of people don’t realize that just about all Negro spirituals are written on the black notes of the piano, and they just keep recurring. Probably the most famous white spiritual that’s built on this slave scale was written by a man by the name of John Newton who, before he became a Christian, used to be the captain of a slave ship and many believe heard this melody that sounds very much like a West African sorrow chant (hums “Amazing Grace”). And it has a haunting, haunting plaintive quality to it that reaches past your arrogance, past your pride, and it speaks to that part of you that’s in bondage, and we feel it.  We feel it.  It’s just one of the most amazing melodies in all of human history.

(performing “Amazing Grace” on stage): To sing God’s praise than when we’ve  first begun. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Amen.

LAWTON: Another lesson, he says, on how hope always triumphs. I’m Kim Lawton in Vero Beach, Florida.

Our guide to Orthodox chanting was Emily Lowe, a member of the choir at the Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church in Linthicum, Maryland.  She told us not only about chanting, but also about her personal experience as a singer of the Eastern Orthodox conviction that worship brings change.

EMILY LOWE (Choir, Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church, singing):  Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

The Orthodox Church is unique in modern times, having a completely sung liturgy. Everything is sung from the very beginning to the end.

In Orthodoxy, the music is not sacred.  The words are sacred.  The music is really meant to fit the text.  So when we talk about heaven, the voice goes up, and when you talk about hell or Hades or sin, it goes down.  For instance (singing), “The company of the angels was amazed when they beheld the number among the dead.”

During the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Greek chants took on sort of a very Middle Eastern character, and that’s when you hear this sort of dissonant, odd sounding things:  (singing) Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, glory to thee oh God.”  It sounds very foreign to Western ears.

For instance (singing), “Rejoice O Bethany.”  Rejoice O Bethany — it’s a beautiful hymn, and it’s very dear to the heart of our Arabic parishioners — (singing) — “God came to thee; God came to thee.”  That little flourish at the end (singing “la la la la”), very unusual and very otherworldly sounding, and that’s kind of — that’s the impression that people get.  They might hear 20 things when they walk into an Orthodox church, but that’s what they’re going to take away.  They’re going to go, “Whoa, I remember that.  That was really unusual.”

I converted about 12 years ago.  I was 16, and my family converted together.  It was initially my father’s decision.  He said, “I think this is the place for us to be. This is where God’s calling us, and this is really the fullest expression of the Christian faith.”

One thing about Orthodoxy is that it really demands change — and expects change. It expects that you will grow spiritually, that you won’t just be the same person that you were the week before or the month before.

From a personal standpoint, I never had a very good voice before we became Orthodox.  I believe that I found my voice in Orthodox music — that I didn’t have it in Protestant music or in secular music.

When people say, “Oh, you did such a wonderful job,” I feel like telling them it wasn’t me, because it really wasn’t.  It doesn’t feel like me when I chant.  I’m thinking about God and expressing the words the best that I can.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a story today about a woman who is both African American and an Orthodox Jew, a rare but real combination in this country. Her very name expresses her mixed identity — Yavilah McCoy — and she is devoting her talent and energy to using music — Gospel music — to try to overcome the prejudice she has experienced from other Jews. Menachem Daum reports.

YAVILAH MCCOY: I don’t think it’s a simple thing to try to navigate both Jewish and black identity simultaneously in the context of raising a family. It’s hard. It involves a lot of sacrifice. It involves a lot of joy.

MENACHEM DAUM: Yavilah McCoy is one of several thousand African-American Jews. To create a better future for her children, Yavilah wants it known that Jews come in a variety of shades and colors. For the past several years, Yavilah has led workshops that combine classical Jewish liturgy with her family’s rich Gospel tradition.

Ms. MCCOY (leading group of white Jews singing in Hebrew the Gospel version of “Modeh Ani Lifanecha”): And the kishkas are about this soul: “Thank God for this soul that’s in me, oh yeah.” He woke me up this morning and I’m glad, so glad, about it.

The spirit doesn’t have a color, and this whole thing I do now with song is just because I feel like music is a way in which people access spirit quite immediately.

Ms. MCCOY (singing): And I’m glad, so glad about it, you know, I ‘m glad down in my soul.

UNIDENTIFIED JEWISH WOMAN: I’m sure there are white Jews who may have taken Hebrew songs and put them to Gospel music, just because Gospel’s part of our vocabulary, our musical vocabulary. But if a white Jew would do it I’d say, like, you know, I would say that isn’t ours.

Ms. MCCOY: What you got to do is say, “I went to Limud in New York, and I met my sister of color, and when I met my sister of color she sang some songs to me that now are a part of our people, and I want to share them with you because this is what our people look like now.” Today “our people” is changing. Today “our people” is broad. Today “our people” come from those places I told you. Our people come from Sudan and Ethiopia, and our people come from America, and our people come from Brooklyn, and our people come from New Jersey, and our people come from Yemen and our people — and you get to claim every inch of your Jewish spiritual breath. You get to claim it.

Ms. MCCOY (joined by her grandmother Jeanette Tate and mother Adeena Fulcher, singing in Hebrew a Jewish Gospel song): Adon olam, asher malach.

DAUM: The road towards Judaism was begun by Yavilah’s grandparents. Her grandmother Jeanette studied the Old Testament and concluded that the biblical children of Israel were actually Jews of color. For this reason, Jeanette rejected Christianity and became a member of the group known as “Black Israelites.”

JEANETTE TATE (Grandmother of Yavilah McCoy): We were brought to this country and subjected. We were taken away from what we originally were, and we were taught how Christianity began and how it enslaved our people and how Christianity was imposed on us.

DAUM: As a Black Israelite, Yavilah’s grandmother was not recognized as a Jew by most Jewish denominations.

AHDENAH FULCHER (Mother of Yavilah McCoy, singing in Hebrew): Adon olam, asher malach.

DAUM: Yavilah’s mother, Adeena, wanted to be acknowledged as a Jew without any questions, so she converted to Orthodox Judaism. But when she started having a family she learned that acceptance was hard to get.

Ms. FULCHER: My children started in the yeshivas at a very early age; as soon as they basically were toddling they were in yeshiva. That was not, first of all — depending on where they were — that wasn’t always pleasant. My children paid a price.

Ms. MCCOY: I was in third grade, and they didn’t want to hold my hand. When they would say line up, you know, the kids were scared.

Ms. FULCHER: It traumatizes you. It does things to you, but it doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t change the fact that we’re Jews. Like it, lump it, or indifferent, that’s who we are. We’re Jews.

Ms. MCCOY (leading group, singing in Hebrew): Ana Hashem ki ani avdecha.

Through music, you don’t have to work that hard. You don’t have to sit and have a conversation with me about what are the obstacles to welcoming difference. All you got to do is just open yourselves up to the music.

(Group dancing and clapping): Hallelujah! All right, Hallelujah!

GROUP OF YOUNG CHILDREN (lighting Hanukkah menorah and singing “Ma’oz Tzur”)

Ms. MCOY: More than anything, this is about the children. This is about the next generation having a chance to be Jews just because.

DAUM: For the sake of her children Yavilah has founded an organization called Ayecha. One of Ayecha’s main events is an annual concert designed to build a community of acceptance for Jews of color.

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): Whooo! Everybody, hello. Need some of your attention! Okay, you are at a Jewish soul celebration. Welcome. If you didn’t know it, you have arrived at a journey that we’re going to take this evening through the music of Jews from cultures that come from Jerusalem all the way to Africa.

Ms. FULCHER (speaking to crowd): My dad and my grandmother — they came up as Gospel singers in the early days. They came out of the churches, and they could sing. When I say they could sing, they could really sing. And, yeah, they could sing.

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): If everybody in here has the spirit say, “Amen.”

CROWD: Amen!

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): If everybody wants to see this again, say “Mazel Tov.”

CROWD: Mazel Tov!

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): If everybody in here wants to go, say “Oy Vey.”

CROWD: Oy Vey!

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): If everybody here loves the spiritual journey we’re on, say “Umm hmmmm.”

CROWD: “Umm hmmmm!”

JOSHUA NELSON AND THE KOSHER GOSPEL SINGERS (singing in Hebrew): Adon olam, asher malach.

Ms. MCCOY (dancing and singing, leading Jewish group): I want to sing, sing, sing. I want to shout, shout, shout.

At the end of the day, if all we get to be is white or black Jews, it creates a situation where people have to leave parts of their identity behind. So Ayecha is giving people around the country a taste of what they’re missing every single day. People get a taste of what’s to come. They get a taste of that Jewish community that doesn’t exist yet.

DAUM: Whether or not Yavilah’s song will create the better world she dreams of remains to be seen. But she is guided by the Talmud’s teaching: You’re not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to abandon it.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY this is Menachem Daum in New York.

Well, you know, so much that we do is industry driven. In music form, whether gospel, secular, it’s all industry driven. And it’s very rare that the artist can really do what is closest to his or her heart. You do what the industry dictates that the people want to hear. But there comes a time when you’ve got to know your audience and you’ve got to know where you really function best and you’ve got to take the chance. That’s what we’ve done with this CD. It’s more of the songs of the church because that’s the thing that people respond to more than any of the other songs that I sing, and there has to be a bridge that can connect the old with the new and everything in between. That’s what this CD does. It becomes an eclectic blend of the church songs that will bring the young people back to the foundation of where it started and the old people [to] a greater appreciation [of] what the youth of America and the world are partaking [of] in their worship services. We reached way back [to] songs that only your grandmother and great-grandmother would know, and we just brought them back into today and didn’t doctor them up. Just did it totally raw. We didn’t slick it down in the studio.

Do young people who are listening to lots of other kinds of music have a heart or an ear to hear this?

Sure. I’m 45 years old, and it’s starting to tickle me very, very much how the young people — and I’m talking about from the kids five, six, seven years old on up to the young adults — gravitate to the music form that I sing. You’ve got little kids singing “I’ve Got My Mind Made Up,” jumping up on stage, doing all kinds of dances. You know, they appreciate it. The only reason why they haven’t is because it hasn’t been given to them, but they appreciate it and they gravitate and they even take it on. You know, they learn the songs, and they become a part of their lifestyles, just like they were mine. These songs that I’m singing were ancient to me when I was a child, but because they sang it to me it became a part of my relationship with God and my church world.

Are you hoping it will be a crossover success like some of your other songs? Are you hoping for airtime on secular stations?

No, and I can guarantee that it won’t. You can’t sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” on BET or MTV. They’re not going to play that, and it’s not for them necessarily. It’s for those people who have roots in the church even if they’re not in the church any longer. There’s no way in the world that this is going to have any crossover appeal or be picked up by the secular stations at all. It’s not supposed to. It’s geared to the church. But most secular artists and secular listeners have roots in gospel and the church, so it will appeal to them in that sense. And believe me, the majority of the people that listen [to] and buy secular music, they also listen to and buy gospel music, and that is how it will appeal to them. It won’t be something that will be commercial, but it will be something that grabs them in their heart and their spirit and brings them back to a place of remembrance that was precious, that was innocent, and that gives them, you know, that moral “oomph” that reminds them of who they are and who they are supposed to be, even if they’re not that. So we won’t see this played in between Lil’ Kim and, you know, Outkast, but it will have an appeal that will probably be greater than any other CD that I’ve done besides “We Fall Down.”

Music has been such a part of your spirituality. What is that connection? What is it about the music that affects your spiritual life?

Music has a divine root, a divine origin. Music comes from God. So it doesn’t only affect my spirit; it affects everyone’s spirit that hears it. No matter what music form it is, it affects our spirit. There’s some music that can make you sad because it can invoke memories. There’s some music that can lift your spirits. There’s some music that can just calm you down. There’s some music that can make you crazy and angry and do crazy things — mosh pit, and tear up furniture while you’re listening to it — hard heavy metal. But all music affects the spirit of man, in one form or another. The music that I sing affects me because it is my connection between God and my situations. It is how I relate to God and how he relates to me. I can learn more through the songs than I can through any other form, and that’s not just me but that’s people in general. But the music helps me to express my feelings toward God and even incorporate him into my different situations, that I can display through my musical interpretations. It’s a release.

I was always introverted. I was the guy that was scared of crowds, that was inferior. I had such an inferiority complex, and the only way that I could really depict any feelings or any emotions was through music. The only way that I had a voice was through music, because I was the reclusive fellow that sat in the back and that didn’t think that I had any worth at all. The way that God caused me to become integrated into society was through music. So that has a spiritual connection with me that was really imperative and important in my development [and] ministry, because other than that, I don’t think that I’d be able to function socially.

Does it still have that spiritual reality for you?

More so than ever before, because I’ve been through much more now, and the song “Stand” that I wrote, that Oprah fell in love with, came out of that because I was able to express some things that I was going through. You know, we fall down but we get up, the whole nine -yards; everything that I’ve ever really written or sung I’ve been able to pull out of me, what was in me, through that. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but it caused a release of the things that were pent up in me, through the music. It tapped into the spiritual side of me and the emotional side of me and allowed me a voice that I would have never had any other way.

Tell me about the song “Stand.”

Oh, Jesus! I was sitting on a plane. I was traveling from Los Angeles going to Miami and stopping in Detroit, and I had been gone for two weeks and I was going to be gone for a week and a half more and I was just having a meltdown, a real meltdown. I didn’t want to go any further. I wanted to stop, and I sat on the back of a big 260-seat jet, with only 50 people on it, ’cause it was 1 a.m. in the morning, red-eye flight. I was so tired. I was fed up with this; this didn’t make any sense, and my thing to God was, “God, why can’t I be normal? Why can’t I have a wife, 2.5 children, a dog, a cat, a white picket fence? Where’s my stuff? Why do I have to do this?” And I was really out of it. And within 20 minutes the whole song came. What do you do when you’ve done all you can? Seems like it’s just never enough. What do you say when people who thought that they would be with you, promised that they’d be with you — but they didn’t understand the level of ministry that God was calling you to, and they left because they couldn’t handle it, and you’re all alone? All of these different things came out in 20 minutes — the melody, the words — and I thought it was a song just for me. You know, artists have their own special songs that nobody else is going to hear and nobody else would understand because it’s totally crazy. And then I taught it to a choir in Cleveland — one of the stops I had to make — so I could remember it, ’cause I didn’t have a tape recorder or anything. I don’t know what happened from there. It just went, like, berserk, crazy, took on a life of its own. The next thing I knew, I was in the Bahamas and the telephone rang and it was Oprah. I never saw or spoke to her before, and she asked me to come and do a show with her in Cape May, New Jersey, and from then on Oprah would stand on the show and on television and talk about the song “Stand” week after week and told the whole nation, ’cause whatever Oprah says, you know, the nation does! That’s what happened. And we did this thing in Nassau, Bahamas, maybe about two years later, and she wanted me to come and sing “Stand” and she said, “Donnie, has this CD gone gold yet?” And I said, “No, no.” She said, “Okay.” She stood on television and said, “You’ve heard me talk about Donnie McClurkin before. This is a voice that you’ve got to reckon with, and this is my favorite song. This is the CD and the song is ‘Stand.’ You need to, everybody needs to have a copy of this. And now Donnie McClurkin sings ‘Stand.’” Two weeks later, the thing went gold, and the rest is history. That’s how it happened; it was just something that came out of something that I was going through and, again, the music was my way of expressing it — and not knowing that expression was going to touch a world. And it still boggles my mind.

What does it say to you about the songs — that it is something that did touch so many people?

I don’t know. A lot of this is really a mystery to me. A lot of this is so absolutely phenomenal and mysterious to me — that God would allow you to go through something for the purpose of touching a whole entire world. He’d allowed me to have a temper tantrum on a plane so that a whole entire world can be, you know, ministered to by a song. Why he does that? I don’t know, and when I get to him I’m going to ask him, because it seems like it would be so much easier for him to use somebody else because of the pains and stuff, but he does it for his purposes, and consequently people are helped. When you have people coming to you talking about how after they tried to commit suicide and lay in the hospital and somebody brought a tape up, a CD, and put it on their ears and gave them hope — now that kind of stuff, you know, just humbles you. It breaks you down because you never expected that type of thing, and it’s still mysterious to me.

You’ve been really open about some of your own struggles and certainly [about] some of the music that became a part of that.

It’s not an unusual story. It’s just one that’s not usually told. I have been totally, you know, taken by surprise by the thousands on top of thousands of people that relate to the story because it’s happened to them — child molestation that you have to keep quiet. I was raped at eight years old by my uncle and again, at 13, by his son. And it’s amazing, you know, when you stand up there and tell it and you become totally naked and transparent and you pull the skeletons out of the closet and your family goes totally berserk because “That’s our business” — and let me tell you, in the Black family we’re a very quiet family; we’re a very secretive family. “What goes on here stays here,” “Don’t air your business in front of people,” you know what I mean. And when I started talking about it, it became tumultuous. But this is what God laid on my heart to do. I wasn’t even trying to really reach out and help a world. It was just the spur of the moment where I felt the leaning of the Lord just to share it. And consequently, it has turned around and given me platforms in so many different areas to talk to different people who have gone through [it]. It’s all because of the brokenness of the past and the healing of the present. Yeah, the rape happened, twice. Yeah, there was a 20-year period of total sexual ambiguity and scars that dug so deep, you know, but at the end of the road it was worth it.

You’ve gotten a lot of opposition from gay groups for what you say.

This has been a three-ring circus. “Controversy” is a small word compared to what it’s been, with people not even giving me the chance to do what you all are giving me the chance to do — to talk about it, straight from me. But people have filtered things and said things and contorted things and distorted things to the point where it’s become a battleground now with a few, because it’s not the entire gay community; it’s a few of the radical activists in the gay community trying to spin things into something that it really isn’t — misquoting or adding quotes to things that I’ve said, misinterpreting purposely to start a war — and it’s been interesting.

It doesn’t reflect the whole of the gay community, because there are a whole lot of gay people that understand exactly what I said, and although they are in that lifestyle, they give me the privilege of having my opinion and my free speech, just as they have theirs. So it’s not so much of a full-fledged battle, but it’s just the few that are trying to make more of what I’ve said than I have said.

Now, I do have my views! Don’t get me wrong. I do have my views and as a minister of the gospel, I make my views known. It is not to condemn anyone, but it’s to give an opportunity for anyone who wants help. And for those who don’t think that they need help, then, you know, I’m not the guy. But for those that do and that want help, then I can use my experiences. I’m not talking from another place. I’m talking about, from my experiences. I can use my experiences and how God did what he did in me, in order to give them the help that they need.

Let’s be clear about it. What did God do?

Well, like I said, there was a big 20-year gap of sexual ambiguity where after the rape my desires were toward men, and I had to fight those things because I knew that it wasn’t what we were taught in church was right. And the older I got, the more that became a problem, because those were the first two sexual relationships that I had. Eight years old and 13 years old. So that’s what I was molded into. And I fought that. When I tell you from eight to 28, that was my fight — in the church. And you were in an environment where there were hidden, you know, vultures I call them, that are hidden behind frocks and behind collars and behind — you know, reverends and the deacons, and it becomes a preying ground, a place where the prey is hunted, and that was what it was like. And for 20 years, trying to find who I was, trying to define myself and my lust pulling me one way or my passions pulling me one way and my spiritual conviction pulling me the other. And I was never one that would say, “This is who I am. This is just who I am.” Because there was something that I read in the Bible and that had been preached for too long that said it was the exact opposite.

And finally God started showing me some things in the Bible, in Ecclesiastes. “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” There’s a time to love, and a time to hate. And they’d preached about the time to love, but nobody had really told me about the time to hate, and then God started making it plain to me the things to hate. You don’t hate the people, but there are certain things that are against God that may be in you that you have got to learn how to hate, even though it’s in you. It’s not self-hatred, of yourself, but there are certain things like, you know, anybody who has a lying problem; they get to the point where they hate being so, having such a lack of character that they make a change. And so on and so on. Whatever a person finds in themselves that is really counterproductive to them being the best that they can be — you learn how to despise that and cause a change, and that is what exactly happened to me. I had to be a man that was made for a woman. I wanted a family, I wanted a home, I wanted the whole lot of it. This was a problem to me. And God gave me the wherewithal to get out of that and to find out who I really am. And, consequently, that’s how the change took place — the different scriptures in the Bible, his will being shown through the scriptures.

Once I got to that point and that determination hit — that just because this happened to me doesn’t mean that this is who I’ve got to be — that’s when the change started taking place and God walked me through it until I became the Donnie that you see sitting in front of you. A little shabby, but it’s still the Donnie you see sitting in front of you. And there are other men and women, boys and girls that are going through the same thing.

There’s a group that says, “God made us this way,” but then there’s another group that knows God didn’t make them that way. And for those that are looking for that exit, there are those of us, — and I’m not a lone wolf; there are many more — that can tell that God did it for us and he will do it for them, and consequently we see it happening here in this church quite consistently.

Does it follow the theme of your song “We Fall Down” — this notion that people aren’t always perfect? How does all that fit together?

Not only people are not always perfect, but Christians are not always perfect. You know, the Christian body is the religious body that portrays, you know, sinlessness. You know, we are above sin and our character is beyond reproach. But the bottom line is, if you really looked underneath the covers and in the underbelly of Christianity, we are an imperfect people that are serving a perfect God. We have faults and failures that we just, you know — I don’t understand where the hypocrisy comes in heavily in Christianity. And it angers me in a way, because the bottom line is, if you mess up, just say, “I messed up.” Don’t cover it up and act like, you know, “I’m too pomped and pious to say that I’ve done wrong.” No, if you are a preacher and a pastor or a minister, and you mess up, just come clean and tell the truth: “I’ve messed up.”

The song “We Fall Down but We Get Up” brings the preacher and the pious to the same level as the so-called peons. That song levels the playing field. Every one of us are sinners that need a savior. And even in our piety, we jack this thing up so many times, and we just don’t want people to know it. But the song simply tells us, “A saint is just a sinner who fell down and got up.” That is the only thing that distinguishes the saint from the sinner. The saint was a sinner who fell down and had enough sense to get back up and know that God is merciful. And that’s the thing that I think turns people off about church — the pretentiousness that we are a bunch of people who have so been enlightened and brought to the greatest awareness that we don’t do wrong anymore. That’s a lie. That is nothing less than a lie that the church world is still paying the price for, because people don’t want to come to a hypocritical organization. That song just brought people to the realization that we are all the same. Consequently, the secular world grabbed a hold of it. “We Fall Down but We Get Up” just simply let people know we’re all the same, just some of us go to God for help.

How has celebrity changed you? And what new challenges has that posed for you as a minister?

It’s not so much a challenge [as] a change. If anything, it’s been more beneficial for the ministry. Celebrity has its pros and cons. But what celebrity has afforded me is a greater platform to declare the very message that has changed my life. I never intended, nor ever wanted — ’cause remember, I’m still the reclusive guy that’s afraid to be in certain areas and environments, and when I get around people of renown, I go back to that same reclusiveness. I’m not one to grab — “Hey, Stevie Wonder, I love you, man.” I’m the guy — they’re in the room, okay, let me go to the other room, because it still makes me jittery and nervous. What’s happened in my music career has bridged a gap that has caused people to embrace me. They’ve embraced me, and they’ve gravitated to me and pulled me into them also. A lot of them call me their pastor and I never dreamed of that; that wasn’t an intention of mine. It has given me a greater platform to deliver this life-changing message, and for that I’m grateful. You know, I don’t apologize for that.

How do you maintain your own spiritual strength or spark? What do you do to keep it fresh within you, so you have something to give out?

Well, the first thing I do is I never let this become really a part of me. The first and the main thing I do is never let this affect me. All the going and the singing and the crowds and the people and the church and the growth of the church — I take it off because at the end of the day, I’ve got to be the little boy that met God at nine years old. At the end of all accomplishments, I’ve got to be that little boy — the one who was broken, who realized his own lack of self-worth, who depended on God in the beginning. That’s the same little boy that I’ve got to be now — the one that depends on God now, that still realizes his own lack of self-worth, his own inabilities no matter what accomplishments have been made, attributing all of the success to God and all failure to me. That’s how I stay grounded, surrounding myself with people who are not going to praise me. I don’t travel with entourages. I don’t need folk, you know, [who say] “You’re great, you’re great. Oh man, that was wonderful, that was great. Oh my God, you’re the best thing since sliced bread.” Those people get on my nerves, and when people like that come around me I become enemies to them very quickly. I need people that are going to be levelers for me, that are going to help keep me aware of who I really am. I don’t want to be larger than life. God’s chosen that I am for his purposes. But when all this is over, and when these lights go off and this television show is over that you are doing right now — I go right back to being the nine-year-old boy that met God on July 14, 1969 and cried out at an altar in Amityville, New York and stayed in his presence, who felt most comfortable in his presence ’cause he didn’t fit in anyplace else. I become that boy all over again. In my bedroom, I become that boy. In my home, I become that boy. In my office, I become that boy. After the concert is over, everybody knows what I do. I go right back into the room and everybody that comes with us, we go and we pray and we go back to our hotel rooms and my admonition to them is, “Take this off. We’re not wearing this. The success of this concert — we’re not wearing this. Take it off. Don’t care who was here. Don’t care what they say, don’t care what they write about us. This ends here, and we wait for the next assignment, and we go back to God.” ‘Cause nobody can get the glory of this but God. If you know who I am, I’m Donnie McClurkin, a nine-year-old boy who met God. That’s it.

What role does music play for you?

If you sit me at a piano now, I’d cry like a baby. There are certain songs that bring me into a greater awareness of who God is. There are certain songs that open up another illumination to how great God is that would reduce me to tears, you know. There’s a song that says, (singing) “Sweet hour of prayer, Sweet hour of prayer that calls me from this world of care, and bids me at my Father’s throne make all of my wants and wishes known.” Those songs reduce me to tears.

Music has always been a part of religious activity — always has. Go to any major religious belief system, and you’ll find that music plays a part, because music has always been something that has come from God. It’s a gift that God has given to man, and it’s the greatest thing in the world. I don’t understand it to this day, but music goes past the soul, goes past the emotions, and gets into the spirit of a man and can bring him to his knees.

If you ever want to get anybody in touch with God, sing to them. And if you can touch a person where they live, you can bring hope to them. That’s what music does. You won’t find a major religion in this world that doesn’t use music, because the truth of the matter is that music comes from God.

KIM LAWTON: Donnie McClurkin is a Gospel superstar whose voice is recognized around the world. But on Sunday mornings, as Pastor McClurkin, he has more local concerns — like the parking problems in his church’s neighborhood.

Pastor DONNIE MCCLURKIN (Perfecting Faith Church, at pulpit): You want to be mindful of Zack’s Delicatessen across the street also. You can park around there, but don’t block the front door entrance because they have a problem with the clientele getting in. Amen?

LAWTON: This Grammy award winning artist may sing for presidents, but he’s known for “being real.” And whether in his local church pulpit or on a stage before thousands, he preaches a forthright, often-provocative message about his troubled past, his struggle with homosexuality, and his faith in God. Music, he says, is his sermon.

“If you ever want to get anybody in touch with God, sing to them.”

Pastor MCCLURKIN: You won’t find a major religion in this world that doesn’t use music, because the truth of the matter is that music comes from God. I don’t understand it to this day, but music goes past the soul, goes past the emotions and gets into the spirit of a man and can bring him to his knees. If you ever want to get anybody in touch with God, sing to them.

LAWTON: McClurkin has sung for millions. His three solo albums have topped the Billboard charts and Gospel and secular R&B play lists. In 2003 he won a Grammy for his CD, AGAIN. He credits Oprah Winfrey with promoting his hit single, “Stand.”

Pastor MCCLURKIN: She said, “Donnie, has this CD gone gold yet?” And I said, “No, No.” She said, “OK.” She stood on television and said, “You’ve heard me talk about Donnie McClurkin before. This is a voice that you’ve got to reckon with, and this is my favorite song.” Two weeks later, the thing went gold.

LAWTON: McClurkin wrote the song “Stand” in 1996, after having what he calls “a meltdown with God.” He was on a red-eye flight, feeling exhausted and frustrated that God didn’t seem to be answering his prayers. The song that became his signature came to him, he says, in about 20 minutes.

Pastor MCCLURKIN: He’d allowed me to have a temper tantrum on a plane so that a whole entire world can be, you know, ministered to by a song. Why he does that I don’t know, and when I get to him, I’m going to ask him.

LAWTON: Much of McClurkin’s music comes out of his personal experience and his own pain. His happy early childhood ended abruptly in 1968 when he was eight years old. His two-year-old brother was hit by a car and killed. The night of the funeral, McClurkin’s uncle raped him. His family was torn apart by drugs, alcohol, and violence. McClurkin found solace in the church.

Pastor MCCLURKIN (from documentary, “The Story of Donnie McClurkin”): I received Jesus in that church right there, on a Sunday morning, July 14, 1969.

LAWTON: He was particularly drawn to the music of the church.

“Celebrity has afforded me is a greater platform to declare the very message that has changed my life.”

Pastor MCCLURKIN: I was always introverted. I was the guy that was scared of crowds, that was inferior. I had such an inferiority complex, and the only way that I could really depict any feelings or any emotions was through music.

LAWTON: When he was 13, McClurkin says he was raped again, by his cousin. That led to a 20-year-long battle over his sexual identity.

Pastor MCCLURKIN: My desires were toward men, and I had to fight those things because I knew that it wasn’t what we were taught in church was right.

LAWTON: McClurkin says that through Bible study and intense prayer, he has overcome his homosexuality.

Pastor MCCLURKIN: God gave me the wherewithal to get out of that and to find out who I really am and, consequently, that’s how the change took place. The different scriptures in the Bible, his will being shown through the scriptures — God walked me through it.

LAWTON: His comments have provoked a firestorm of controversy, particularly from gay rights groups that are offended by his belief that homosexuality is something that can be chosen or “overcome.” McClurkin insists he’s not condemning anyone, but he makes no apologies for his beliefs.

Pastor MCCLURKIN: There’s a group that says, “God made us this way,” but then there’s another group that knows that God didn’t make them this way. And for those that are looking for that exit — there are those of us, and I’m not a lone wolf — there are many more that can tell that God did it for us, and he will do it for them.

LAWTON: He’s also open about his continuing sexual struggles. He fathered a child out of wedlock five years ago. His hit song “We Fall Down” talks about the frailties of saints and sinners alike.

Pastor MCCLURKIN: You know, I don’t understand where the hypocrisy comes in so heavily in Christianity. And it angers me in a way, because the bottom line is, if you mess up, just say, “I messed up.” Don’t cover it up and act like, you know, I’m too pompous and pious to say that I’ve done wrong. No, if you are a preacher and a pastor or a minister and you mess up, just come clean.

“You’ve got to know your audience”

LAWTON: McClurkin is head pastor at Perfecting Faith Church, a nondenominational Pentecostal church in Freeport, New York. The 1,000-plus congregation meets in a former supermarket. He’s home for the services every Sunday unless he’s traveling overseas. Services there are exuberant and interactive. Church members are likely to be dancing in the aisles, speaking in tongues or lying on the floor, overcome by the Holy Spirit.

While many Gospel artists have been accused of abandoning their religious roots after they hit it big, McClurkin is emphasizing his roots all the more.

Pastor MCCLURKIN (at BET Awards): ‘Cause I’m telling you, I’m nothing but a glorified church boy. That’s all I am.

LAWTON: His new CD, “Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs,” is all praise and worship music recorded live at this concert in Virginia.

Pastor MCCLURKIN: So much of what we do is industry driven, but there comes a time when you’ve got to know your audience, and you’ve got to know where you really function best, and you’ve got to take the chance.

LAWTON (to Pastor McClurkin): Has success brought new challenges for you?

Pastor MCCLURKIN: Celebrity has its pros and cons, but what celebrity has afforded me is a greater platform to declare the very message that has changed my life. I don’t want to be larger than life. God’s chosen that I am for his purposes.

(from documentary, “The Donnie McClurkin Story,” on tour bus): Welcome to the world of touring. Welcome to Donnie McClurkin’s world.

“You won’t find a major religion in this world that doesn’t use music.”

LAWTON: McClurkin, who is still single, says he stays grounded by surrounding himself with family, including several of his sisters who sing backup for him. Music, he says, helps keep his relationship with God fresh.

Pastor MCCLURKIN: There are certain songs that open up another illumination to how great God is, that would reduce me to tears, you know? There’s a song that says, [singing] “Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer that calls me from this world of care.” Those songs reduce me to tears.

At the end of all the accomplishments, I’ve got to be that little boy — the one who was broken, realized his own lack of self-worth, that depended on God in the beginning; the one that depends on God now. If you want to know who I am, I’m Donnie McClurkin, a nine-year-old boy who met God. That’s it.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton reporting.