Click here to see the You Tube video of the Kingdom Choir in Bowling Green, Ky.
 

Click here to see more pictures from the Nashville/Bowling Green trip>>

Our Kingdom Choir (formerly Youth Choir) is an exciting group of middle and high school students. They represent virtually all of our local schools (and some come from beyond Hall County) to work together as a family of young men and women committed to praising God through joyful worship. They sing monthly in worship, and this year will sing for a number of other special events, including "Christmas on Green Street." This choir has taken an annual trip on MLK weekend in Jan to Charleston SC, Orlando FL, Nashville, TN, Memphis TN, and Washington DC. Kingdom Choir is directed by Michael Henry, and accompanied by Denise Nylander.

All Middle and High School youth are invited to come rehearse and participate in worship with us and, and bring a friend or two!

Finding the Holy in a Holiday by Mike Henry
     I was recently on the road with 21 members of our church’s Kingdom (Youth) choir, and five other adult chaperones for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Each January for the past 7 or 8 years, we have made a trip with our youth to various locations, including Memphis, Charleston, Orlando, Washington, and Nashville. The trips always include something aimed at increasing our awareness of the racial divide that permeates much of our living. Our all-white choir has sung in an African-American Baptist church, shared in the very first multiracial walk across the new Martin Luther King, Jr. bridge in Nashville, sung for the official Mayor’s MLK breakfast in Orlando, attended worship in the country’s largest black Pentecostal congregation (Memphis), and other similar activities. We have also included some musical highlights on each trip, like singing in the National Presbyterian Church, visiting Sun Studios where Elvis and others gave birth to rock and roll, and attending the Grand Ol’ Opry at the historic Ryman Auditorium.

This year’s excursion included a visit to the Preston Taylor Ministries in the west end of Nashville. With the assistance of some folks at First Presbyterian in Nashville, we linked up with Jennifer Fouse, who is a campus minister at Vanderbilt. Jennifer, in turn, put us in touch with Chan Sheppard, who directs the work of the community center in the Preston Taylor housing project, one of Nashville’s largest public housing areas. Chan invited our whole group to come to the center, and spend Saturday morning in a variety of tasks he would organize.   
     After a breakfast at McDonald’s, Dan Hartley drove our group to the center. This was a cold 11 degree morning when we arrived at the center. The building, we soon learned, had originally been a structure that housed two bars and a  barber shop, but was now a

vital part of a whole umbrella of ministries, many of which addressed the literacy, educational and mentoring needs of hundreds of young children in the surrounding neighborhood. Preston Taylor is supported by churches from several denominations, and First Presbyterian in Nashville has been a strong supporting church from the start.
     After a short video introduction to the work of the center, Chan put us to work. In three hours time, an inside crew cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed and mopped all the floors, organized a large number of books in the children’s library, straightened up the main educational room, cleaned marks and did touch up paint on inside walls. Meanwhile, an outside team dismantled a chain link fence, cleared an amphitheatre stage of wood and building materials that had been stacked there, cleaned the yard of all trash, and swept mulch back into flower beds. It was time well spent, as Chan complimented the kids, and told them that because of their willingness to volunteer, he could redirect funds that otherwise would have been spent on maintenance to the hiring of an after school reading teacher for the children the center serves. Thank you, Kingdom Choir members, and chaperones, for “walking the walk” for a few hours that day in Nashville.