The East Coast Chinese Church Music Association held a music training and worship conference at New York's Faith Bible Church on August 13th. Number of churches in Queens participated in the choir, and several musicians and pastors shared their faith as well.
The morning lecture topic was on sound pronunciation and choir translation skills. Famous Christian artists Louie Ju Yuan and Liao Mu Zhen led the lectures. The course taught how to breathe, harmonize, tone, volume control, pronunciation, and how to analyze music pieces to gain deeper understanding and to better express the piece when playing.
During the afternoon, chair of the music association Rev. Fook Wong hosted the choir worship "Sing and Make Music in Your Heart to the Lord." Rev. Xu Chang Rong from Taiwan River of Life Mission Center come out and shared a few words. He said that choir is an integral part of gatherings. Not only choir itself is important, but performing the choir with a message is of even greater importance. He used a certain nation's Christian conference as an example: there was 430 people who attended the conference, yet only 30 people were believers, and he was the only speaker there. At the gathering, he witnessed the gospel through the choir and asked the coordinators to give out copies of the lyrics for everyone to sing. At the second session of the conference, over half of the people sang the choir songs with tears. After the second session, over 380 people raised their hands willing to accept Christ.
Rev. Xu explained that the strength of man could not change anyone; rather through the message in the choir the word of God was delivered. It is this kind of message that has the ability to move a person's heart.
