The rich sound of gospel music drifting through the streets of Rueil-Malmaison, a Paris suburb, was similar in sensation to a “Fifth Sunday Singin’” in Alabama.
But rather than mingling in the air with the mouth-watering aroma of a Bible Belt potluck dinner, the sound was heavy with a hunger of a different variety.
The music — pouring from an Emmanuel Gospel Choir concert — was thick not only with a French accent but also with the tension of Parisians wrestling with the truth.
And it was ringing out in the neighborhoods of France’s capital city with the help of a sound system belonging to the Rueil-Malmaison town hall, part of a government that in some instances restricts its students from wearing the Christian cross in its public schools.
“It’s quite a miracle, really,” said Brian Kirby, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Paris and director of the Emmanuel Gospel Choir. “It’s amazing the response we’ve had from French who want to be a part of this. Gospel music is very popular in France right now, and that has been an incredible draw.”
And because the choir’s popularity was in its musical genre rather than its belief system, it drew primarily from the community, not the church — all from an ad placed in the newspaper for auditions.
“People were looking for a place to plug in musically, and this is just what many of them were looking for,” said Kirby, who is originally from North Carolina.
And through plugging in musically, many have found spiritual power instead.
“When the choir began four years ago as an outreach to our local community, we hoped for maybe 10 French to join in with some of our church members,” said Scott Sontag, pianist for the choir and music minister of Emmanuel Baptist, a member of the International Baptist Convention.
Forty-five showed up at the first rehearsal, Sontag said.
The members — now numbering 93, with others still on a waiting list — join knowing little English. But in hearing the lyrics explained in French they hear the Truth explained as well.
About half of the members do not profess to be Christians, Sontag said, but the choir brings them to the church every Tuesday night for rehearsals and occasionally for Sunday services.
“It’s a miracle, the way the Holy Spirit is working through gospel music sung in English to touch the lives of these French,” said Sontag, who is originally from Louisiana.
One choir member first brought Sebastien Degueurce, a young French mechanic, to a Tuesday night rehearsal three years ago. He “fell in love” — first with the music, then with the message.
“I had a belief in God before, but I wasn’t involved in my faith,” he said. “Now I can put more of my faith — more of myself — in my music.”
Singing with the choir in English led Degueurce to pray for salvation in his native French, Kirby said.
“I asked him one night what he (Degueurce) was waiting for, and he said he didn’t know,” Kirby said. “We prayed the sinner’s prayer right there in his car.”
From then on, Kirby said, he determined to be even more intentional in putting his faith before the choir.
“Because most join strictly for the musical aspect, some nonbelievers in the choir occasionally say something about the constant references to God and the Christian faith during rehearsals and concerts,” Kirby said. “But for the most part they understand that the content of the music leads naturally to that, and the fact that I’m a pastor leads naturally to my wanting to share it.”
Kirby said he takes this “criticism” as encouragement — a sign that there’s healthy tension and that his choir members are being actively confronted with the Truth.
That’s the goal, he said — to draw them from the assurance of their notes in the rich-sounding “I’m a-goin’ home to live with God” to the assurance of the truth of those very words in their own lives.
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