“Back to the Heart of Worship: Praise and Worship Music in a Los Angeles African American Megachurch”

“Back to the Heart of Worship: Praise and Worship Music in a Los Angeles African American Megachurch”

by Birgitta J. Johnson

“Back to the Heart of Worship: Praise and Worship Music in a Los Angeles African American Megachurch” by Birgitta J. Johnson, explores music making in the context of an urban African American megachurch that holds weekly worship services in a sports arena. The author provides historical overviews black megachurches in Los Angeles and information on the origins of praise and worship and the megachurch phenomenon in the United States. The supplementary materials featured here include footnotes, a list of praise and worship recordings, and photographs and diagrams of buildings that could not be included in the original article due to page limitations. Also included is a table that features information about thirteen African American megachurches in Greater Los Angeles. The note numbers correspond to footnotes from the original published article.

• Note 1: Appendix: Selected List of Praise and Worship Recordings(click to open)
  


• Note 2:
  While church growth scholars agree on the figure of at least two thousand members, some sources suggest numbers as low as fifteen hundred or as high as five thousand. African American lifestyle magazines such as Ebony, Jet, and other publications often describe a megachurch as a congregation that has at least three thousand members in attendance each Sunday (see “New Black Spirituality” 2004; “What is the Future” 2004; “The Megachurches” 2004; “Where We Stand” 2005; Johnson 2008).
  


• Note 3: Table 1: African American Megachurches in Greater Los Angeles
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Church	Head Pastor*	City	Established	Denominational Background
  Brookins Community A.M.E. Church	Frederick Murph	Los Angeles	1977	African Methodist Episcopal Church
  Full Harvest International Church	Clarence McClendon	Gardena	1939	Four Square--;§Non-denominational
  City of Refuge	Noel Jones	Gardena	(c. 1970s)	Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc.
  Crenshaw Christian Center	Fredrick K.C. Price	Los Angeles	1973	Non-denominational
  Faithful Central Bible Church	Kenneth C. Ulmer	Inglewood	1936	Missionary Baptist-- Full Gospel Baptist -- Non-denominational
  First A.M.E. Church	Cecil Murray/ John Hunter	Los Angeles	1872	African Methodist Episcopal Church
  First Church of God of Los Angeles (City of Hope)	Gregory Dixon	Inglewood	(1892/1940) 1972 †	Church of God, Anderson
  Friendship Baptist Church	James Carrington	Yorba Linda	1964	Baptist
  Life Church of God in Christ	Ron Gibson	Riverside	1987	Church of God in Christ
  Maranatha Community Church	Billy Ingram	Los Angeles	1980	Non-denominational
  Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church	Edward V. Hill, II	Los Angeles	1893	Missionary Baptist Church
  Ward A.M.E. Church	Norman Copland/ C. Dennis Williams	Los Angeles	1902	African Methodist Episcopal Church
  West Angeles Church of God in Christ	Charles E. Blake	Los Angeles	1943	Church of God in Christ

  
  
  Due to discrepancies among sources of actual membership sizes and regular attendance figures for some of these churches as well as rapid attendance growth or decline since the late 1990s, numerical data for each church has been purposely omitted.
  
  *During the course of my fieldwork, the head pastor of some congregations changed. In those cases the first name denotes the head pastor from the 1990s and the second, the most current head pastor.
  
  §Some congregations have changed denominational affiliations over time. Dashes denote the move to the most current affiliation.
  
  †This church is a combination of two congregations that united in 1972. The foundational dates of the original churches are given in parentheses.
  
  


• Note 4:
  Tabernacle photo and sanctuary schematic. (click to view)
  


• Note 5:
  Faithful Central went through a series of affiliation changes during the mid-nineties, joining the Full Gospel Baptist Fellowship in 1994. In 1996, Faithful Central became an independent church, affiliated with the Macedonia International Bible Fellowship. The Macedonia International Bible Fellowship is not a separate denomination but a global organization of affiliated Christian churches and ministries in the United States, southern Africa, the United Kingdom, and the Ukraine.
  


• Note 6: Photograph of the Forum. (click to view)
  


• Note 7: Forum Sunday morning seating configuration. (click to view)
  


• Note 8:
  Only four times during the course of my fieldwork at Faithful Central was an order of service featured in the printed church bulletin. Two occasions were during the citywide Easter service and the other two were for the annual baccalaureate program that occurred during the main Sunday morning service. During one church service in 2002, Ulmer commented that the church had stopped printing an order of service “a long time ago” because they rarely followed it. Church video from services as early as 1988 show that several of the formal elements of the traditional order of service were not present, being phased out, or combined at Faithful Central.