Last weekend, my church hosted Gladys Knight and the Saint’s Unified Voices Choir.

Yes, that’s right, Gladys Knight, from Gladys Knight and the Pips. Only this time she wasn’t singing with the Pips and she wasn’t singing “Midnight Train to Georgia”.  Instead, she was performing with a 100 person multi-cultural choir made up of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) who live in the Las Vegas, Nevada area.

We had 6000 tickets, free and by invitation only, for four performances that could better be described as praise worship events. Someone called it a “Mormon revival”.

The packed events were much more spirited and lively than anything our church typically does. The musical heritage of our faith finds its roots in those of its early converts, many of whom were white and from the eastern United States and Europe. They brought with them a ural heritage of many faiths, but the influences of African American ure have been slow to take root.

That is…