Blog 28- addt. data

Additional Observation

Thanks to modern technology, and more specifically, YouTube. I was able to do observation of other church settings beyond my own. This will not be a large section of my paper, but I think it will be good data to mention as far as bringing out similarities between the black church and other church groups, and will allow me to ask and probe further questions. This video I found was interesting because it is in another language entirely yet, not only does the church appear to worship like a black church, the  song that they start singing at the 35 second mark, is actually a piece of another song that in the black church occasionally gets tacked on to the end of another song. And what follows is exactly what follows here in this video.  Not only that but you will hear the expression “I, I got a praise. I got a praise and I gotta get it out. I gotta praise.” This too is a black church literary invention which was never an actual song- only words put with a popular rhythm scheme. What is amazing is that the though the words are pronounced differently by the singers, the music sounds identical to that which I am used to. The last point to make in this video is the genre of a praise team, which is also a feature in black church discourse communities. I am amazed at this, and will definitely be sending it to people in my church!

Another string of videos I looked over one afternoon were sermons by a man by the name of Jeff Arnold. He is a Caucasian preacher of the Pentecostal denomination. While searching Youtube, what I have found is that though most black churches vary little over denomination, white church services change drastically when it comes to Pentecostal vs. the perceived ‘white church’ stereotype. In fact, besides apostolic, there are very few ‘white church videos on YouTube compared to churches of ethnicity. I think that says something in itself. An example is the comparison of the following two videos. The preaching is entirely different. Video 1/ Video 2 (skim through). The evidence of these two videos, and my general YouTube observations overall, has lead me to a question which I am not sure how to set up. It is either a question of whether black people are inheritantly more apostolic, or if better, has the history and culture of black people shaped the way they view acceptable/ideal expression of their faith. I think it is the latter.

Also on Easter sunday I took this note:

Bishop asks: "heaven is a prepared place by who"

Congregation: "prepared people!"

What's special about this particular call and recall is that the pastor set the question up wrong, yet most of the congregation responded as if he said it correctly, either because they knew what he meant, or because they are so used to responding in that way that they didn't even here his error- they just heard what he was about to say and was prepared to resond.

It is supposed to go like this:

call- "heaven is a prepared place for who?"
congregation response- prepared people