Rejoicing in the music
Kim and Vernon Samuels founded Renewal Choir 17 years ago and the Bristol-based gospel singers are still raising the roof. They tell BEE BAILEY about faith, harmony and the transformative power of song ahead of a performance in Gloucestershire this month.
EVERY once in a while, when Kim Samuels is tired, or life is hectic and it’s cold and dark outside, she has to muster the energy to travel across Bristol for choir rehearsals. But, no matter how she feels, Kim would never let the choir down. And she knows that once she’s there, singing her beloved gospel music and directing the choir, the power and joy of the songs will take over and she will feel completely uplifted.
When the members of Renewal Choir sing together they raise themselves and each other up. The past week’s rehearsal was a case in point.
“There were a few there who were not necessarily feeling great emotionally or physically,” Kim says. “One lady came along and said, ‘I’m not feeling that well, I’ve got a bit of a migraine. I’m just going to sit here quietly’. Halfway through the rehearsal you can see her, she’s up on her feet dancing away. When she left she literally danced out the door.
“I got a message saying, ‘It was great rejoicing with you all, I feel so much better’.
“When you hear people saying something shifted during one of the songs it makes you feel fulfilled. My heart is full, overflowing.
“Sometimes you are tired and drag yourself to rehearsal but what you receive when you get there... you can’t explain it properly.”
Kim and her husband Vernon, both 58, set up Renewal Choir together in Bristol 17 years ago, in 2005 after taking a break from running their first one – the Bristol Christ Centre Choir – to care for their three small children. As committed Christians, they knew that leading others in harmonious praise was something they wanted to do again.
Renewal – a Community Interest Company (CIC), of which Vernon is the chair and Kim is director of the choir – took its name from a New Testament
scripture (Romans 12:2) – “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
“I think we both felt an inner call,” Kim remembers. “It wasn’t just about having a great time on a Thursday night, it also felt like something that people in this city needed, the people who would be in the choir and also people who would hear the choir.
“I don’t think there were any other community gospel choirs in Bristol at the time. There was a gap there that needed to be filled. We wanted to start something that would be transformational and life-changing for people.”
The couple came to gospel music from different paths. Vernon – a trained musician and former Olympian who competed in the triple jump at the Seoul Summer Olympics in 1988 – was brought up in a Christian family in Bristol. But it was while in America, where he was doing a degree on a sports scholarship, that he deepened his faith.
While competing at the Olympics a while later, he met other Christian athletes and they worshipped and sang gospel songs together, something that was a highlight of the games for him. Today he is a mentor for young athletes.
Kim and her sister Karen grew up in London where they were taken to church by their mum from the time Kim was only two or three years old. With a classical music background and piano lessons from the age of eight, Kim fine-tuned her voice by hearing the congregation singing in harmony in the Black Pentecostal Church every week.
She was appointed as youth choir director while she was still a teenager, before joining a regional gospel choir made up from members of different churches across London.
Vernon and Kim’s love of music, gospel and God was a shared bond when they met through mutual friends in 1990 and has threaded through their lives together.
Most – but not all – of Renewal’s members identify as Christian but come from different denominations. There are Catholics, Church of England, Seventh Day Adventists; people who are all from the same faith but may not believe exactly the same thing. Kim and Vernon, who are members of the Church of God and Prophecy, are bornagain believers with a strong faith that is celebrated through the music.
“Last night, we said, ‘We’re just going to finish with a bit of praise and worship, not rehearsal’,” Kim says. “I didn’t have a song in mind. I said, ‘Any requests?’ Someone piped up, ‘Can we sing Bless The Lord?’ When this person came to choir she would say she didn’t believe in God, yet she gets a lot out of singing gospel songs.
“She would describe herself as spiritual, that’s not necessarily a belief in God. She’s on her own journey and her own path. I don’t feel I need to say, ‘You should be a Christian’. My job is about teaching them music and encouraging people to express their faith through the music.
“I don’t feel the need to convert anyone. I can’t anyway, that’s not my role. It’s about music and leaving space for however they are affected by the music to take place.”
The choir sometimes sings nonreligious songs with wholesome lyrics such as Lean On Me, which has a message of love and supporting other people that resonates with many believers. But it is gospel standards, such
There are times I suddenly realise there’s a song going around in my head that I hadn’t noticed and it comes to the fore... My feeling is that God speaks through the song and will just drop something in your heart and it’s the right answer at the right time Kim Samuels
as the powerful Total Praise by American composer Richard Smallwood, that fill them with joy.
“Sometimes the music itself can be powerful, it can be healing, uplifting, then sometimes it’s the words in the song,” Kim says.
“There are times I suddenly realise there’s a song going around in my head that I hadn’t noticed and it comes to the fore and I think, ‘Oh wow, that speaks directly to a situation I’m in or something I’ve been thinking about’ and I go, ‘There’s the answer’. My feeling is that God speaks through the song and will just drop something in your heart and it’s the right answer at the right time.”
As well as the weekly practice in the Knowle West area of Bristol and performing in concerts, the choir sings in hospitals, schools and prisons, giving others the opportunity to worship and feel included, or simply listen and enjoy as non-believers.
Some of them have also sung at a rather high-profile wedding, that of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018.
Vernon, Kim and their daughter, Robyn, joined the Kingdom Choir – founded and conducted by Kim’s sister Karen Gibson – to sing Stand By Me in Windsor Castle’s chapel. They are believed to be the first gospel choir to sing at a British royal wedding.
“It was just amazing to be a part of,” Kim says. “I feel a little bit of a connection to Harry and Meghan now, not that they have the foggiest who I am, so much so that when I see the negativity that follows them, I’ll pray for them. We were there at their union and we want the best for them.”
As the choir prepares for its performance in Gloucestershire, all the hard work is paying off. Not every rehearsal is the same but for Kim and the members, some are just that little bit more special.
“There’s that kind of directing when you are just trying to make sure everyone remembers their words, remembers their part, the music goes in the right way and then you finish and heave a sigh of relief,” she says.
“The bonus is when, sometimes it just feels like there’s a shift and it’s no longer me doing any work. Sometimes it has felt like a presence has entered the room and you are no longer directing, you are just flowing at that moment and you allow whatever happens to happen.
“Those times are amazing,” she says.
“I do remember Vern and I were going to a prison ministry event and we were so tired. I said to Vern, ‘I’ve got nothing, I’ve got absolutely nothing’. I didn’t want to go, I wanted to stay at home, I just felt so depleted.
“But when we got there it just felt like God took over. The whole experience, for the choir as well as for the inmates, felt like something was released. You sit back afterwards and you think, ‘That wasn’t me; it was somebody else’.
“God comes in, does what he needs to in that moment and then you go home and you just think ‘Wow, that was something else’.”
The choir is singing at St Mary’s Church, Culverhay, Wotton-under-edge, GL12 7LS, on Saturday, December 17 at 7pm. See the church website for details.
Find Renewal Choir on Facebook and at www.renewal choir.org