This week the blog is sponsored by Getty Music. The team at Getty Music would like to remind you that summer registration for the Sing! Conference ends Aug 6, and if you use the code CHALLIES you can get 20% off!
The Getty Music SING! Conference began in 2017 with a vision to equip believers, families, and churches to cultivate deep theology, timeless artistry, and vibrant congregational singing. For 3 years, we enjoyed gathering each fall in a city known for its music—Nashville, TN—to spur one another on in the greatest musical opportunity each of us has: singing praise to Christ.
Then the coronavirus pandemic began.
Like so many around the world, we now had to ask questions we’d never imagined: How can we host a conference on congregational singing without a “congregation?”
It was humbling and refreshing to remember that God does not need our conference. He will accomplish his good plans, and his ways are often mysterious.
Yet, as we prayed and sought counsel from trusted partners across the globe, we realized that the challenges of this moment also bring unparalleled opportunities. The urgent need to “Sing the Scripture”—this year’s conference theme—does not change because of COVID-19.
With that in mind, we are excited to move forward with a new vision for 2020: an immersive digital conference, totally redesigned from the ground up as a virtual event.
We are anticipating tens of thousands of delegates from around the globe to participate in this virtual event. One of the things we are the most excited about, however, is the unique challenge of building a new form of the conference from the ground up that is immersive, connected, and accessible to believers from every corner of the earth.
Here are 8 reasons this excites us:
1) People from across the world who could never have attended an event in Nashville are now able to participate in the entire event making the Sing! Conference accessible to everyone! Because of this, we have renamed this year’s event “Sing! Global.”
2) This has given us a unique opportunity to reengage many of our top speakers and who were previously unavailable. We are excited to partner with over 100 speakers and artists such as Joni Eareckson Tada, John Piper, Trip Lee, John Lennox, David Kim, Alistair Begg, Conrad Mbewe, Andrew Peterson, H.B. Charles, Tim Challies, David Platt, Shai Linne, Trillia Newbell, and many more.
3) We have added new international pastors and musicians to share their wisdom and gifts with us—from Miguél Núñez in the Dominican Republic to Richard Chin and City Alight in Australia.
4) For the first time, attendees can record themselves singing along with many hymns in advance, and our amazing production team will add their voices during the event broadcast. This way, even though we cannot be together, we can still hear one another sing as voices from many nations praise Christ in harmony!
5) We will feature worship led from six continents as part of this immersive global experience! What a sweet foretaste of the new creation to be led in song by brothers and sisters from each inhabited continent. And there will be a virtual choir made up of singers from many countries to perform Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus among other selections.
6) Through in-home interviews and special performances, we will be able to go behind the scenes into the ministries of Christian musicians and artists at the top of their field in areas such as jazz, classical music, ballet, visual arts, and more.
7) We have a new focus on equipping families to sing in the home. It is so urgent to build new habits of singing the Word with our children during this season, and we have several sessions that will focus on the why and how of family worship.
8) We reimagined the event schedule. The main sessions will be broadcast in the evening in the USA but will remain available on-demand everywhere in the world so those in any time zone can tune in at the most convenient hour. Watch parties around the world will meet (subject to local regulations) to experience the event together. Breakout sessions will become available at various stages during the day, organized into tracks that viewers can follow at their own schedule. All the content will then remain available for 90 days so that everyone can catch up on all the sessions and go deeper throughout the fall.
Please pray with us that the Lord would bless this event for his glory. We have never seen such anticipation for an event before and it is our hope that we will look back in 30 years at this moment in history as one of the most unique opportunities to sing of the beauty and riches of our Lord, and cry out together as part of His global church, and to strengthen families and churches in God’s Word.
Summer registration for the Sing! Conference ends Aug 6, and if you use the code CHALLIES you can get 20% off!
