Wendell Kimbrough on the Psalms
Wendell Kimbrough is a songwriter and worship leader in southern Alabama who believes church music should simply be good music that forms us as we sing it together. Drawing on the sounds of American folk and soul music, Wendell writes scripturally-rich songs with singable, memorable melodies. His music has been embraced by a growing number of churches, young and old, large groups and small, contemporary praise bands and traditional choirs.
View the entire 60 minute conversation between Wendell Kimbrough and John Witvliet, professor of music and worship and director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
Wendell’s newest album, Psalms We Sing Together, provides a collection of congregational songs that invite a powerful encounter with the psalms. The album emerged from a liturgical practice at his church in Alabama. Each week, Wendell creates a refrain for the congregation to sing in a form of call-and-response during the weekly psalm reading. This regular discipline of meditation—for the congregation and for Wendell himself—yielded an immense collection of music, emerging from a single congregation pressing into the wild, enormous, real-life experience of worship that we find in the psalms.