1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2026 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Rev. Dr. Raymond Wise has served as a church musician for more than 30 years and is director of the African American Choral Ensemble at Indiana University.
Dr. Wise has penned more than 600 compositions, recorded 22 albums, and performed, taught, and conducted extensively all across the world. He served as co-director of the Hampton University Ministers' Conference Choir Directors' and Organists' Guild, which provides intensive training in African American sacred music for church music ministers and college students preparing for service as church music ministers.
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, he began his musical career at the age of three, singing gospel music with his family singing group "The Wise Singers."
In this conversation, John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, engages Dr. Wise on a number of topics:
Old Testament scholar Nancy deClaissé-Walford has spent her career studying the ordering of the Psalter. Most of the psalms, she says, are not tied to a particular situation, allowing us to sing and pray them honestly in our own contexts.
Pastor-scholar Andrew Wilkes shares how his worshiping community, Double Love Experience Church, prayed and sang the psalms during the troubling times of 2020. The psalms gave them language and support for praise and lament, and Wilkes asserts that lament is the evidence of faith because we are bringing our troubles to God.
Author and pastor-scholar David Taylor shares how he came to appreciate the psalms and how he encourages people to bring their full, unedited selves to God in prayer and experience a richer and more honest life of faith.
Old Testament scholar Nancy deClaissé-Walford has spent her career studying the ordering of the Psalter. Most of the psalms, she says, are not tied to a particular situation, allowing us to sing and pray them honestly in our own contexts.
Pastor-scholar Andrew Wilkes shares how his worshiping community, Double Love Experience Church, prayed and sang the psalms during the troubling times of 2020. The psalms gave them language and support for praise and lament, and Wilkes asserts that lament is the evidence of faith because we are bringing our troubles to God.
Author and pastor-scholar David Taylor shares how he came to appreciate the psalms and how he encourages people to bring their full, unedited selves to God in prayer and experience a richer and more honest life of faith.
A Psalm Talk by Jared E. Alcántara recorded at the 2026 Psalms 150 conference, with a visual prayer and embodied response from artist Dea Jenkins.
