By Loveness Mpofu
In a bid to kick start national choral competitions, Eagle Life Church Assembly held its inaugural choral competitions last Sunday, which saw church departments competing against each other.
Church sections comprising of the ushering, youth choir, Kingdom women (married women), Royal family (single parents), Hosting team, Teenagers, Cleaning department, Sunday School teachers among others battled each other for a first prize.
Experienced adjudicators were invited from the Methodist Church and the Salvation Army, who judged choirs according to best choir conductor, best attire, well disciplined choir and main section of vocals.
Kingdom women triumphed in the vocals category walking away with a trophy and
R1 000 cash prize followed by Ushering while Hosting Team was third and took home R500 and R300 respectively.
The ushering team however, outshined the rest, winning the other categories.
In the best choir conductor and well dressed categories the Hosting team choir conductor was the first runner up while Teenagers came second in the well disciplined section.
Prophet Blessing Chiza said the choral competition was a stepping stone for his greater vision to establish national choral competitions, which will see different churches competing against each other.
“My vision is to host Bulawayo choral competitions to sponsor all churches and it’s all coming from love. We want to set a platform for choirs from different denominations to come in and showcase their skills of singing,” he said.
“We also encourage other churches to take up such things because there will be powerful competitions in Bulawayo, as we intend to promote that spirit and we will be inviting them very soon.
So this was like a fundraising for that day because we are going to be inviting all churches from Bulawayo then there would be big prizes.”
The vision behind the competition is to bring back the concept of a strong main choir in churches, as it was with main line churches in the past decades.
Inspired by other nations, prophet Chiza said seeing other nations conducting the same competition gave him the drive to follow in their footsteps, as it will help enhance the choirs’ skills.
“We want to build a strong choir which will be able to compete with other choirs on an international level. So, the concept is to get good singers who will make up a powerful choir of about 500 members,” he said. The Sunday News
