Apr 20

Apr 20 A Night of Praise with Kurt Carr at Harvest Praise 2014.

Kurt Carr has always been a favourite of mine when it comes to gospel artistes. His style, the inspiration of his song lyrics has always gotten me raising my hands in worship. So when I heard he was coming to perform at this year’s Harvest Praise, I gladly accepted to attend the show to promote the event on Twitter on behalf of CitiFm.

The Good Friday show which was in its 18th year, started with some local artistes and the Harvest Praise Choir team delivering melodious worship songs to which many people sang along to.

Rev. Fitzgerald Odonkor. overseer at Harvest International Ministries came on stage to preach on the importance of the cross of Christ and conducted an altar call as well. New members for Harvest Chapel...Go you! :)

Then the moment came for Kurt Carr to come on and after a prolonged 5 minute wait, he came on stage and what a wonderful performance it was! Kurt Carr didn’t disappoint the crowd as he sang both old and new songs from previous albums 'One Church' and 'Awesome Wonder' picking out songs such as ‘I Almost Let Go’, ‘Sanctuary’ and ‘Something Happens’. Something Happens is a personal favourite of mine which gets me ‘in the spirit’ all the time! :) The passion in the voices of the team was exceptional and got me wondering why some of our local gospel artistes didn't put that passion in their music?

The backup singers were resplendent and awe-inspiring with their strong and passionate voices and I was struck by the fantastic fashion sense of the women in the backup team, you should have seen the suede platforms/wedges one lady wore. Big and beautiful!!

I totally enjoyed the performance as did the entire audience although Kurt had to encourage people to stand up and worship! What is it about Ghanaians and sitting down during an artistes performance until urged to do so? I don’t quite get that.

My take on the organisation of the program, i was a bit disappointed with whoever at Harvest Chapel decided to allow only VIP ticket holders to park in the Accra Conference Centre premises whilst the others park outside by the roadside. AT A GOSPEL SHOW???? This is unheard of! Even God isn’t a partial God so where is this attitude from? Why do people like post like that in this country? Put someone in charge of a gate, then they act like its heaven’s gate. I finally parked just outside the building and got in hoping I wasn’t late. I wasn't at all. They were rather late. Ghanaian Meridian Time (GMT) was activated.

I was led in by one of the organisers from Harvest Praise to wait for the appropriate tag for my work there. Within five minutes of sitting down, two security men came up and asked me to get out of the auditorium! ‘Which one too is this?’ According to the security men, they had been tasked to throw out anyone without a tag! My explanation of being brought in by the same organiser fell on deaf macho ears. One security guy actually made a move towards me and startled I asked him, ‘Ei! Why are you going to lift me up out of this place?’ My query stopped him in his tracks. I tweeted my displeasure at this treatment and went out.

If Harvest Chapel really ordered for only VIP vehicles to park in the conference premises then I as a Christian I am very disappointed at this attitude. Why segregate when we serve a God who isn’t partial and He regards all of us as one? I found this action really uncalled for and hypocritical. Whats really even sad is, the VIP booked seats were only occupied by about 8 persons which begged the question, ‘Which cars are then parked in the premises?’ The security company there is just a sham and will really cause issues for any event organiser at the Conference Centre.

Thanks to Kurt Carr for making my evening! You can catch up with my live tweets on Twitter using the hashtag #HarvestPraise.