Never Would Have Made It

Early in the pandemic my life partner and I swapped church attendance with livestreams of worship services.  Unfaithful servants, we quickly found ourselves shopping around for inspirational music and astute preachers with shameless promiscuity. During the pre-times, our ideal Sunday morning church experience lasted less than 60 minutes.  That’s one reason we may never visit the Chosen Vessel Cathedral in Fort Worth.  The June 5 service is more than two hours long.  Oh, but what music! Marvin Sapp is the most prominent member of the church’s outstanding array of vocalists and instrumentalists.  Sapp’s comparitively anemic new album Substance contains nothing as memorable as his signature song"You Kept Me" and "All In Your Hands" are among the few selections approximating the holy fervor heard at Chosen Vessel.