“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
—Matthew 7:24
I stood there looking at that faded relic of a photograph—the one of I.W. hanging in Marvin’s office, and it reminded me of my youth. Marvin showed me another faded black-and-white picture of all the congregants standing in front of the church, along the street, up and down the cement stairs that led to the top level where the sanctuary was. An old battered sign now hangs above the front door and reads, ZION CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST. We grew up running the halls of that church I.W. founded there on 2135 Mack Avenue, two streets west of Chene. He started his ministry in Detroit when he migrated from Mississippi in 1916.
You can still find the tall and narrow brick building today. Services are still held there. My memories of that church simmer up from boyhood. And you know how it is when you’re little; everything seems so big and grand then. The alleyway between Mack and the Baptist church that is right next door is only about six feet wide. Now I can stand in the center of the alley, stretch out my arms, and nearly touch both outside walls of the churches. But I remember that alley being as long as a football field and wide enough for us to play games and create whole worlds in our pretend universe. It was huge, then.
I can remember sitting in the worn wooden pews listening to I.W. and trying to be “good” so I didn’t get in trouble after the service. The ceiling vaulted high, past the balcony, making the sanctuary room feel grand. I always wanted to sit up in the balcony. Today, the vaulted ceiling doesn’t exist. It’s been closed off, and a low ceiling now hangs, smashing the room into a shallow and cramped-feeling gathering place. The same pulpit still stands. And many of the wall hangings remain. When last I visited, it did not feel as alive as it did when I was a kid.
As I walked the halls of the old building, I could almost smell lunch cooking down in the basement room where the kitchen was, as if the smell was baked into the concrete walls. That’s right: church included lunch. I remember how my siblings and cousins and I couldn’t wait to run down the steps and dive into lunch. The only thing we were thinking by the end of the message was, “Hurry up and close the Word, Pastor, so we can get downstairs to that chicken.” Because that’s all we could smell by the end of the message: fried chicken and rice and cabbage—soul food—rising up from the basement.
Downstairs, along with the kitchen, was “small church.” We kids did the Sunshine Band down in small church. Small church even had its own instruments, which included a piano and drum set. I remember singing “I Will Make You Fishers of Men” in small church.
But what I’m describing is only a building. And though the building still holds a nostalgic place in my heart, it’s what we did in that building that shaped me: worship.
Our home was nurtured under the wings of the church. And when I say “church,” I mean a foot-stompin’, hand-clappin’, roof-raisin’ Pentecostal church. I know, it’s hard to know what all the names of churches mean nowadays. Just picture in your mind a service that began with really no start time. Pastor started church when the Holy Ghost arrived. And we all know the Holy Ghost doesn’t get up until around 10:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. And he’s not ready to go home until, oh, you know, around 10:30 p.m. Church for us, growing up, was an all-day affair. Remember, we ate our meals there.
But when the Holy Spirit did show up, oh boy, you better watch out.
The worship time—the singing time—in church was our time to find out where our hearts were. We didn’t know that then; we were just kids. But going to church was our time to discover what shape our souls were in. At Mack, the worship service was chaotic: people fighting for the song, dueling for the lead. You’ll find more order in services today, especially at Marvin’s church. But you still get the ocean swell of the Holy Spirit. And if you don’t know how to swim, you’ll drown.
What did I discover in the Holy Spirit swell?
That the human heart is on fire, and on fire with little pieces of heaven all over them. And when your heart has parts of heaven on it, that makes a sound. Have you heard it?
It doesn’t sound like a muffled song that you’re embarrassed to hear or sing. It sounds like a shouting from above. It comes in shouts, and praises, and people sounding off during the message, “Hallelujah!” and “Preach!” and “Yes, Lord!” It sounds like a unity of voices, sounding as one, with the power of angels and fire.
It is ear-piercing, gut-wrenching praise. A kick drum beating in your chest.
It looks like hands raised high in the air with no care of who is standing to the right or to the left.
It looks like dancing and spinning men and women, clapping their hands in an unexplainable joy. It looks like leaping, and I’m not using a figure of speech here. I mean literal leaping. It looks like wearing your best suit and tie, sweat pouring down, and you just don’t care, because this is church. This is where you came to gather with the saints and participate in a hallelujah party.
All were invited.
It looks like a man running up and down the aisle. Why? Because he’s worshipping. He’s letting the music move him.
It looks like my cousin singing beside me, her hands raised, singing her heart.
Church blazes in my memory, like a scene from David’s Psalms—I grew up living the Psalms. They are still so real to me because I lived those words of King David every Sunday morning. I think about Psalm 150, where it says:
Praise the LORD!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD! (ESV)
Now take a moment and think about your church on Sunday morning. And I’m not trying to say my church is better than yours, I’m just saying that sometimes when you experience the Holy Spirit in church, your eyes see that church has nothing to do with the building or the technology or any of the fancy bells and whistles. The only thing that matters is the Holy Spirit.
Is the Spirit there?
And then, what is the Spirit about? When he moves, is he stagnant, or does he resemble the praise of the saints?
King David danced before the Lord. That’s what we’re told, and that’s what I saw in the pews and from the pulpit: dancing before the Lord.
I heard messages that rained down upon our ears, heavy with passion and glory. King David talked about praising the Lord with clapping and raised hands. The Psalms tell us to sing a new song unto God. We’re supposed to come before him with glad hearts making joyful sounds. When I was young, attending church, joyful sounds came from the Hammond B3 organ, and the textured chords of jazz, and lyrics that talked about the Good News of Jesus. These are the rousing sounds of the Holy Spirit—heaven sounds that bring tears of joy and laughter at the same time.
We discovered a new world at church. And it was dynamic. On the one hand it was this incredibly vivacious world, full of life and love and the grace of God. A world busting with creative freedom, with an invitation to discover the person God made me to be.
But on the other hand, it was a world with very clear rules. And those rules toughened us up. We didn’t like them all. But it’s like my brother Marvin says: we were taught the truth, and the truth stayed with us—it brought us up and made us men and women who hungered for God. And later in life, the truth set us free from legalism. Well, that last part was me.
Now, what I’ve just described is the passion side of church. And yes, it rings with a romantic kind of sound, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to experience joy in music and dancing and singing? Who wouldn’t want to stay all day long with family and friends, singing and dancing, eating and laughing, and experiencing a little bit of heaven on a Sunday afternoon? I may not attend a church that goes all day now, but I do miss the “event” of church in our culture. Most churches today reduce the event of the saints gathering and praising and receiving the Scriptures as if it were food from heaven itself, to something manageable, relevant to everybody’s wants, something more in tune with everyone’s busy schedules. When did we go off and get in such a hurry? There’s no hurry in heaven.
That’s what church did for me and to me. It was an event that shaped my virtue, the way I saw the world; it shaped my voice, and it gave me a voice; it pressed its weight into me, and it gave me a platform on which to stand. It brought me up. It built me up. And it set me up.
Do I sound like I’m preaching?
Well, I’m sorry and I’m not. Preaching found its way into me. When I preach now, I’m preaching first to myself, something maybe we all need to do. Preaching to yourself gives you strength. It reminds and reassures you. It gives you a deep encouragement.
Can all this come from the event of church?
I believe so, yes. Because the event of church has nothing to do with a physical building. It has everything to do with people. People gathering to lift up the name of God—not themselves. And there’s a beautiful power in leaving yourself at the door and focusing on someone else—someone like God, someone like your brother or sister—the ones you don’t live with, the ones you live next door to.
The power of church dug deep into me and my siblings. We loved it. We may not have understood the spiritual power of church, but we did understand that church was a blast.
Can you imagine? Kids loving to go to church?
In today’s world, parents have to force their kids to go to church and at the same time convince themselves to attend. But not in my day. It was exciting to go to church, to sing and dance and hear how much God loved us. We thought it was thrilling.
If Mom or Dad wanted to punish us really bad, all they had to say was, “You ain’t going to church this week.” That was awful, that was painful, but that’s all they needed to say! We’d straighten up and fly right.
Church is where everything happened. Family, friends, the Lord, good food, all gathered in those halls, and my goodness, a joyful noise was heard and felt for miles away.
We loved church so much that for me and my brothers and sisters, our church family felt like our extended family. And I mean that in a very real sense—I’m not just being nostalgic. The adults at the church had full authority over us just like my birth parents. They could correct us verbally or with the belt. I think society calls this “corporal punishment,” which makes me laugh. We simply called it a “whippin’,” and to this day, to me and my generation, there is a big difference between discipline and abuse.
If it wasn’t for that kind of loving from my parents and our church family, there’s no telling where I and all the young people of my day would be. Our upbringing kept a high percentage of us out of jail, off drugs, in school, out of trouble, respectful to law enforcement, to teachers, and even taught us to care and respect our neighbors and strangers.
The love that I grew up hearing about in church was a love that corrected and disciplined when it needed to and taught us the good things of life, like family, faith, and friendship. I grew up hearing how love was patient and kind, slow to become angry, quick to forgive. It doesn’t brag; it’s not jealous. Love isn’t selfish. It doesn’t disrespect other people. It’s not easily angered. It doesn’t keep track of all the wrong things people do. It does not delight in evil; it delights in the truth. It always protects, and trusts, and hopes, and perseveres. Love never fails.
That is not a squishy kind of love. That’s a love that requires us to listen to one another. It requires us to help one another. And when I say “one another,” I’m not just saying your good friends, or the people you attend church with, or the people in your school or at your work. I mean e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e.
Love means the world to me. And I believe that’s true for every human being, if we’re really honest with ourselves. When I look back on the love I learned in church and from my family, I can see how so much of my life’s story revolves around my understanding and application of love. My life and career can be traced by those times I learned hard lessons about love, when someone else loved me and taught me more about love, or when I was reminded about the brevity of life and the importance to walk in love, daily. What’s so amazing about love is that it gives flight to other attributes, like compassion and forgiveness. And I know we miss that in today’s world.
* * *
The old photographs of I.W. Winans and loved ones from our past that Marvin showed me stirred up images and smells and sweaty feelings of worship that felt like home. And as I think about it, the home I felt in that church began somewhere else.
The Mack church is a historical landmark in a beaten-down area of town on the east side of Detroit. But the founding of that church reaches even further back, before I was even a thought. It reaches into a time I hardly knew growing up in the Detroit of the twentieth century. Now I knew that it extended well beyond Detroit, into the Deep South of Centreville, Mississippi. Marvin and I can’t be sure of his findings, but we’re looking into it. But even the likelihood of it all is enough to give me pause for reflection.
I’m the seventh son of David and Delores Winans, who once were David and Delores Glenn. Then Dad was convinced to change his name—to his rightful name, they say. And so he did, and all my siblings and I took on the name Winans and its history. The name touches two ethnicities and two histories and migrated to Detroit.
And I’ve read about the personal belongings many of those migrants took with them; simple things, really, whatever possessions they had, be it their King James Bibles, their steel guitars, or their congregations—they left for a new land and a new time, a new hope and a new future. And they risked their very lives for that freedom.
How incredible it is to think my family, who probably took on the name of their slave owners, left the Natchez Trace area and became the early human seeds of the Detroit that I now know and love. A friend told me the banjo was actually an instrument that originated in Africa, and that enslaved Africans were the first to use it in the New World.9 Amazing how what is now known as a country music instrument actually influenced many genres, from bluegrass to boogie-woogie, to blues and rock and jazz and country. An African instrument, the forerunner and the shaper of much of the American music landscape. That instrument emigrated here and moved around, was played by many and used for all kinds of sounds. And just how that instrument was a seed for so much of the music many of us know and love today, so too were those families of the migration; they were the seeds of change, the seeds that formed and shaped early Detroit—banjo people strumming their songs, shaping the land with their lives.
That’s what I was born into. That’s the Detroit that shaped me. So in many respects, I was shaped by them—all the families, mine included, that set off for a new life. And their souls poured into Detroit as they brought along their Southern histories, their African and American legacies, and mixed it all together to form a dynamic land of music: Detroit.
When I talked with my brother Marvin and asked him if he remembered the Detroit of our youth, he told me, “In Detroit, when Motown was in Motown, there was a sense of hope and an air of something special.”
He reminded me that when we moved to the west side in 1966, it was not uncommon to see little Stevie Wonder performing on a street corner. It was nothing to go into a restaurant and see Gladys Knight or Marvin Gaye Sr., who later went on to pastor. Gaye’s house wasn’t far away from ours, and it was given to him by Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records. And like us, Marvin Jr. grew up in Pentecostal church singing in the choir. I wonder how strict his parents really were with him, because a holiness church meant rules and a whole different way of living.
We lived near Smokey Robinson’s house, and we’d always try to get over there when it snowed hard because he paid well to have his sidewalk shoveled. We went to school with the sons of the Temptations. Music permeated the entire place. I lived music. There was a sense of song and home and hope that permeated the Detroit of my youth.
When Motown relocated to Los Angeles, its absence left a hole in Detroit. But this absence didn’t affect Gospel music. Detroit is synonymous with Motown, with soul music and R&B, but let’s not forget it’s also a birthplace of Gospel music.
Some say Gospel music comes to us all the way from plantation holler songs, which reaches back to its roots, the African spiritual.10 A holler song was usually sung by a lone worker out in the field; it was soulful, melancholy. There were also call-and-response work songs. I remember that scene from the Denzel Washington movie Glory, in which the black regiment gathered around the fire the night before a big battle and they sang old African spirituals—it was a moody scene of passion, despair, and hope.
They say if you Christianize an African spiritual, you get Gospel. I suppose that might be true. And it makes sense to me because Gospel music comes from the gut, it takes you over, and it points you to heaven—the only and best place for our hope in this world.
And maybe it was the Great Migration that brought all those sharecroppers—formerly enslaved—to this new place; maybe that was the infusion of so much passion and soul and music in Detroit. Maybe God filled the lungs of my great-grandfather, and his father, and gave them this town to preach in, to sing in. And here I find myself in this long line of preachers, hollerin’ for heaven to come down and fill my soul—fill the souls of everyone.
I love Detroit because it’s where I was raised. I love it because of its rich heritage in music, but I especially love Gospel music. That’s all I knew as a young boy, and it’s what I was steeped in as a teenager. It’s what we sang in church, and it’s what we sang around the house. And though some may suggest that Gospel music might come from the holler songs of the plantations, I can attest to how Gospel progressed through modern contemporary voices. Voices like the Clark Sisters, for example, who helped bring Gospel into the mainstream. They pioneered contemporary Gospel and won three Grammy Awards. Their song “You Brought the Sunshine” was a crossover hit and catapulted their careers. And Twinkie Clark? Well, she’s known as the Queen of the Hammond B3 Organ. Whether you know it or not, you hear that instrument all over the musical landscape today.
Then there’s the voice of Thomas Whitfield. Like the Clark Sisters, he also helped shape contemporary Gospel music. He liked to mix different sounds together. He’d take jazz and classical music and fuse them together with Gospel sounds.
And I haven’t even mentioned Andraé Crouch yet. He’s Gospel music’s most famous maestro. Perhaps you know him best for directing choirs for Michael Jackson and Madonna, but his influence goes so much deeper. He led the way for so many of us today in Gospel music by taking the traditional sounds and styles of Gospel music and mixing them with the newer secular music styles. You might say that the Gospel music family tree finds its roots in Andraé Crouch.
But I know Andraé from a more personal perspective. He discovered my brothers Ronald, Carvin, Marvin, and Michael when they were singing in church. He gave them their first major recording contract. When they received the contract from Andraé, Dad wanted to get the record done, but Andraé was dragging his feet. So, Dad took the initiative to drive my brothers to California. They stopped and performed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the way—to help pay for gas.
When they arrived, Andraé was out of town. But when he returned, he asked my brothers to perform for his father’s church dedication. They sang “Are We Really Doing Your Will,” followed by “The Question Is,” which brought down the house. Andraé got them in the studio quick after that performance, and they recorded their first album, the self-titled The Winans.
This Detroit, this place that possessed a sense of hope, an air of song, that was my home and in a lot of ways my family. The root had grown deep. The foundation laid.
When I think back on my life as a young man growing up in Detroit, I think about foundations. If I wanted to be a singer but refused to learn the foundational rules and principles to music and singing, I wasn’t going to get very far in the profession. In order to learn the foundational rules to music, I had to apply myself to them. I had to practice them—which Dad made us do. Sometimes, even on school nights, he made us practice until late in the evening.
I can remember Mom saying, “Skippy, they have to go to school in the morning.”
And he’d say, “OK, well, let them get this last note right. Then they can go off to bed.” Practice, practice, practice. It’s part of building a foundation.
I can’t make up what a whole note is and how many beats it gets. No, I spent time, just like my other siblings, studying other artists, such as Andraé Crouch, the Hawkins Family, the Caravans, the Mighty Clouds of Joy. Now, some of these artists you may not know. But let it be understood, my father allowed only Gospel music in our home. There may have been times as an older teenager I questioned this rule. But now, as an adult and parent, I understand Dad’s rules completely. With the world we live in, with all the negative vibes swirling outside the doors, you need to ensure, as a parent, that there’s as much positive inside the doors of your home.
So we listened to good music and musicians and singers who used positive lyrics in their songs. It was the positive, the good, the holy that Dad wanted influencing us.
In practicing, in listening to Gospel music, in listening—though at times grudgingly—to my parents, I was building a foundation.
As I tell my story through song, through a musical, through this book, over and over in my mind the word “foundations” rolls on like a song that my mother used to hum as she cleaned the house. My story is the story of having my house built upon the rock and not liking it sometimes. But despite my youthful ambition and struggles to always understand the value of what my parents were trying to build in us kids, the situations in my life revealed to me that what my parents set out to do was for my own good.
But foundations, I’ve found, are more than principles. They’re made of real places and real people. Detroit, for example, was part of my foundation. It was more than just the city to me. And it was more than a place in which I grew up with my brothers and sisters. It was also a place where I learned the value of family, the value of hard work. It was a place where I learned the value of music.
Detroit was home to some of the best music our country has ever known. The Detroit music itself was a kind of foundation for us as a country. The music that came out of Detroit told the story of the love of God and of family, of ruin and of redemption. It was passionate and sweaty, glorious and raw.
It’s hard to forget anything my dad told me. By now, you’ve got a good idea of the kind of man my dad was. And though he was a tough, firm man, he was also our biggest fan and advocate. We always knew Dad had our backs.
Earlier I mentioned how Dad encouraged me to know who I was before I walked through the door and into the outside world. If you know who you are, you won’t lose your way. I’ve endured over five decades of life, and in many ways, I still feel as though I’m finding my way. But after so many years of hearing Dad in my ear, reminding me to be myself, to be the person God made me to be, in a lot of ways, being me now seems second nature.
That might sound a little strange, because aren’t we all ourselves? And shouldn’t that be the easiest thing to be?
Well, we live in a world in which every single person now can be someone they are not. They can manipulate and curate their own digital existence and actually train themselves to be someone they are not. How easy is it, now, for you and me to lose our way simply because we’ve forgotten who we are? It sounds crazy. But crazy in today’s world is too often true.
I’ve been thumbing through the history of the Winans family, taking pieces of the puzzle and snapping them together, seeing if all the pieces fit. In some ways, I’m surprised by the puzzle image that is taking shape. But in other ways, I’m not surprised at all. Because my God is the God of the unexpected. He uses all kinds of means and people to get things done in this world. And in my case, it looks as if he assembled a family out of the Deep South and the shackles of slavery to be a mouthpiece for a song. And that song is not a lonely hollerin’ song from way out in the fields. It’s a beautiful song of hope and acceptance and love. It’s a song that reminds me that hope springs eternal because its source is heavenly. I’m happy to contribute a note or maybe a line to that song. And l hope if you hear it, you’ll sing along and contribute too.
* * *
Even though Detroit played home to some of the most dynamic people and the most beautifully powerful music in the world, it wasn’t going to launch my career, like I had dreamed it would when I was little. Whether or not I wanted to admit it to myself, I had been hoping to be a star since I even had a concept of what that was. And the stars I knew of and loved were stars in Detroit.
But God was going to have to take me elsewhere so I could learn what I needed to learn. I’d take my foundation with me, but I was headed away from the colorful and familiar Detroit toward something new and unexpected.