The Temple of Deliverance COGIC church’s 200-voice Women’s Choir has been taking the gospel music world by storm over the last year or so with its pulsating Top 20 radio smash “Everybody Praise.” Now, the Memphis-based ensemble is rocking the gospel world again with its last radio single “Breakthrough” from its Top Ten CD “In the Sanctuary” (Habakkuk Music).
This feverish, hand-clapper continues the celebratory worship of “Every Praise” with an equally engaging song led by veteran singer Angelique “Lena” Starks who has done backing vocals with the The Winans, The Clark Sisters and Vanessa Bell Armstrong. “This song has special meaning to me because people don’t know that I’ve suffered a lot even though I wear my smile,” the Detroit native adds. “I’ve been divorced and my son has cerebral palsy so I go through a lot of things. But the message of the song is about holding on. Even though we experience a lot and may be on the verge of giving up, if you just hold on a minute longer – when all your other options have failed – that’s when God comes through and gives you that breakthrough. He steps in right in the nick of time.”
Something else Starks loves about the tune is its fast tempo. “A lot of the songs you hear on the radio nowadays are slow,” she adds. “It feels like it’s time to lift the heavy burden off of us. We have something to shout about and this helps us get to that point.” Someone else who has something to shout about is gospel music legend Karen Clark Sheard who passionately testifies on the tail end of the song about her own breakthrough. “I got mine when the doctors gave up on me,” she sermonizes in reference to her breakthrough following 2001 hernia surgery where a blood vessel ruptured and put the Grammy Award winning singer into a coma. The singer miraculously recovered in spite of her doctors telling her family that she had only a 2% chance of surviving.
The twelve-song project supports the choir’s year-round fundraising efforts for various charitable causes. The Temple of Deliverance church has donated over $75,000 to cancer research and various global relief efforts (tornadoes in southern states, Hurricane Sandy, earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, etc.).
