Here’s today’s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.
Veteran Christian music artist Melissa Greene will appear on NBC’s two-hour season premiere holiday special of its popular musical competition series The Sing-Off. Green will perform Ghost with the female group Timothy’s Gift, one of the six new acts who will compete for the show’s first-place $50,000. Here’s a preview:
Hosted by Nich Lachey, The Sing-Off season launch airs tomorrow night (12/17) @ 9:00 PM (ET). Returning judges Jewel and Shawn Stockman will be joined by Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump.
Greene has a deeply-rooted history with the faith audiences. After singing soprano with the gospel music group Truth, she was invited to become a part of the critically-acclaimed and Grammy-nominated Christian quartet Avalon. The group won the 2002 American Music Award for Favorite Artist in Contemporary Inspirational Music. She spent nearly seven years with the group, singing the lead for such songs at Everything to Me which won the Dove Award for Inspirational Recorded Song of the year in 2004. Green currently serves as the full-time pastor of worship and arts at GracePointe Church in Franklin, Tenn.
For those unfamiliar The Sing-Off, here’s how it works. Each group will perform musical favorites from today’s top pop, R&B, rock and country charts with no lip-synching, backup bands or safety net as the celebrity judges critique the performers and eliminate one group each week. The last group standing will be awarded a cash prize and an Epic Records/Sony Music recording contract.
The show is executive produced by Mark Burnett, who between the veteran reality hit The Voice and the upcoming scripted series A.D. (a follow-up to his hugely-successful miniseries The Bible) is busy at NBC these days. The Sing-Off is produced by United Artists Media Group (a joint venture among MGM, Burnett and his wife Roma Downey and Hearst Corporation) along with Outlaw Entertainment and Sony Pictures Television.
Encourage one another and build each other up – 1 Thessalonians 5:11