Gospel Hymn DVD Outreach Takes Church to Dementia Patients

Kentucky Today reports that the Gospel Music Hymn Sing Foundation is engaged in an ongoing outreach project that has distributed nearly 47,000 gospel music DVDs among more than 15,600 nursing communities. The Operation Sing Again initiative gave each community three DVDs featuring well-known gospel artists leading congregations of up to 2,000 people singing hymns in sanctuaries like Atlanta's First Baptist Church, with each DVD concluding with an invitation to receive the Gospel. Mary Anne Oglesby, director of Veranda Ministries in Gallatin, Tenn., says patients have been known to talk to the DVDs as though the singers were in the room with them. The videos have been particularly beneficial as communities operate during the COVID-19 pandemic, says Gerald Wolfe on the Gospel Music Hymn Sing Foundation's board. "We've received stacks of cards and notes from activity directors letting us know how encouraging the DVDs have been for their residents, especially during the last year," he notes. "They've become a kind of lifeline connecting the residents to the familiar scenes of a church sanctuary, and the songs they sang all their lives."