Sheila Booker hunched over the black grand piano at the front of the church.
"Don't
you
sing the song," she instructed the 30 worshipers in the pews. "Let the song sing you."
Booker, 56, was leading a final rehearsal yesterday morning for the Gospel Music Workshop, an annual weeklong seminar at St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Olney.
The workshop, which culminated with a concert at the church last night, offered a crash course on the harmonies and syncopations of gospel.
About 60 churchgoers from many denominations - Catholics, Baptists, Episcopalians, among others - participated in complete harmony, naturally, said Theodore Harris, 69, a congregant at St. Ignatius of Loyola, a Catholic church in West Philadelphia.
Booker, the workshop's music director the last six years, said gospel is no harder to learn than other types of singing. The main difference is it offers some room for expression.
"There's usually that area where you expect people to kind of loosen up," Booker said. "There's a little freedom to kind of bend it and mold it and let the spirituality get in."
The workshop brought together a variety of skill levels. Some participants have been in choirs all their lives; others were novices.
What was common was a love for gospel.
Eduardo Luna, 39, said he connected with the religious nature of the music. "It talks about Jesus and God, the Bible," said Luna, a native of Puerto Rico. "It's always good to have a belief in a faith."
For Dorothy Covington, 75, gospel's true beauty lies in the lyrics. "The words in the song tell you so much," said Covington, who joined her first choir when she was 3.
The workshop was launched 25 years ago by Edwin Newberry Jr., an internationally known gospel singer from Germantown who died in 1999. It attracts gospel fans from Philadelphia, its suburbs and beyond.
This year, Sheila Mull, 55, made the two-hour commute from Lancaster to attend the three-hour nightly practices at St. Paul's. With gas prices so high this year, she said, the workshop has taken the place of a vacation.
"I just decided this would be what I do instead of go on a trip," Mull said.
Annie Torian, 55, also did a lot of driving last week: She commuted an hour every night from her job as an account manager with Comstar Supply Inc. in Collegeville. The travel was "more than worth every minute," she said.
She joined the workshop last year at the behest of her close friend Martina Webb, who had unsuccessfully urged Torian to join for years. When Webb became sick last summer and couldn't attend, Torian agreed to take her place.
"When I got here, I got so much of a sense of what she was trying to tell me for so many years," said Torian, a member of St. Therese of the Child Jesus in East Mount Airy. "I was so filled with what I found that I stayed."
This year, Torian took her granddaughter Monique Jimperson, 15. Having to pick her up and drop her off, Torian never get home before midnight.
Despite her long week, Torian was too excited yesterday morning to be tired. "I'll sleep tomorrow," she said.