A four-day Christian worship conference will gather thousands online this week to sing, pray and help each other create better worship experiences for their local churches to connect with God during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Musicians Keith and Kristyn Getty created the Sing! Conference in 2017. This year the conference kicks off Sunday, Aug. 30. Last year, over 13,000 people attended Sing! in Nashville, Tenn. 

This year, about 14,000 participants from around the world were registered on the first day of the conference. Registration will remain open for the duration of the event.

As part of the global conference, translations will be available in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Korean and Simplified Chinese for free.

“With all the foreign language translations on parts of the conference we are hoping for 250k over the four days,” Getty told Religion Unplugged. 

Rather than focusing just on the worship leaders in churches, Keith Getty says that the goal of Sing! is to bring different parts of congregations together, and this year, to think through how to adapt to the pandemic. 

“The irony of the coronavirus is that it’s banning churches from singing, and yet we need singing now more than ever,” Getty said. 

A survey of 443 Protestant pastors by Lifeway Research in July of 2020 said that 71 percent of churches were meeting in person as of July 19. But many churches continue to host virtual services and drive-in services, and churches meeting in person have had to modify services to fit within COVID-19 restrictions. 

“It really is so much also about just helping local churches at every level,” Getty said. “It brings together three groups that normally talk that much: the pastor doesn’t usually understand the worship leader, and people who are serious about the arts often feel left out of church.”

The mission of these conferences emphasizes the importance of singing in various forms. In addition to conference leadership, Sing! leadership includes a writers’ team that produces hymns to share with Protestant Christian churches, often with an Evangelical focus. 

“I think there was a need for songs of more depth, and there’s such a need to bring art that lasts back to the church,” Getty said. 

“After three years, it was our prayer that this event would become more deep, more influential on day to day church life and more global,” Getty said. “And Sing! Global in a way has done all of that.”

Getty says that Sing! now includes music and lessons from every continent, some of which were originally recorded in the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn. Additionally, those who pay the registration fee will receive access to the content until Dec. 31, along with other Sing! Conferences from the past and other videos. 

This growth to a global audience and opportunity for participants to utilize the material for a longer period has begun achieving what Getty and his team wanted with Sing!, but he says he will still miss the in-person fellowship the conference normally provides.

“There is nothing like being with God’s people singing,” Getty said. “There’s nothing like having 11,000 of your mates in a room with some world-class musicians, and world class speakers—and, candidly, world class food—and being able to enjoy each others’ company.”

Each day of the conference is focused on a different aspect of singing within the church. Sunday is about singing with the family, Monday is about individual singing of the Bible, Tuesday is about singing in church and focuses on worship leaders and Wednesday is about the importance of singing in a global Christian community. 

Sunday is always family day at Sing! Conferences, Getty says, but he adds that this year will be the “most important family sing we’ve had” because of the strain families have been under in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Monday night will also mark the launch of Kristyn Getty’s “Evensong” project, which is about “the songs we sing to ourselves at night, and the songs we sing to ourselves in comfort,” he said. 

And the conference will end by establishing Sing’s global platform, which Getty says he hopes to build in the following years. 

In the meantime, the team is working to recreate in-person fellowship while following COVID-19 restrictions. 

One of the options for participants is to host a Watch Party, which can be done in homes or churches. Getty says this allows for people to experience the conference in person and can be good for those with financial constraints—an individual ticket is $214, while a Sing! Global Group of 5-9 people is $179 per person and a group of 10-19 people is $159 per person. Getty says over 3,000 Watch Parties had been registered as of Aug. 27.

Getty notes that they are encouraging people not to break the law but meet “sensitively and carefully.” This achieves another goal of Getty’s in leading Sing!, for people to restart their routine as they focus on worship in church communities. 

“I think we need a moment to lift our eyes,” Getty said. “But more than that, it’s important to remember that when it comes to Christianity, the number one command is not a system of belief, the number one command is not a social action, but the number one command is actually to sing. So it is fundamental to all parts of our spiritual health.”

The Sing! Global 2020 Conference begins on Aug. 30. Tickets are available here.  

Jillian Cheney is a Poynter-Koch fellow for Religion Unplugged who loves consuming good culture and writing about it. She also reports on American Protestantism and Evangelical Christianity. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.