Kingdom Voices United: Building Community and Healing Through Gospel Song

The story of Kingdom Voices United starts with a vision from God. “I was on my way to service one morning and God just dropped it so heavily in my spirit,” Minister La’Wanda Leggett recalls. Though reluctant at first to start a choir, she recalls, after consulting with lifelong friends Apostle Stanley Douglas and Tony Smith as well as others, “Not one of them said no. They were immediately on board and so I said, you know what, this is it. And here we are today after two years.” Since this vision that led to the creation of Kingdom Voices United, the choir has grown to include members that come from all backgrounds, religious or not. As Tony Smith explains, for those in Harnett County, “They love to sing gospel music. And they’re not really affiliated with a religious denomination here. They just wanna sing, and singing the gospel music in this choir is a dynamic outlet for them to do that.” 

While Kingdom Voices United has been going strong for two years, the longer history of choir music in Harnett County is closely intertwined with the more than fifty years’ friendship between choir leaders Minister Leggett, Apostle Douglas, and Mr. Smith. “We are from the same church,” Apostle Douglas states about growing up together. “We’ve always been singing. It just comes easy, just natural. It’s like we know each other’s style.” At the time known as part of the Quartet Belt, by the 1960s and 1970s choir music had started to grow in popularity in the area. This especially resonated amongst the younger generation of churchgoers, with Minister Leggett, Apostle Douglas, and Mr. Smith at 12 and 13 years old trying to find any opportunity to sing.

“ We were raised up in a church where there were a lot of older, seasoned saints,” Minister Leggett explains. “We were either gonna sing hymns or spirituals, something that was going to reach the older people.” But, as time went on, coupled with strong support from their pastor, things eventually changed. By the late 1970s, traditional hymns evolved into music arranged for choir. It was therefore in 1980, with more and more younger people interested in joining the choir, that the first community choir in Harnett County started – the Voices of Faith. As Mr. Smith recollects, “When we had the first choir, [Voices of Faith], we would always be invited to other churches to sing. We would do two or three programs a weekend. We all led, and we had maybe about 15, 20 people in there.” 

For years, Voices of Faith was a pillar in Harnett County as the main community choir, traveling and regularly ministering across multiple churches in the region. But, as those left to raise families and others had other responsibilities, membership slowly declined over the years. Fast forward to recent years, and the COVID pandemic has dealt an even stronger blow to church attendance as a whole, with growing numbers opting for online services. However, in more recent years, there has been a greater interest to bring back choirs, with Minister Leggett leading with the founding of Kingdom Voices United. And, while a non-denominational community choir,as Mr. Smith outlines, one of the central missions of Kingdom Voices United is, “to reach lost souls. That’s one of our main goals, to reach lost souls through the singing of the gospel. And we hope to reach somebody who’s, who’s lost in their way of living. Their way of thinking. So, and hopefully that song will prick somebody’s heart.” Kingdom Voices United aims to be a form of therapy through singing the Word of God that ultimately strengthens and brings people to Christianity. The words of Minister Leggett reflect it best: “Just like you go to these urgent cares, this is an urgent care. The House of God is a hospital for hurting souls. There’s healing in the house of God. It’s urgent that people get into the House of God and hear this Bible-based music. If we can reach ’em, if they can be healed, delivered, saved, set, free, whatever it is that they need in the house of God, we’re gonna give it to ’em through music.”

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