Sam Gurwitt Photo
Pastor Darlene Hayes Daniley at the organ.
That’s why I praise You
I lift You up
And I magnify Your name …
There was no choir raising a joyful noise inside Victory Temple for the Sabbath. No band; just a drum and small Hammond organ. And yet … The rafters shook. The Lord’s name was magnified.
Victory Temple, a small Pentecostal church on Morse Street in southern Hamden, has not had a choir for years. On Sunday, Assistant Pastor Diane Daniley Langford led the service while Raquel Holloway played the drums and Pastor Darlene Hayes Daniley played a small electric organ.
Even without a choir, the sound of Langford and the 30-odd congregants who were there was more than enough to overpower the organ. Song filled the church throughout the service, sometimes at planned moments, sometimes swept in unannounced by the Holy Spirit.
Langford’s service alternated between song and sermon, the occasional spoken turn of phrase or bible verse giving rise to spontaneous music.
That was how the congregation had come to sing “I Love You.” When Langford asked the congregants to take out their bibles and read a verse, a woman volunteered: “I love you, Lord, my strength,” she read, quoting Psalm 18:1.
“I will love you, Lord,” echoed Langford.
“Will you love me when I put you down and talk about you?” she asked. “Will you love me when I’m down and dry?”
Diane Langford.
“Nobody can ever love me like [the Lord] can love me!” she continued.
At that point, she burst into song, and the congregation quickly joined her.
I love You, I love You
I love You Lord today
Because You cared for me
In such a special way
That’s why I praise you
I lift you up
And I magnify Your name
That’s why my heart is filled with praise.
Langford said that she plans her sermon ahead of time, but when she delivers it, she sometimes just feels the spirit to sing.
“You know, I believe it’s being directed or touched by the holy spirit, and the holy spirit kind of takes over,” she said. “He takes control. We are a vessel or a vehicle or a body that he can use. We pray for him to come in and take over the service. We sing a couple of notes, and then the congregation will come in and join along,” she said.
Langford leads the Sunday service at Victory Temple on the third Sunday of every month. She has been involved with the church since her father, John Daniley, helped found it in 1988. When he passed away in 1995, his wife, Darlene Hayes Daniley, became the pastor.
Most Pentecostal churches have choirs, Langford noted. When her father was pastor, Victory Temple had a choir. After he died, however, some congregants left, while some went and founded another church elsewhere, and the choir disbanded. Langford said the church is trying to form a choir again.
But for now, at least based on Sunday’s service, the congregation has stepped in and served as a choir in full.
“It Comes With Prayer”
Watching the service was like watching an hour-and-a-half-long continuous poem, sometimes sung, sometimes spoken, always punctuated not with pauses but with peaks of emotion and seamless transitions.
At one point, members of the congregation came to the front and stood in a line next to one another facing forward, arms stretched out to their sides, while Langford came around and touched each one, preaching all the while.
Near the end of the service, Langford, half singing, half speaking, invited congregants in sections to come up and place donations into three golden bowls tended by Deacon Sylvia McNeal.
Langford’s invitation began in spoken prose and quickly melted into music as she and the congregation sang “Come and stroll down blessing boulevard.”
Praying, Daniley reflected later, is not just about singing. It’s about the relationship that you have with God. But “the relationship that you have with Him enhances the singing, the praises. It comes with reading the word of God. It comes with prayer.”
“Keep Looking At The Promises Of God”
Sylvia McNeal accepts donations.
On Sunday, Langford delivered a sermon inspired by a passage in Chapter 13 of the book of Numbers. The Lord commands Moses to send 12 spies into the land of Canaan, which God has promised to the Israelites, to see if they can take it. Ten of the spies report that the land is inhabited by giants and is unsafe. Joshua and Caleb have faith; they report that since the Lord has promised the land, it can be taken.
“All we have to do is keep looking at the promises of God,” Langford told the congregation. “No one will stop you from doing what he’s telling us to do.”
“A lot of time we don’t get the things that God has offered us because we’re looking at the things that suppress us or keep us down,” Langford reflected later. “Sometimes we don’t remember the goodness of the Lord because there’s so much going on in the world today.”
Langford runs the outreach ministry for the church. She works with the formerly incarcerated and helps them navigate challenges in their lives using faith. She called it a “deliverance ministry.” In addition to helping them through spiritual growth, she also helps them find housing and other care that they need. She teaches bible classes at a halfway house, and invites the inhabitants to services every week. Some of them showed up for the service on Sunday.
Langford said she was inspired to do outreach work because of the role that God has played in her life.
“Because I had issues in my life that the Lord delivered me from, I try to reach out to the people that are struggling with the same things that I’ve been delivered from,” she said. “I know for me, God did it. He literally just made me anew, and so for that purpose, I go into the places where people are struggling to help them know that He could do it for them too.”
Daniley said that the church helps people by trying to show them a “better way.”
“We meet them right where they are — that’s in life, I mean — and coach them through whatever they’re going through to help them experience a new life,” she explained.
Victory Temple holds worship services on Sundays, prayer and bible study Wednesday evenings, and evangelist services on Fridays. Next Sunday’s service is scheduled to be led by the congregation’s men, in honor of annual men’s day.
