A New ​“Voice” Lifts A Congregation

After winning the second season of NBC’s The Voice and touring for a decade with Alicia Keys, Jeremiah Jermaine Paul realized his true life — singing about ​“building your church from the ground up” from his own pulpit at Sunday worship services.

Paul was conducting services as pastor of Hamden Plains United Methodist Church.

The 43-year-old is settling in as the southern Hamden church’s new pastor, a post he assumed three months ago.

After ascending to the heights of commercial musical fame, Paul is pursuing what he called his ultimate life goal of serving as a pastor.

Of course, music still plays a central role.

Since Paul was ​“sent by God” (more directly, by his Methodist district superintendent) to town in July, Sunday services have looked, felt, and sounded different to loyal church-goers who turn out each weekends.

At 10 a.m. on Oct. 10, Pastor Paul, or ​“Pastor J,” as he’s better known, was running 10 minutes behind schedule. As people settled into the Hamden Plains pews, Paul was coaching 14-year-old Perjah Delgado on a new song arrangement, scanning keyboard scores with O’Jays alum (and new Hamden Plains keyboardist) Dunn Pearson, and tweaking sound equipment levels.

“Services are longer now,” noted Perjah and her younger sister, Reneejah, choir members and Sunday regulars who were baptized at Hamden Plains United Methodist Church as infants.

The pair said they don’t mind spending extra time each week at church now that services are also much more ​“engaging, accessible, and inspiring.”

Before Pastor J showed up, ​“you’d sit down, go by the bulletin, and then be done,” according to the teens. ​“It’s never been flowing.”

“This church has been around for 200-plus years,” Perjah said. She said it can be ​“intimidating” as a child to confront so much living history and try to understand ancient texts without modern contextualization.

By alternating conversational sermons with both contemporary and traditional song and music, Paul clarifies the emotional meaning of the moment and draws the past into the present.

“He’s so open and can relate. He’s great at hearing feedback,” the Delgados agreed. ​“We call him our ​‘bestie.’”

“Responsive worship is so huge,” Paul said of his work. He said his goal for the new job is not only to ​“reach a lot of folks spiritually,” but to encourage them to reach out in return, creating a reciprocal relationship in which a maximally ​“inclusive congregation is communing together.”

“Doesn’t it feel good to be in the house of the Lord?” Paul asked around 20 congregants on Sunday. ​“It’s getting cold outside,” he noticed.

Then he launched into song:

“I’ll never be more loved than I am right now,” he sang. ​“It doesn’t take a trophy to make You proud.”

Perjah came in: ​“Going through a storm, but I won’t go down. I hear Your voice, carried in the rhythm of the wind, to call me out.”

Paul let Perjah and her sister take the lead, then brought his son in on drums.

The three-part harmony preceded Paul’s lesson of the day, a meditation on the meaning of leadership.

Between songs, he referenced and riffed off the Parable of the Lost Sheep, discussing the relationship between shepherd and flock. ​“As a flock we come together, we unite. We do the work that Jesus has called us to do,” he said. ​“As a flock, our faith builds.

“The voice of Jesus Christ was something incredible, something phenomena A good sheep is attracted to the voice of the shepherd … and a good shepherd is always keeping the flock in mind … A good shepherd is being led, led by the importance of the life of the flock.”

“We’re all sheep, but we’re also shepherds,” Paul concluded. ​“We all come from different walks of life, we have different things that have happened to us … and we all teach one another. We’re all examples for one another.”

For Paul, the intersection of music and spirituality is about following one’s intuition to develop a voice that is strong, truthful, and in turn of service to a given community.

He recalled playing Marco Polo in the pool as a young boy. “If there was a girl I liked, I’d follow her around, follow her voice,” he said. That gut phenomenon of inexplicable attraction has long been a primary force in his life, voice being the most compelling tool with which to foster and follow that force.

Music and faith have always governed Paul’s life. He spent the first decade of his life in Spring Valley, N.Y., a village in Rockland County. During the ‘80s and late ‘90s, Paul said, the suburb in which he grew up, known as “The Hill,” was heavily impacted by the crack epidemic, given its proximity to New York City.

His father, a professional bassist, taught Paul and his nine siblings to sing and play various instruments. He also took his ten kids to a Pentecostal church four times a week. Paul said playing music and praying kept him busy and made him feel like he was a part of something bigger than himself. While he watched friends struggle with and die from addictions, he said, he felt protected by his strong sense of community.

When Paul was 14, a house fire prompted his family to relocate. They moved to Monroe, N.Y, to a whiter and wealthier neighborhood, and joined the Newburgh United Methodist Church. There, Paul said, he began to see spirituality as a celebration, which contrasted with the fear and “fire” associated with the Pentecostal preachings recalled from his early childhood.

Being the “new Black family in town” meant facing significant racial prejudice and emotional hardship. But, he added, that experience gave him a new sense of self-confidence and expanded his understanding of leadership and community: Through conversation and confrontation, he was able to understand and connect with even those who acted with the most intolerance towards him.

“There are people who called me the N-word freshman year that my children now call ‘uncle,’” he said.

Paul’s dream of becoming a pastor also took on more specificity: he wanted to become the leader of that church in Newburgh in order to create unity in a divided small town. He took on the role of worship leader while still a teenager.

At the same time, his music career was rapidly unfolding. At 14, he formed a four person R&B group named 1 Accord. The band was signed by famed producer Rodney Jerkins. During Paul’s freshman year at Utica College, he and his group landed a deal with Shaquille O’Neal’s record label, TWIsM.

At 20, he also married his wife, whom he met in school. That same year, they had their first child, then three more in each of the following years.

TWIsM ultimately dissipated. Shortly after dropping out of college to focus on music, Paul got a call from Jeff Robinson, who was Alicia Keys’ manager, asking him to try out for a spot as her backup vocalist.

He went to his pastor, Matthew Adams, and told him about the call.

“I don’t know where it might lead,” he said, but asked him to pray for his success. Turns out, Jeff Robinson was the father of the pastor’s daughter’s baby.

Paul got the job. For the first ten years of his kids’ life, he toured with Keys, earning a Grammy nomination and performing around the world with artists such as David Bowie and Mary J. Blige. (In the above video, Paul sings with Alicia Keys on the title song of her first album, Diary.)

As his kids got older, Paul knew he needed to be home more. He ended the tour ​“on a high note,” but his family took a financial hit in exchange for having the full family at home more often.

One day, Paul stumbled across his daughter Arealyah watching a new show called The Voice, in which ​“undiscovered talent” compete against each other on teams led by musical icons like Jennifer Hudson, Usher, and Shakira.

“You should audition, Dad!” she urged.

Paul followed his daughter’s guidance.

He made it onto the show, with Blake Shelton as his coach, and ended up spending another year away from his family

“I was an emotional wreck,” he said.

He passed his first televised audition while battling pneumonia after his home was flooded in Hurricane Irene. While he was in California, his mother was across the country going through open heart surgery.

While working directly to attain commercial popularity, Paul was also picking songs that communicated what he was going through, even as he declined to talk about it publicly on the show itself. He rose to the top of the competition on songs like ​“Living on a Prayer,” ​“I Believe I Can Fly,” and, his favorite, ​“Against All Odds.” (In the above video, Paul performs ​“Against All Odds” on the show. He said he still hasn’t watched the season.)

Winning the show did position Paul to meet what he calls the happy medium between struggling artists and Beyonce-level fame: He now makes a solid living playing wedding and special venue gigs and recording albums, while he is able to use the voice the way he really wants — to bring communities and audiences together through common faith. Above: Paul’s first single after winning The Voice, ​“I Believe In This Life.”

In 2018, he became a certified pastor. In 2020, he was appointed for the first time to a church, serving people in East Berlin and Southern Meriden. One year later, his district supervisor asked him to transfer to another community, in which he thought Paul’s ​“gifts and graces would be well received.” Hamden.

“It was hard to leave” Meriden, he said, ​“but part of the work is to follow” the direction of those who are deemed closer to God, he said. ​“I feel like it was the right choice.”

Over the past three months, Paul has started to see his new job in Hamden as the position his varied path has been leading him to all along. Hamden reminds him of Newburgh: He finds familiarity in the small-town sense of community, and recognizes similar issues of classism and segregation that he is working to address through church organizing.

Even the crumbling corners of the church walls remind him of the rough edges of that Newburgh church, which was ultimately closed down before he could return as pastor.

Paul is applying for grants to renovate Hamden Plains Methodist, in plans to improve one of the most significant spaces open to residents of the southern end of town. ​“We have so much room,” he said. He wants to fill it with youth services. H has spent the past few months working with local nonprofits and organizations to establish new partnerships and provide them with the ample resources he now governs.

A couple of weeks ago, Paul’s pianist had to leave work. Paul told his sister, who is also a pastor. She informed him that her old music minister, Dunn Pearson, was an arranger and keyboardist for the O’Jays and a producer of Broadway scores. He had recently relocated to Hamden.

“He lives in Hamden?” Paul exclaimed. ​“What are the chances? What are the odds?”

Last week, the pair performed for the first time together at Sunday service. The partnership affirmed what Paul already believed: ​“I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

“If I became a pastor when I was 23, I’d just be saying what I heard, what someone taught me,” Paul said. Instead, he spent years discovering, developing, and refining a voice that is ready to set a new tone for an entire town.

Looking back, Paul laughed at how ​“weird” his compilation of memories are upon recollection, like singing backup on the film soundtrack to Jamie Foxx’s film Booty Call.

“Experiences are what they are. It’s the light we project that matters,” he said.

At 11:30 on Sunday, Paul wrapped up group worship.

“You may be seated to enjoy the music or make your way home,” he told his audience.

No one moved as Pearson poured his soul into the piano keys. As listeners swayed and savored the song with eyes closed, it was clear that they were enjoying the music — and that they had already found a shared way home.