Sean Lee has been a BlackPlanet member since 2007 and he is an ordained elder and music director for several conferences. Check out his profile here to learn more about him.

Here at Elev8 we were privileged to get our hands on a few photos that give a sneak peek at the Red Carpet and behind the scenes at the 2010 Stellar Music Awards.  Enjoy and Be Blessed Family!

Written by Sheeri Mitchell for Elev8.com. Follow Sheeri on Twitter! or visit her on Black Planet.

Stellar Music Awards To Air Sunday, February 28th At 8:oo PM (ET)

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MEDIA ADVISORY, Feb. 25 /Christian Newswire/ — The 25th Anniversary Stellar Awards — the premier Gospel event that recognizes and honors Gospel artists — will air Sunday, Feb. 28 at 8:00 p.m. ET on Gospel Music Channel (GMC) as the climax to GMC’s celebration of Black History Month.

Vickie Winans, Kirk Franklin and Donnie McClurkin will co-host this star-studded event. Legendary vocalists Tremaine Hawkins, Shirley Caesar and Dottie Peoples will appear on stage together, as will Donnie McClurkin, Marvin Sapp and Byron Cage. The show will also feature piano collaborations from Smokie Norful and Richard Smallwood, Hezekiah Walker with his Love Fellowship Choir and Ricky Dillard and New G with a Choir Collaboration.

To read more, click here

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Where are you from?
KP – Queens, New York.

Do you miss the city?
KP – Not terribly.  I miss the energy of the city.  I miss shopping.  I miss what I love most about New York.  It’s a great melting pot.

What was your childhood like?
KP – That’s a loaded question.  My childhood was rich spiritually.  And at times confusing because it was old school Pentecostal.  I had a lot of questions that were not being answered and could not be answered but I still asked them.  And when we were coming up children were supposed to be seen and not heard.  On the natural side it was challenging.  My parents split up when I was really young.  My mother was 22 years old raising three children alone in the ‘70’s.  My father died when I was nine years old.  My mother left my dad because he was a preacher in the church who left the church and backslid.

How did your dad backslide?
KP – There was alcoholism and drug abuse on my dad’s side of the family.  He was the only person in his family who was saved.  He had a real battle because he would go to church on Sunday and his entire family would stay home.  They didn’t do church.  He had an inner battle and it got to be too much for him.  He was a black man in the ‘70’s with a family to take care of and realized after the fact that he wasn’t really ready.  His dad died when he was really young and he had no male figures to really look up to.

What was the toughest time of your childhood?
KP – I remember being homeless and sleeping in my mother’s car when I was four years old.  I remember my mother would go to family members on my dad’s side and ask can my sisters and I stay with them.  Even if we could  sleep on the floor.  I remember them telling my mother there’s no room for us in the house and telling my mother she’ll be fine.  I remember my mother bundling us up in coats with tears in her eyes and taking us to sleep in the car.

How did that experience shape you as an adult?
KP – As an adult, I have to be honest and say that there’s not much that I’m afraid of.  But I work the way that I do because I have a bit of fear of homelessness.  I have to believe God to deliver me from that.  I have such a vivid memory of being homeless.  I remember I would not get my nails or hair done unless I had a show because I felt like it was money that did not need to be spent.  I’m talking about Kelly Price, “The Soul of a Woman” record.  I would have to give myself a reason to go to the mall and shop.  I don’t splurge shop.  I have too much in my closet to spend money on clothes.

How did you meet your husband?
KP – I met Jeffery when I was 13 years old at the state youth convention.  We were friends for years.  We would see each other during the conferences held throughout the years.  It was a different day.  When I saw him it was because we were in church somewhere.  He would come to wherever I was singing.  I always had a lot of guy friends and he was one of my really good guy friends.  It shifted when I turned 16 years old.  We talked to each other about things we couldn’t talk to other people about.  My family was homeless again when I was 16 years old and Jeffery’s mother was in the hospital with breast cancer.  Back then you had to have a physical address to be registered in school or the state would take you from your parents.  I had to keep it a secret.  Jeffery knew that mother and I were bouncing from house to house.

When did you know you were in love with Jeffery?
KP – I knew pretty quickly.  After being his friend for so long…my family bounced around for about five or six months with no place to live.  During that time his mother died from breast cancer.  Throughout her sickness and my homelessness we got closer and closer.

Tell me about getting pregnant at an early age.
KP – I look at my son and I do not regret my son.  I will never let some over religious, super pious, lying individual and I say LYING (all caps) make me feel guilty about my child.  I say that because it takes a lot of nerve for someone to act as if they’ve never sinned.  My grandfather is a COGIC bishop.  It was difficult.  I think I was more concerned about my grandparents being disappointed in me.  No one talked to me about sex.  My mother didn’t talk to me because no one talked to her about sex.  Much of what I learned I learned from school and television.

Did anyone in the church try to convince you to abort?
KP – No one tried to get me to abort.  But I was silenced and sat down.  It was desired that I get up and apologize before the congregation.  I have a girlfriend who’s father was her pastor and she got pregnant and she had to get up and apologize in front of the church.  I said absolutely not.  I sinned against God and not the church.  I bucked a lot of things growing up.  I got slapped in the mouth a lot.  If you couldn’t show me in the bible where I owed the church an apology then I wasn’t going along with it.  I owed God and my grandparents and my mother an apology.  I was involved in the music department.  I only did that because my grandfather said I had to.  As the preacher’s kid you did not have options.  But I had to sit down and not direct the choir any longer.

How did you get discovered as a singer?
KP – I had a dear friend name Darryl Douglas.  He was an incredible song writer and arranger.  He would use me to demo his songs.  One thing led to another.  There was another session singer who sang for Luther Vandross.  Her name is Cindy Mizelle.  When she was getting married, she asked Darryl to do all of the music for her wedding.  There were a lot of executives at her wedding.  At that time, George Michael came to New York to do an east coast tour.   He was looking for a great choir to back him up.  Cindy put in a call to Darryl who then called me and some others.  There were about 10 or 12 of us.  We showed up to Madison Square Garden and sang behind George Michael in January of 1992.  In February of 1992, Mariah Carey needed a choir for her Grammy performance and once again we got the call.  Long story short, Mariah was three hours late for rehearsal.  I just found out I was pregnant and I was sick as a dog.  We were on a break and I stayed around the rehearsal hall and started singing around the piano with my back to the door and Mariah Carey walked in and stood there and listened.  Someone told me Mariah was standing at the door listening and I shut up immediately and walked away from the piano.  I didn’t want anyone to believe that I was trying to be heard.  When the rehearsal was over I was preparing to leave, Mariah sent one of her background singers to me and he tried to get me to start singing again and I said no at first but then I started singing and she was hiding behind a pole listening.  Tommy Mottola arrived and heard me and said I’m going to make you a star.  I had no idea who he was at the time.  I looked at him and said “really” (dripping with sarcasm).  That’s how it all started.

How did church folks respond to you singing secular music?
KP – Are you kidding me?  According to them I was probably going to hell faster for singing secular music then for being pregnant.  That’s amazing to me.  My observation of the scripture that says having a form of godliness but denying it’s power…it came to life for me.  It’s been so clear that if you keep the form of godliness in public people really don’t care how ragedy your life is behind closed doors.  As long as you don’t do anything that brings them to shame.  I don’t have a problem doing what I do because I am the same Kelly in secular venues as I am in church pulpits.  I speak Jesus at my R&B concerts.

How have you been received by the Gospel music industry?
KP – It’s been a mixed bag.  Everyone at first was overjoyed.  Some of that joy turned to dismissal when people realized that I was not willing to make the announcement that they wanted me to make.  That announcement was for me to say that I was wrong for all of the years that I sang R&B and that I had been converted and that I would never sing R&B again.  I refused to make that statement because I didn’t backslide to sing R&B.  Doing  the gospel album that I did and touring with gospel artists opened my eyes to a lot more than I even cared to know about people who sing gospel music.  We need to be careful about what we’re allowing our young people to listen to.  I say that because I’ve been on the road with a lot of these people and just because the genre is gospel doesn’t mean that the music itself is.  Just because people call themselves gospel singers, that’s just a title and doesn’t mean they’re living a sanctified life.  Check my life.  Chile Please!

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BP Member, Wendy, is a gospel recording artist who has just released, ‘Jesus Our Provider.’ Check her out and find out where you can purchase her music from, on her page.

I was watching and enjoying Celebration Of Gospel last night on B.E.T.  I love live gospel sangin’!  The 10 year anniversary of Celebration Of Gospel did not lack some good sangin’.  I want to give a special shout out to two people I’ve worked with in the past who have made the show beyond phenomenal:  Tony McCuin (Director) and Joyce Coleman (Talent Producer).  Like I said the sangin’ was beyond “off the hook.”  I love gospel music.  I play it to feed my spirit and get my day going.  I grew up on it.  My mom used to sing in a small group back in the day.

I just have one little bitty problem with some of the artists….WHAT IN THE WORLD WERE THEY WEARING??????  Okay sorry for shouting, but I had to get that off of my chest.  Some have said that gospel artists push the envelope and are dressed way too secular.  Others have said that gospel artists need to catch up with the times and dress a little more “hip” (for lack of a better term).  What do you think?  I remember when I was growing up my mom would drag us to local gospel concerts and tent revivals all over town.  All of these incredible gospel groups would perform and I remember the women in particular would literally be clothed from head to toe.  Showing your knees was a no no!  The men always wore three piece suits.  Burgandy seemed to be the color of that era.

It’s all so different now.  I enjoyed Fantasia and her mom hollering…ur…singing together last night.  I really did.  But I just kept noticing how short both of their dresses were.  At one point ‘Tasia kicked her leg up and I thought the entire front row probably got a good look at all of her business.  I’m not saying that gospel artists should be covered like the women of the Taliban.  But I am asking the question:  Do you all believe gospel artists have gone too far?  Do you feel the artists have crossed over so much that the line between gospel and secular is completely blurred?  I know that you all will be honest as you always are.

For some of the artists who did cover up, some of them were down right comical.  I may get into trouble for this but was CeCe Winans wearing a somewhat glamorous “snuggie”?  Can someone please explain Donald Lawrence’s suit to me?  Like was he trying to portray The Garden of Eden with that suit?  I love that brother’s ministering music.  But that suit was a hot mess.  And who is the worship leader for City Of Refuge choir?  Those pants were so tight I could see his future children. I’m just sayin’.

I know that Dr. Bobby Jones was making a statement with his “beggar’s” costume before he changed into his traditional glittery one, but who was the Jetson singing with him?  Did we get invaded with gospel aliens and their spaceship landed at Celebration Of Gospel?    Kelly Price and Ledisi blew me away with their rendition of  “How Great Thou Art”…but I will be lying if I say I wasn’t distracted by Ledisi’s hair.  It looked like “ground beef,” according to one of my Facebook friends.

On a serious note, the tribute to Steve Harvey was absolutely awesome.  Marvin Sapp wore me out with “He Saw The Best In Me”.  Folks have a lot to say about Steve Harvey.  I appreciate that the brother isn’t afraid to cry and be transparent with his struggles.  If only more of us were that honest.  Chile Please!

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Somebody Should Be A Friend And Tell You, You Can’t Sang

I used to love to ride my bike when I was a kid. It was something I would do nearly everyday. My favorite thing to do — find the biggest hills my neighborhood and race down them with my friends. The only catch was that at a certain point we would stop pedaling and just coast. Man, we would fly. We would go faster and faster until we reached our top speed at the bottom of the hill. We’d maintain momentum going up the hill from which we just came down, but we could never, as hard as we tried, coast all the way to the top. There would always come a point at which we would have to pedal and push forward to make it up the hill. Either that or we’d turn around and roll back down the hill only to come to an eventual stop at the lowest point.

Too many Christians are coasting. They’re not pedaling, pushing ahead with intentionality. Instead, they’re content with letting yesterday’s successes sustain today’s movement. Coasting in nothing more than mediocrity covered with the guise of forward motion.

And that’s a problem. The verbs in the Bible are not passive. They require action. Press. Go. Change. Work. Serve. Run. You can’t do those things and be coasting at the same time. Coasting requires no work. The work that God calls us to do requires work. Constant work. Continual work. Not coasting. You can’t do anything great for God by resting on the energy of yesterday.

The problem with coasting is this: You can coast for awhile. You can get comfortable coasting because you may pick up speed and gain momentum, and you think you’re good. You think you’re doing something. But in reality, you haven’t done anything in a long time. Then, when an uphill comes along, when a trial comes, when you’re confronted with a test, your coasting, your built up momentum will only take you so far. Eventually you’ll stop. And then you start to roll backwards, just as me and my bike would.

How do you know if you’re coasting? Chances are, if you have to ask, then you are. But how do we stop coasting? Start pedaling!

[For more from Stuart McDonald, check out his personal blog and follow him on Twitter]

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Overcoming abuse of any kind, whether you are male or female, old or young, can be a struggle. Abuse has no ethnic preference and the ramifications thereof affects both the saved and unsaved, but when do we learn to forgive?

I know a woman – beautiful lady, and her three adult children. Each of them endured abuse at some level throughout their childhood while in their mother’s care. During her second marriage, the daughter – from preschool to second grade, was molested on almost a daily basis and both she and her little brother were given pot by their stepfather. Even worse, the youngest son, only a toddler and hardly out of pampers was brutally beaten on more than one occasion, but just enough so that there were no broken bones. Sadly, this woman was being beaten by her husband as well. Her eldest, the daughter, witnessed at the age of seven, a shotgun being held to her mothers neck, while her husband threatened to pull the trigger. The third marriage only added insult to injury, as Her daughter continued to be molested everyday and raped on more than one occasion by the pedophile she called her husband.

I’ve known this woman and her story for quite some time now. Over the years she and her daughter have gone through many trials as a result of the abuse, moreover, when her daughter told her the truth, even though she saw proof, she denied it, and stayed in the marriage.

For many years their relationship suffered as a result, but today her daughter is saved, has a relationship with Christ, is a “for real” Christian- who not only professes Him in name, but deed. This woman’s daughter has forgiven her. Likewise, so have her sons. However, the purpose of this story is to talk about forgiving yourself.

My friend is older than me, but I do have a son. For that reason, I have finally come to recognize why it has been so hard for her to forgive her self. Over the years, I’ve tried to make her see how blessed she is that all of her children love her, none of them are in jail or a mental institution, and all are very upwardly mobile young men and woman, who would be at her side at a moments notice were anything to happen to her. I’ve witness them shower her with gifts and have had conversations with each of them about the endless love they all have for her.

Unfortunately, all the love her children have for her isn’t enough to make the pain and torment of the past go away. In fact, it only compounds the guilt she feels. You see, every time she opens a gift from one of her children, she thinks, “Wow, this is beautiful. I don’t deserve this because…” Every time her children come home to visit, she thinks, “Wow, my children love me, I don’t deserve this.” As a result, Satan takes every opportunity to remind her of what “she let happen” and how “she doesn’t deserve love” and how “she has no right to forgive her self”. So instead of being able to truly share happiness with her whole, healed, and delivered daughter and sons that love her dearly, the guilt and shame ensues. My friend not only allows the past to haunt her, but whenever there’s a problem with any of her grown children in the present, she blames her self.

If I simply wanted to discuss abuse and overcoming it, I could go on forever. We have all experienced some form of abuse or another, but this article is for those who simply can’t forgive themselves for the unthinkable.

Millions of people reading this would say to hell with that lady, she and both those men belong under the jail. But they are not, the mistakes have been made and while I believe there is still counseling needed in some areas, the kids are doing great. What concerns me is their mother. Her daughter made a comment a while ago, that while her mother wasn’t the best, the one thing she gave her was a work ethic. Likewise, her brothers agreed. Apparently, everything that happened to them, happened while their mother was working tooth and nail, trying to take care of them, as well as the men she married. That statement spoke volumes to me about this woman and how low her self-esteem had to be in order to allow something of this magnitude to happen not only in the life of her children, but her own.

While I don’t have all the answers to this dilemma, I do know that unforgiveness keeps you bound. This woman has endured so much. She was pregnant and married for the first time at fifteen years old; suffered abuse at the hands of men; worked her fingers to the bone to take care of her kids; and almost lost her daughter to suicide. Finally, she’s over fifty, married to a wonderful man who loves her for the first time, someone her children respects and adores; has several grand kids, and three kids that love her dearly.

This lady’s ex-husbands left her wounded long ago, yet she still hasn’t healed because she has continued to keep her wounds covered by anger, bitterness and most of all, unforgiveness toward her self.

Without forgiveness, you will not see God (Mathew 6:15, Mark 11:25&26). You can claim Him all day long, but you will not enter the gates of heaven. The day Jesus Christ died for us, every sin we committed was covered under His blood and the day you confess Him as Lord and savior of your life, all is forgiven because salvation has come (Romans 10:9&10). It’s because of His blood, and only by His blood that we have a right to come before God in prayer blameless. It’s because of His blood that those of us who know, serve and love him get into heaven (Hebrews 10:10). God loves us (1John 4:9). He is not sitting in heaven counting our sins because He knew from the foundation of the world, what mistakes we would make, whether or not our hearts are truly sorrowful for what we’ve done. And more importantly, He searches the inward parts of man, that which no one else sees. He is not a man. He doesn’t see us as we see ourselves, but through the blood of Jesus. Neither does God condemn, but He sent His spirit to bring conviction so that we might have a heart to change based on His love for us.

Forgiveness is not easy, but we have to remember, that in and of ourselves we can do nothing, but in Him we can do all things (Philippians 4:13)! God knows how much you’re hurting and sees how deep this wound is. Accept His forgiveness. Don’t place Him on your level. His ways are higher than our ways, thoughts higher than our thoughts. Give it to Him and allow Him to wash you, cleanse you and make you whole. And let me be the one to say, YOU DESERVE IT! YOU DO DESERVE IT! YOU’VE BEEN MADE RIGHTEOUS BY JESUS, THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN TO TAKE AWAY THE SINS OF THE WORLD!

“…Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven (Luke 6:37).”

God Bless!

Talk to Lisa on Twitter.

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Check out BlackPlanet Member, JJordan. He is a breath of fresh air when it comes to music, so check his debut video which is posted on his BP page. Go to his page and show him some BlackPlanet love!

I grew up in Louisiana and came from a long line of good cooks.  By the time I was twelve years old I could just about prepare a full course meal.  At nineteen I was fully convinced that my culinary skills were unparalleled, but something happened.

One Friday evening I decided to bake some spaghetti for my boyfriend and a few guests.  When he got home he was pretty excited but asked what else was on the menu.  Slightly perplexed by his question, I asked why he thought something other than spaghetti was on the menu and he pointed to the large pot of rice on the stove… “Baby, you have a pot of rice on the stove, I’m just wondering what’s gonna go with it.”  Although a bit shocked and irritated that he would question my rice, I managed to give an explanation… “Well, obviously the spaghetti goes on top of the rice.”  Considering my ex was a chef, that conversation didn’t go very well.

After being enlightened I decided to give my grandmother a call to ask why she always cooked rice with our spaghetti.  In her own words…”Chile cuz it was so many of yawl.  I cook rice with every thang.”  And it was true.  She cooked rice with everything and so did I along with all the rest of my relatives.

Lesson:  Tradition, while in this particular instance wasn’t very harmful, can indeed be.  It showed me how I was blindly practicing something without having any idea why.   I witnessed my grandmother cooking spaghetti for years and finally someone questioned my technique.

What traditions have you been practicing without explanation that could be holding you back?  Still eating pork rinds and washing them down with soda every day?  Screaming and yelling obscenities at your kids because that’s all you know to do?  Attending the same church you always have because big mama and aunt Lulu still cook Sunday dinner for Pastor Polyester, yet you still live a substandard life and have yet to experience the goodness of the Lord?

In the end, I still don’t mind a little rice with my spaghetti, but while it’s okay, it’s certainly not the best.  This scenario reminds me of 1 Corinthians 10:23 (Amp) which says all things are permissible and we are free to do anything we please, but not all things are helpful or profitable and all things are legitimate, but not all things are constructive. I hope I’m not alone in coming to this realization.

While there are some wonderful traditions to uphold and many have taught us invaluable lessons like cooking and entertaining; family dinners at the table; and praying together to name a few; let’s not forget to hold on to what brings us joy and peace; and let go of anything that weights us down.

God Bless,

Follow Lisa on Twitter

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