Pittsburgh area churches band together to provide hopeful message at Easter during pandemic

About 30 Pittsburgh-area Christian churches came together to create a positive Easter message during the coronavirus pandemic.

They formed a virtual choir and members of the churches sang the recently released song “The Blessing” by Cody Carnes, Kari Jobe, and Elevation Worship, which was written from Bible verses. The voices were combined into a video that ends with the words, “May His favor be upon you in this season.”

“It’s kind of the Pittsburgh Strong theme,” said Alan Hannah, assistant lead pastor at Allegheny Center Alliance Church in East Allegheny. “Pittsburgh is we endure and when times are hard we look to each other. There are so many people who have lost jobs and small businesses that are suffering.

“We just wanted to be, as church leaders and as churches, we’re different and we’re unique and we pray this blessing over the city. We truly believe God is going to bring us together and He’s going to get us through it.”

Hannah and Jason Howard, lead pastor at Amplify Church in Pittsburgh, came up with the idea.

Together they contacted churches to see who was interested in the project. Howard said he was overwhelmed by the response they received.

Once individual churches sent in their videos, Howard’s team edited them together.

The project took about two weeks to finish, Hannah said, noting that the final product was ready early Friday morning. The goal was to release it at the end of Easter services, which were streamed online to keep with social distancing orders.

But excitement over the video caused it to be leaked two days early. By Easter, however, the video had more than 97,000 views on YouTube and over 300 comments.

“The unity really speaks to people where they’re at and whether you have faith or not, when you hear the song and the lyrics, people are like, ‘I receive that blessing on my family and on my home,’” Hannah said.

The aim is to give people hope and foster their faith in God, Hannah said.

“(God) hasn’t abandoned us. He can bring hope, He can bring joy through the most uncertain of times,” Hannah said.