On 28 November, Channel Media will launch Hymns Therapy, a new experience at Camp Elim Africa that reimagines a therapy room as an immersive Christian music event, with musicians taking on the role of patients and the audience entering the room as patients themselves.Ā
Every person who books a seat receives a patient number. That number becomes how they are identified throughout the experience, appearing on their appointment information and ultimately determining when they are called into the therapy room. Attendees arenāt just watching someone elseās therapy. Theyāre on the record as patients themselves.Ā
At the centre of it is Kingsley Ampoful, a vocal coach and musician taking on the role of therapist. Drawing on his background as a former student counsellor, Kingsley guides each patient through a series of questions and conversations.Ā
The songs are hymns, familiar words many Christians have sung for years, but here they arrive differently. Each singer has written a personal verse into their chosen hymn, drawn from their own grief, struggles and the ways that hymn has met them in a difficult season. Featured patients bringing their stories to the room include Julia Asante-Mensah, Laud Evans, Fiā, and Kyei Mensah.Ā
It becomes a hymn carrying someoneās story.Ā And as patients listen to one another, the hope is that someone elseās story becomes recognisable as their own, that moment of āwait, thatās meā sitting at the heart of Hymns Therapy.Ā
Why Channel Media Built the RoomĀ
Hymns Therapy came from a recognition that Christians are often very good at talking about the joy that comes after the struggle, but not always about what happens while theyāre in it. Channel Media wanted to create a room where people could acknowledge their hurt without feeling that doing so makes their faith any less real.Ā
The experience responds to a tension many feel within Christian communities: the expectation to live in the joy of the Lord while privately carrying grief, disappointment, fear, or a lack of joy that doesnāt resolve on schedule.Ā
Kingsley knows that tension personally. Having lived with chronic illness himself, he understands something of what it means to keep believing while waiting for an answer.Ā
āWe donāt really talk about how draining it can get to keep going, to keep believing, to keep praying,ā he says. āSome of us canāt wait for Jesus to come back, not because weāreĀ excited, but because weāre tired. Hymns Therapy is a room to be honest about that, and sometimes a hymn can say what a conversation canāt.āĀ
Hymns are simply songs that have been through something. Theyāve carried people through grief, uncertainty, suffering, hope and joy for generations. At Hymns Therapy, those songs become containers for new stories, letting present-day grief and faith sit alongside words that have already endured for generations.Ā
By the end, Channel Media hopes participants leave not with every question answered, but with the sense that they are not alone in the waiting and that the space between prayer and answer is part of faith, too.Ā
A room where you donāt have to pretend youāre okay.Ā
