As the SGMG enters its third decade of activity, it is truly an honor to be selected once again to serve as Guild president. Judy Nelon did a fantastic job during her two years, leaving the Guild in its most positive financial position ever. Now the challenge will be to utilize those funds in the wisest way possible and invest in those projects that will best fulfill our chartered purposes.

The SGMG is an organization of industry professionals who have come together in order to pool their resources and work together to expand the economic base of the current industry. We have done that in the past through educating aspiring professionals through a number of educational seminars as well as facilitating and enabling current industry professionals to better accomplish their goals through networking and investing in key events and projects that are designed to have an expansive effect on the entire industry.

I think the best way to expand our economic base over the next term is to focus on television and the church. It is my intention to focus the Guild’s efforts on these two areas and impact them in such a way that everybody involved in Southern Gospel Music can benefit from our efforts.

In regards to television, the Harmony Honors is an important component of our efforts. The Harmony Honors was designed to have an objective set of criteria establish a list of eligible nominees whereby industry professionals and experts could determine and recognize achievement and excellence in a number of categories. The awards program gives us the opportunity to provide interested networks and television outlets with a program that is very entertaining and representative of our industry’s best and most accomplished. This year, we have a commitment from the Daystar Television Network to air a 60 minute, post edited version of the Harmony Honors. We are thrilled with this partnership with Daystar and look forward to the impact of having our industry’s best seen on their network which goes into multiple millions of homes both in the U.S. and throughout the world. I hope to establish a new television committee within the Guild structure in order to maximize all such opportunities and explore new ways to expand our footprint on television nation wide.

With over 80 million evangelicals regularly going to church on Sunday morning, I believe it is absolutely essential that Southern Gospel Music become known as the music for the church. With our clear, straight-forward and overt presentation of the Gospel and Biblical truths, I believe our music is perfect to be a regular component of church music. It is my desire to establish a Church Music committee within the Guild structure to explore ways we can promote our music to church music leaders and ministers of music and convince them that Southern Gospel needs to be a regular and frequent part of their Sunday morning music. This committee would make suggestions on showcases we could sponsor and coordinate at ministers of music conferences as well as promotional materials we could prepare and send to these key people. I believe this effort is important enough to devote substantial budget and effort toward accomplishing, and I think the impact on our industry could be enormous.

These are the areas we will be pursuing in the immediate future. If you derive any portion of your income through your involvement in Southern Gospel Music, and you would like to be a part of these initiatives, please go to the membership section of this site and consider becoming a member. We would love to have your support and your involvement. The more key people we can have involved in these efforts, the better equipped we will be to accomplish them.

We hope to see you soon at a future Guild meeting.

Clarke Beasley
SGMG President