By – TIM DILLINGER – October 4, 2025

In 1978, the Gospel Music Association began actively pursuing the development of a museum to accommodate its Gospel Music Hall of Fame. The original site was to be on Music Square East, near the Country Music Hall of Fame. Fundraising efforts were underway, but the project somehow did not come to fruition.

Until now.

Yesterday, the Museum of Christian and Gospel Music opened in Nashville, Tennessee. It beautifully tells the complex story of the evolution of the multiple streams of music that share a common connection to the Christian faith.

With the aid of thousands of physical and digital artifacts, the museum celebrates the accomplishments of early pioneers, including Virgil Stamps, J.R. Baxter, Thomas Dorsey, and Sallie Martin, as well as current artists like Jekalyn Carr, Forrest Frank, and Lauren Daigle.

I was honored to be part of the team of writers who contributed biographies of the inductees from the last fifty years to the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. There is an interactive display in the Hall of Fame area that allows visitors to scroll through each inductee, view photographs, and read the biographies. I was able to write the stories of almost 40 artists, including Albertina Walker, Dottie Rambo, Andraé Crouch, the 2nd Chapter of Acts, Dr. Bobby Jones, Larry Norman, Walter and Edwin Hawkins, and my favorite hymnwriter, Charles Tindley.

The museum offers a variety of membership packages and is open Monday through Saturday. Its store features mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, and other typical merchandise—but also boasts a specially curated collection of used vinyl.

If you live in Nashville, I encourage you to support this important institution. For those outside of Nashville who love music, a trip to our city to visit the multiplicity of high-quality music museums (the National Museum of African American Music, the Jefferson Street Sound Museum, and the Country Music Hall of Fame), all in proximity to each other, is highly recommended!

Also…

Thank you to my community in Nashville for coming to last week’s Testimony Service to celebrate my 50th birthday. We sang so many of the songs that I grew up singing—like Morgan Babb’s “Pray for Me,” a litany of Andraé Crouch songs (“Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus,” “Through It All,” “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power”), congregational songs that have simply survived through the years…it was a total joy. Who knows. We might reprise this event next year….

Original article – https://godsmusicismylife.substack.com/p/the-museum-of-christian-and-gospel