UMC church choir sings Backstreet Boys during worship service: 'Pretty awesome throwback jam'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, October 14, 2026

A progressive United Methodist church in Arkansas drew attention on social media for a viral clip of their choir performing a choral arrangement of the Backstreet Boys' 1999 song "I Want It That Way" during a worship service last Sunday.

The Rev. Jennie Williams, who serves as senior pastor of Central United Methodist Church (CUMC) in Fayetteville, suggested to The Christian Post that her church's musical choice was following Jesus Christ's example of being relatable.

????You are my fire. The one desire. Believe when I say. I want it that way???? The choir at Central United Methodist Church Fayetteville sings Backstreets Boy's “I Want It That Way” for their Sunday worship service, because why not? https://t.co/0uWOdzRvbN

— Protestia (@Protestia) October 14, 2026

The church rolled out its performance of the boy band's pop hit last Sunday as part of a sermon series on generational distinctions, according to the Rev. Virginia Brown, who is listed on the church's website as its Wesley director and college pastor.

"As we continue our 'generations series' — and as a millennial myself, who we're talking about today — I am especially excited about this next part of our service," Brown told the congregation, according to a YouTube video of the Oct. 11 service.

"Our choir is about to bring a pretty awesome throwback jam; one that you've never heard in this style before. It's a little bit of a millennial nostalgia song, and I'm pretty sure you're going to recognize this one. It was released on April 12, 1999," she added.

After being posted Wednesday by the popular Christian X account Protestia, footage of the choir's performance prompted scorn from X users, some of whom accused the church of being "a whitewashed tomb" symptomatic of mainline Methodist decline.

Williams, a millennial who has pastored CUMC's intergenerational congregation since 2023, explained to CP that the song was "just a bit of nostalgia" in the context of "trying to find ways to garner empathy and collaboration [and] a little more understanding, instead of the generational divides that we see so often, especially in the church."

Regarding how she would respond to critics who might claim that singing the Backstreet Boys during a worship service is irreverent and inappropriate, Williams cited Jesus.

"The most important thing Jesus did in order to bring about salvation to the world is to become like us; to make the unknowable relatable. And then, in the end of all of that, He gave us the ultimate sacrifice, and the tomb was empty. And yet, none of that would have meant the same to us if He wasn't like us," she said.

"And so, we're just trying to be relatable to not only the people in our chairs, in our congregation, but also to the people around in the community [to whom] churches seem really irrelevant and unrelatable, so that they can come and meet Jesus, too," she added.

After the choir performed their rendition of The Backstreet Boys, the Rev. Chase Burns read from the story of Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32, which he later offered in his sermon as an illustration of millennials wrestling with faith questions amid their generation's disillusionment and disappointment.

The pastoral leadership of CUMC recently gathered for a 90-minute episode of "It's Not Complicated," their podcast offering reflections on different generations. Their latest episode, which aired Oct. 8, focused on the experiences and characteristics unique to millennials born between 1981 and 1996.

During the podcast, both Williams and Brown described their early faith journeys as riddled with anxiety, with Brown claiming her "first bit of anxiety as a human being" was when "an older kid [told] me that Jesus is going to come back, and you better have everything or whatever." She suggested she later learned to move away from her "very Evangelical private school" upbringing, noting she now believes the Earth is older than 5,000 years old and that no dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark.

Video of CUMC's choir performing the Backstreet Boys comes amid growing tensions among Methodists, who continue to fracture as more than 7,500 mostly conservative Methodist churches have departed the UMC over the mainline denomination's debate over LGBT issues. 

A South Carolina judge is expected to dismiss cases brought by the UMC's South Carolina Conference against approximately 70 congregations seeking to leave with their properties, the conference announced Tuesday.