Sunday at Calvary Baptist Church in Columbia beginning at 6 p.m. a combined choir will present a Christmas musical, “Tis the Season, Tis the Reason.”
The combined choir includes members of Calvary, New Hope and Improve Baptist churches. There are close to 60 people participating.
Reuben McDowell, worship leader at Calvary Baptist Church, said every couple of years they try to do a combined choir musical. There have been times when it has been up to 10 churches involved.
“With more people involved you can do more things. You can do challenging and better stuff when you have more voices,” he said.
Also by doing a combined choir is allows coverage for all areas. Smaller choirs, he said, are great but when you have more voices, it fills in the gaps in any choir. McDowell also said when the choirs are larger, singers are not as apprehensive about singing out loud. Many singers are afraid they will be heard over everyone so they tend not to sing out he said.
“It has been a lot of fun. There are some great people at these churches,” he said.
McDowell added, “You want your people to have a good experience so they will come back.”
The musical was a collaborative effort by McDowell, Chris Turnage, Kyle Smith and Eric Lucas. It involves not only singing but also drama with Kent Lucas and Jordan Whittington and also different types of lighting. McDowell said they wanted to branch out with more than just narration and singing.
McDowell said, “I think we are sounding great,” referring to the combined choir. The program Sunday night is free of charge.
