ROCKYVIEW'S MUSIC MINISTRIES

Rockyview Alliance Adult Choir

As a lover of good music, I was encouraged and thrilled with the caliber of music that we had at Rockyview Alliance Church.  We had some musical talent that some churches only dream about.  For a church the size of Rockyview, one year averaging 400 in the Sunday morning attendance, peaking a couple of times at 500, we were abundantly blessed.

The day came when we had three choirs.  There was an adult choir, led for a period of time by Ian Charter, who was a school teacher in Calgary.  Ian also led some of our congregational singing and together with Allen Powles, put together some wonderful and inspiring seasonal music nights.  Donna Frentz led a youth choir and Marla Craig led a children's choir, later giving leadership to the adult choir when Ian joined the music faculty at the Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta.  From there he was on the music faculty at Canadian Bible College, now Ambrose University in Calgary where he is associate professor of music.

A Spring Music Night with Ian Charter

In addition to the three choirs, we were blessed with two male quartets, ladies trios, mixed trios, a variety of duets and several soloists.  There were also some instrumentalists, in addition to pianists and organists.

I'll never forget the time one of our male quartets sang at a C&MA district function.  The district superintendent was seated behind me and leaning forward inquired as to how a church like Rockyview deserved such a quartet.  Those fellows had a southern gospel flavor to some of their songs and they didn't need to take a back seat to any of today's southern gospel singers.  They were tops.

Those who were involved in the music ministry seemed enthusiastic and enjoyed their ministry.  We usually had three special musical selections in the morning service and I requested no less than four selections in the evening service.  I was a firm believer in making the Sunday evening service as attractive as possible.  It was customary for people to go to church Sunday mornings.  To encourage them to come back Sunday evenings had to be appealing to them. As for music, we sometimes featured the Children's choir and the Youth choir in the evenings.  We had other music nights where we had a variety of numbers, in addition to the seasonal nights which I have already mentioned.

 Childrens Choir and Youth Choir combined

I should add here, seeing I have not mentioned it in any previous posts, that our communion service was always in the evening.  I jokingly used to say that it was the Lord's supper, not the Lord's breakfast.  The message was brief and some times an elder would give the message.  The bulk of the time at our communion services was spent in sharing.  A couple of us, usually two pastors, would have a microphone in hand and when someone indicated they wanted to speak, we would hurry over to them.  Now you need to know, this was before we had cordless microphones.  So each microphone had at least a good 20 to 30 feet of cord.   If someone gave a prayer request, we would immediately have someone pray for the request.  Many were just praise testimonies.  On average the communion Sunday evening was our best attended evening service, barring a music night or some other special.

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