Lift up your voice and sing in a community gospel choir
Bessie Jackson of St. Frederick’s Baptist Church of Marble Falls speaks at Worship in the Park, a five-church community service held May 15 in Johnson Park. Jackson is helping to organize a community-wide gospel choir. All are invited to join. Photo courtesy of Trinity Episcopal Church
Join your voice to a newly forming choir slated to perform during a community worship and fundraiser for the Black History Museum being built by St. Frederick’s Baptist Church of Marble Falls. Choir rehearsals begin at 5 p.m. Saturday, June 4, for the Sept. 24 event in Johnson Park, 230 Avenue J in Marble Falls.
“We are going to come together as children of God and see what we can do,” said Bessie Jackson, a St. Frederick’s member and history museum organizer.
Pastors from several Highland Lakes congregations as well as gospel choirs from Hutto and Simmonsville will take part in the Sept. 24 event.
Jackson said the local gospel choir is seeking 30-40 people from all denominations across the community.
“We need a lot of voices to make it as angelic as it needs to be,” Jackson said. “And don’t worry if you think you can’t hit a note. We are going to sing. We are going to harmonize and be beautiful.”
The idea for the choir came about after a community-wide Worship in the Park on May 15, where the St. Frederick’s choir sang “What a Mighty God We Serve.”
“It went well, and people were asking, ‘Can we sing that again?” Jackson said.
She recalled that St. Frederick’s had a community choir some years ago.
“You know, pastors change and things change and we stopped doing that, but I think we can try to do this again,” she said. “This is a good time for it.”
When asked who can join the choir, Jackson turned to scripture.
“‘Whosoever will may come,’” she pulled from Revelation Chapter 22, Verse 17b.
Rehearsals will be held at St. Frederick’s Baptist Church, 301 Avenue N at Fourth Street, every other Saturday until August, when they will be weekly until the September performance.
“We’re going to get going and sing until it’s really good,” Jackson said. “This is going to be a huge multicultural event.
“We are going to have a gospel season of singing, ‘… the season of singing has come…,’” she continued, this time quoting Song of Songs 2:12.