Easter Musical Ministry
The Easter Musical Ministy is an outreach opportunity to share the most important and powerful story, the life of Jesus Christ. This church wide ministry enables each of us at Cambria to serve the Lord and teaches or reminds us how to use our gifts to witness to others by sharing our faith and love for our Lord. Through drama, music, and song our Lord may come to life for our audience and by giving public performances we enable Christians and those that are still in need of a Savior to hear the message and to be encouraged, uplifted, and prayerfully to make the Lord the center of their life. Our greates hope and prayer is that Jesus Christ may become their personal Savior.
The adult choir is the anchor to the cast and choir of the annual Easter Musical ministry and special music musicians become the prodimant solo musical instruments in telling the gospel story and many times carry the leading roles. An additional 40 to 50 adults will join these musicians in the cast, choir, or crew and take their place on stage. The children are also an important part as their innocent reactions to the scenes and their sweet love as they see Jesus portaryed by Jeremy Harrington, our youth director these past few years, helps the gospel story come alive for our live audiences.
The set crew takes two weeks prior to the Technical Sunday (Palm Sunday) to build the set inside our sanctuary. Except for one special effect, the set is completely construted away from the walls and ceiling and is visable from all seats as there are no curtains like in a contemporay theatrical setting.
The seamstresses and their crew create each unique costume for each character and person individually each year which means their machines are humming as many months as we are rehearsing. Costumes include head gear, soldiers wear, pilates long winding sash, and Christ’s ascension garment that glows from within. Once they have these creations, the makeup crew begins the transformation during the week of dress rehearsals from Palm Sunday to our first production on that Thursday evening. They add hair pieces, mustaches, beards, wigs, make-up, and even jewels to make the cast transform to biblical times. All this is done in only these few days, and with a lot prepreation and prayer.
When the musical is actually in production, the audience can see the almost 80 adults and children on stage each year. What is not as obvious, is the other 25 – 35 directors, technicians, crew, and workers that are making what is happening on stage…well happen…and at the right time. This starts with the kitchen staff that feeds us, as so many of can come straight from work and school that production week and usually bring our entire family as almost always they all have a role in the musical. Then we come to the ushers who great the audience and sometimes the only people who have the opportunity to speak to our guests who look “normal” and not in costume or busy rushing to create the producation. Then we come to the technical crew and stage crew who are checking and re checking each detail because just because it worked last night doesn’t mean it is ready for the next production and everything must be reset. Not because we want a perfect “show”, this is not our goal, our goal is do our best for the Lod as always, and most importanly, to not allow any “distractions” to hinder you, the audience, from hearing HIS story. This is our goal and why we work so hard to make each performance special….because it is…because the next one is for you.
We will be presenting it 15th annual production of the Easter Musical Ministry this comming April. Past performances have included “Almighty” 2010, “His Love” 2009, “One Choice” 2008, “Follow Him” 2007, “The Promise” 2005.
For DVD recordings of these musical services and special programs, go to the DVD post on this web site.