Sing a song
A special choir has been created to sing hymns and songs at the Falls Creek 100th anniversary celebration.
When Oklahoma’s Southern Baptists gather at Falls Creek to mark its centennial, many of them will celebrate by lifting their voices in song.
A special centennial choir has been created to sing several selections during the “Homecoming Service” part of the two-day Falls Creek 100th anniversary celebration on Labor Day weekend. The celebration will begin with a “Night of Praise” on Sept. 2, and the “Homecoming Service” will be on Sept. 3.
Randy Lind, worship and music ministries specialist for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said spiritual music has played a key role in the worship services at the Baptist camp and conference center near Davis since its early years so it was a natural to plan for a special choir to sing during the homecoming event.
Lind said the choir is multigenerational and made up of people from churches around the state. It will include 500 people at maximum. Some of the members sang in the Falls Creek choir as youths while others simply wanted to lend their voices for the momentous occasion.
He said the choir has held rehearsals in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Lawton.
Lind said the choir will sing several Falls Creek classics, including “three songs that are tied to Oklahoma and Falls Creek.”
He said this includes “Victory in Jesus,” which was written by Eugene Monroe Bartlett Sr., whose son, Gene Bartlett, served as Falls Creek music director from 1954 to 1979. Other songs that will make up the trio of Falls Creek classics include “Wherever He Leads, I’ll Go,” which Lind said was sung pretty regularly at the camp, and “Saved, Saved,” which Gene Bartlett and Bill Greene both often led.
Lind and Brian Hobbs, the Oklahoma Baptist convention’s communications director, said “Saved, Saved” is a song that Green sang every year that he was music director, from 19912004, and it was a signature song at the camp during the 1990s. Lind said the Oklahoma Baptist Symphony will perform with the choir and a special big timpani solo will be part of the “Saved, Saved” performance.
Two other musical components will be featured including a selection by Native Praise, an American Indian women’s ensemble that will perform to mark the Falls Creek centennial and the 70th anniversary of Indian Falls Creek. Lind said the Oklahoma Baptist Children’s Choir also will perform a selection.
Finally, the choir will sing an original song written by Lind, Phil Barfoot and Rebecca Peck for the centennial. Lind said the homecoming service will be the first time the song “Legacy of Faith,” a power ballad, will be performed. He said LifeWay Christian Resources is set to publish the song in September.