Choirs

• Cherub Choir – four & five-year-olds

• Carol Choir – Kindergarten - 1st grade

• Chapel Choir – 2nd - 4th grade

• Covenant Choir – 5th - 8th grade

We hold weekly rehearsals on Wednesday evenings starting mid-September and running through late April, taking off for Thanksgiving, Winter Break, Spring Break, and Holy Week. Cherub and Carol Choirs rehearse for 30 minutes each. Chapel Choir rehearses for 45 minutes (except in the weeks preceding a concert, when rehearsal is extended to 1 hour. Covenant Choir rehearses for 1 hour.)

Cherub Choir’s commitment is limited to Wednesdays. Carol Choir participates in Sunday morning worship twice a semester, including our Family Christmas Eve Service. Chapel Choir and Covenant Choir participate in worship about twice a semester, perform in our annual Christmas Concert, and lead worship for our Family Christmas Eve Service. There is also sometimes a spring concert or event in which one or both choirs are invited to participate.

We do ask that you miss no more than three rehearsals per semester. Participation in worship or a concert depends on consistent weekly attendance and attendance at the dress rehearsal: the final rehearsal before we participate in worship or perform in a concert. If you have extenuating circumstances, please notify Mrs. Haring.

Of course not! Choir is not just for those who find they are gifted singers. It is a place to learn to sing and worship our great God! There are no prerequisite skills or experiences needed to join our choirs.

No, you do not have to be a member of PCPC to join our choirs. However, we ask that your family attend PCPC on the Sunday mornings your child sings in worship.

Please check our Midweek page to find other ways to get involved in our church on Wednesday nights. I highly encourage our choir families to register for our Midweek dinner, which runs from 5:30-7:00 p.m. Follow that link for information on menus and costs. It’s a wonderfully convenient way to feed your family on Wednesday evening, allowing further fellowship among our choir families!

As a covenant child of this church and an alumna of our dear Lynda Fray’s choirs, I could go on forever about why singing in a choir is a valuable endeavor. Choir teaches us to read music, sing well, participate meaningfully in worship, listen, and collaborate. Studies show that music-making has a myriad of benefits for child development and for our physical and emotional health. In my college career and young adulthood, choir opened the doors to incredible experiences, including winning awards at international competitions, recording CDs, performing in 1000-year-old cathedrals, singing with people from all over the world, and making wonderful friendships. When I joined the PCPC Chapel Choir in 1999, I entered a life full of music. Could joining the choir open these kinds of doors for your children? Absolutely. But music will also be there for your children when doors are shut upon them.

During his imprisonment in World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer found great solace in music. In 1944, he wrote to a dear friend, “It has been a year now since I have heard a hymn sung. But it is strange how the music that we hear inwardly can almost surpass…what we hear physically.” A few months later, he wrote to his infant godson, “Music…will help to dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibility, and in times of care and sorrow will keep an underlying [note] of joy alive in you.” In other words, as Lynda Fray would put it, music is able to “plant the word of God deep into hearts.” There are numerous anthems and hymns that we sang in our children’s choirs 20 years ago that I still know from memory. Many Alzheimer’s patients who have forgotten their loved ones’ names can still hear, sing, or play the music that they cherished during their lives. What inward music would you like your children to hear in 20, 40, or 80 years?

I first received the gospel through a hymn, and throughout my life, the Lord has consistently ministered to me through music. Our goal in the PCPC Children’s and Youth Choirs is to give our singers spiritual food that will nourish them in the present and sustain them for the years to come. We want to put a song in their hearts that will keep resonating throughout their lives, so that when they walk through valleys of care and sorrow, like Bonhoeffer, the Apostle Paul, and King David, their inward music would be a spring of the living water that will never run dry. – Katie Haring, Ministry Leader of Children’s and Youth Choirs

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” – Colossians 3:16-17

(Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, and Eberhard Bethge. Letters and Papers from Prison. S.C.M., 1967.)