Service and mass choir event hopes to bring people together

Choir member Robin Twiggs and Lynwood Baptist Church worship pastor Brian Crisman have created a way for people of any denomination, race, gender or age to worship their God as one choir.

Lynwood Baptist Church will host the Community Worship Service and Mass Choir at 6 p.m. Sunday. Twiggs contacted Crisman with the concept of a community worship service, and Crisman said he was interested.

"We actually did something fairly similar to this last year for the Pink Up Cape celebration at Saint Francis, and put together a smaller mass choir for that event and just loved it," Crisman said. "I've just tried hard to get churches together for a long time and across denominational lines and ethnic lines and just get together and worship, so that was kind of the first step ..."

In addition to the Lynwood choir, choir members from Second Missionary Baptist, New Bethel Missionary Baptist, Centenary United Methodist and Westminster Presbyterian will participate.

Twiggs said she wanted people from any church, in a choir or not in a choir, to be included. She said the choirs have rehearsed only this month so they would not interfere with Easter worship preparations. Twiggs expects a large turnout at the last rehearsal on Saturday. Each rehearsal draws 40 to 50 people, she said.

Four churches will lead a 10- to 15-minute segment of worship, followed by all the participants coming together at the end as one mass choir.

"Every church has their own thing, and they do their own different thing, but this is kind of a way for everybody to connect and experience and see how different churches praise and worship," Twiggs said.

Twiggs and Crisman emphasized they believe this event will be important to the local churches and the local churches are important to the community.

"I think it's important for the church, for one thing, to kind of tear down these ethnic walls and the division that we have on Sundays, and just get together and worship together," Crisman said. "Every race, color, denomination just get together and worship, because we all serve the same God. I think it's important for a community to see that unity; that the body of Christ is one, and we get together and serve the same God and we can worship and serve together."

This is the first installment of an event Twiggs and Crisman hope to make at least an annual occurrence.

"I've already been asked to coordinate the same kind of thing in September for the next Pink Up Cape event, so everybody that's involved right now I think is committed to that, and we want to do this at least annually and begin to involve more churches. You know, ask others to come and to lead worship, and then at the end just continue to grow the mass choir until, I don't know, everybody's involved," Crisman said.

Pertinent address:

2935 Lynwood Hills Drive, Cape Girardeau, Mo.