A Church’s Passion

It’s Sunday afternoon, and Pikes Peak Park Baptist Church looks like a convention for nightshirt enthusiasts.

The pews are filled with congregants wearing knee-length tunics. Some whisper and laugh in groups of two or three. Many clutch ragged, highlighted scripts.

Onstage, backed by faux walls of Jerusalem, Music Minister Scott Goodman talks above the diminishing buzz. “Ms. Colleen, your leper costume is up front,” he says. Welcome to an afternoon rehearsal for “The Light,” Pikes Peak Park Baptist’s musical retelling of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The production is free and runs April 6-8 at the church.

For congregants, “The Light” is more borderline obsession than typical Easter play. Nearly 130 congregants will participate in the production — a pittance compared with some local Easter productions, but huge considering that average Sunday worship attendance hovers around 200.

The unpaid cast and crew work for months to put the musical together, eventually spending as much as nine hours a week rehearsing. Many are doing more than one job.

“That’s one thing about this church,” said congregant Arthur Mussey. “They’re willing to stretch themselves.”

Mussey is one of 15 behindthe-scenes construction experts who build the church’s multifunctional set. Right now it looks like just a series of walls. But Mussey says Jesus’ tomb, complete with roll-away stone, is hidden at center stage. The crucifixion scene will take place above the tomb.

Mussey will sing in the choir, too. He and other cast members took their music on a springtime mission trip to Mexico this week, so they could practice while building a house for a needy family.

“The commitment of the people here is amazing,” Mussey said. “These people are doing it as a gift of love.”

There are 27 people in the cast, chosen through auditions. Another 45 fill the choir.

“Most of these people don’t sing in our regular choir,” Goodman said, “but they can step in for three months and participate in this.”

The church enlisted another 30 “prayer warriors” to pray for the production.

That doesn’t leave a lot of church members to fill the sanctuary come showtime. No matter: Senior Pastor Steve Turrentine estimates that 400 to 600 people attend the production annually.

Some join the church and then volunteer for the play the following year.

Pikes Peak Park Baptist Church began its annual production of “The Light” three years ago, coinciding with Goodman’s arrival. Though the music is culled from two other productions (“Jesus, Son of God” and “Amazing Love”), the script is about 60 percent original — based on the Gospel of John and written by Goodman.

Even hiring Goodman, according to Turrentine, was a leap of faith: Most churches the size of Pikes Peak Park Baptist can’t afford a second full-time staff member.

“He brought this (production) with him,” Turrentine said of Goodman. When Goodman suggested producing the ambitious play, Turrentine didn’t even blink.

“I’m all for doing whatever we can do to reach out,” he said.

But producing a full-fledged musical entirely with volunteers is a hefty undertaking, especially for a relatively small church such as Pikes Peak Park.

Sure, New Life Church offers its over-the-top passion play “The Thorn” every year, complete with fire-jugglers, aerial acrobats and a cast and crew topping 1,000.

Then again, New Life has around 14,000 congregants, and the church also opens its auditions to folks outside the church. If New Life had the same level of participation Pikes Peak Park Baptist did, “The Thorn” would have a bigger cast than “Ben Hur.”

“Most churches never really think they could do something like this,” Goodman said. “But it’s not the size of the church, it’s the size of the heart of the church.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0367 or paul.asay@gazette.com

“THE LIGHT”

When: 7 p.m. April 6-8

Where: Pikes Peak Park Baptist Church, 3725 El Morro Road

Tickets: None needed; the show is free