Bellevue Baptist Church - Music and Theater

Music and Theater

The well-known Bellevue’s Girls Quartet, formed in 1928, sang at conferences and denominational meetings across the South. Bellevue’s drama ministry, organized in 1951, was the first drama ministry in the Southern Baptist Convention. The ground floor of the 1952 sanctuary was designed for Christian theatre presentations like “The Robe” (1957, 1959) and “Ben Hur” (1961). In 1948, Bellevue called Thomas P. Lane to build a comprehensive music program for children through adults. He was the first full-time minister of music in the Southern Baptist Convention, and when he retired 38 years later, he had the longest tenure of any Southern Baptist Convention minister of music. For more than three decades he directed the student nurse choir at Baptist Memorial Hospital known as the Nightingales. Lane served with three Bellevue pastors who were each elected Southern Baptist Convention president: Robert G. Lee, Ramsey Pollard, and Adrian Rogers. For the community they presented 38 consecutive performances of Handel's Messiah, as well as other classical works like The Seven Last Words of Christ and Mendelssohn's Elijah. Dr. Lane was awarded the Southern Baptist Convention’s Church Music Award for Outstanding Service, and in 1986 he was named Bellevue’s Minister of Music Emeritus.

Rogers served with two ministers of music: Dr. Thomas P. Lane and Dr. James D. Whitmire. After working together as pastor and minister of music at First Baptist Church in Merritt Island, Florida, Rogers and Whitmire reunited at Bellevue in 1975. Whitmire was minister of youth music until Lane’s retirement in 1986. In December 2005 when he retired as senior minister of music, 5,000 adults and children were enrolled in Bellevue’s vocal and instrumental programs. Whitmire premiered The Singing Christmas Tree in 1976, with a record attendance for as high 56,000. An Easter program, Living Pictures, was introduced in 1981,evolving into The Memphis Passion Play on the church’s expanded stage in the Cordova worship center in 1990. In 1984, Whitmire began an annual patriotic program, Celebrate America! Under his direction Bellevue’s choirs sang at seven annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention, and in 1997 and in 2006 he served as SBC Music Director.