MIDLAND, Texas — The First Baptist Church of Midland wrapped up their two-day "Behold" Christmas Musical on Dec. 16 and Dec. 17.
The play featured an adult orchestra and a kids choir with projections across the worship center.
Jeff Wash, the pastor of worship arts at the Church, says despite all of the extravagance of the play, it is always centered on one topic.
“It’s always going to be about the Baby Jesus and the Manger, and the nativity," Wash said. "We are going to do a recreation of the nativity tonight with Mary, Joseph, the Baby Jesus, the Shepherds and the Wise Men. Kids will come up around with candles and worship around the Baby Jesus.”
The event is always popular, and since the church itself can hold up to a thousand people thanks to seating on the floor and balcony, it can hold up to a thousand people.
It also helps that the shows were at different times, which meant guests could pick and choose which show they preferred to go to.
“We premiered [Saturday] at two o’clock and we did a matinee for some of the folks that don’t want to get out at night and not have to drive at night," Wash said. "We had a good house at two, it was a good time.”
However, plays like this can't get done in one night. It takes months of preparation to set up the stage, get the music and practice the lyrics so everything goes off smoothly.
“So we started the music portion in August and the choir and orchestra started learning it. Then the last few weeks we worked on the behind the scenes stuff, the technical stuff," Wash said. "We are using what we call environmental projection tonight, so there will be projection all across the worship center. There’s also a creation scene where video was created for our orchestra to play.”
Every year is a little different, but it’s always a big hit with the crowd.
Ask anyone at the church, however, and they’ll always try and stay humble with the praise.
“Everyone is really encouraging, Wash said. "It’s a celebration of who God is in our lives, so we try to push away any accolades to ourselves and turn them all to our savior.”