August Concerts, 'Camp Meetings,' Coming up at Calimesa Church

Puppets, food, drama, and special guest speakers and musicians – all stirred into a mix of “old fashioned camp meeting” worship services and concerts for the community – will be featured at the Calimesa Seventh-day Adventist Church during August. The events are part of the dressed-down, casual programming adopted by the congregation every August, reprising the spirit of a summer tent meeting in the past century. (But in a departure from total tent-meeting authenticity, air conditioning is promised to be on in the church at 391 Myrtlewood Dr., Calimesa.) Guest speakers for the five August Saturday mornings are all faculty members at the Loma Linda University School of Religion, each developing an aspect of the series theme of Jesus’s promised second coming. They include Dr. George T. Dizmiri (Aug. 1), Dr. Zane G. Yi (Aug. 8), Dr. Jon Paulien (Aug. 15), Dr. Theodore Levterov (Aug. 22), and Dr. Erik C. Carter (Aug. 29). Services are at 8:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. in the church sanctuary. Afternoon sacred music concerts, open free to residents of the surrounding communities, are scheduled at the church on two of the August Saturdays. Riverside’s Kansas Avenue Seventh-day Adventist Church Praise Singers will be featured at 4 p.m. on Aug 8 and Pierre van der Westhuizen, international recording artist and concert tenor from South Africa, at 5 p.m. on Aug. 22. Singers from the Kansas Avenue choir and Westhuizen will also participate in the morning worship services on the day of their respective afternoon concerts. Other musicians featured throughout the month-long worship series include The Johnson Family Quartet, The Kim Family and Friends, gospel singer Conner Smith and the California Baptist University Praise Team, and vocal duo Kellie Brown and Shannon Barnes. Also the Timothy, Michael, and Kuk-Wha Won Trio, the Men of Faith Quartet, John Browning and Mark Isaak, and keyboard artists Gary Donesky, Michael Fillman, and Dona Klein. A community blood drive on Aug. 29 will feature a mobile donation site at the church parking lot from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Interested community members are encouraged to reserve an appointment time by calling the Lifestream blood bank at 1-800-879-4484 or by visiting its website, www.Lstream.org. Directions and information about all the special programs in August are available by calling the church office at 909-795-9741 or visiting its website, www.calimesasda.com