On Christmas Eve, the English Tudor-style chapel with stained glass windows and exposed beams is usually decorated with garlands, poinsettias and little white lights as generations of families and friends gather much the same way the congregation of First United Methodist Church of Seal Beach has done each year on this night for more than a century. And for the past 20-plus years or so, my family has been among them.
Sitting close together on long wooden pews, we listened to the Christmas story, sang hymns and, after taking communion, filed into the adjacent social hall where, one by one, we lit handheld candles in the semidarkness and sang every verse of “Silent Night.” And as the song drew to a close, we raised the slender white tapers that illuminated the circle of familiar faces and seemed to reflect the simple message of love at the heart and soul of the Christmas spirit.
And this month he’s going to do a concert for local charity Westerville Caring and Sharing.
The live concert, which will take place at 4 p.m. on Dec. 20 on the Westerville Community United Church of Christ s YouTube channel, isn’t unusual for Doty. The church s interim pastor loves to sing and said he misses performing, which the pandemic has made difficult to do.
What is more unusual is that a pastor would be such a talented opera singer.
Doty, who lives with his wife in Wadsworth in northeast Ohio and stays in Westerville a few days a week, found his passion for opera in college at Bowling Green State University, where he went to become a band director. The only problem? He didn’t own a tuba, which he played and needed to major in music, and the instrument cost $3,500.