Gilbert Gospel Venue Keeps Going After More Than 30 Years

For more than 30 years, the Midland Gospel Singing Center in Gilbert has been a monthly part of local gospel fans’ lives, who still fill the seats the first Saturday of every month to hear local and regional groups perform. 

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the current location, built in 1997 specifically to host the monthly singing events. This Saturday, the featured acts are Steven Craps, lead singer from the local Pine Ridge Boys Quartet in a solo performance, and Infinity Quartet, a group from Greer.

“We missed a few singings due to COVID, and even before that the attendance had been lagging some,” said  Brenda Crosby, secretary for the Singing Center’s governing board. “Since we started back, though, the crowds have been getting better and better.” 

The center was the vision of Lexington’s Earl Outlaw, whose career as a gospel singer stretched back into the 1960s. The monthly singings that Outlaw hosted at his home church, Pond Branch United Methodist, were the inspiration for the first Singing Center, constructed with the help of friends and fellow church members. 

In 1997, the Singing Center became its own separate nonprofit entity, and it has held countless events in the two and a half decades since opening that August. With a capacity of 400 and full kitchen facilities, the space has presented not just singings but community-centered fundraisers to help with operating expenses, as well as special holiday events. 

Southern gospel is the genre of choice at the Singing Center, more specifically the quartet style of singing that features four part harmonies. The performers range from local groups such as Mercy’s Well, Forever Changed, The Glorymen, and Pine Ridge Boys to more well-known regional and even national professional recording artists — such as Atlanta’s Lefevre Quartet, which features second and third generation members of the famous Lefevre family of gospel music stars, and Mark Trammell Quartet, who brought their Christmas themed show. 

Crosby stressed the family atmosphere and the nonprofit nature of the Singing Center as its main strengths. 

“Everybody can come and enjoy whoever is singing, and we get people from all over — there were two buses that came all the way from Prosperity for last month’s singing,” she said. “We are a nonprofit, so we take a love offering to give to the groups who are performing that night.”