the opry story

In 1989, Oak Grove Baptist Church faced many great tragedies. Right before Mother’s Day, two of our youth group members, Jeff Carnes and Steve ‘Frank’ Sexton, suffered a horrific, fatal automobile accident. It left the church broken hearted as they sang the words Friends are Friends Forever if the Lords the Lord of Them at their funerals. 

That theme of Friends are Friends Forever would carry over to church camp that same year as sadness still loomed and the usual excitement for camp was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that two of our usual campers would be looking down upon us from heaven. The talent show that year was being whispered about by a group of female campers who had something up their sleeves that was going to blow everyone away. The rumor mill was they were going to do something impersonating country music acts. For some reason, I was not a part of their group and decided I needed to come up with an act of my own to compete against their group. I decided we would do a male versus their females so I loaded up my Jeep with my male singers and headed to Toccoa. They bought gaberdine pants, silk shirts, scarves, roses to throw out, a sheet to hide behind, black hair dye, and one Conway Twitty Live cassette tape. We came back to camp and Conway (Russell Moore) practiced with his band, body guards, and back up dancers too. Yes, we did a temporary dye on Russell’s hair (he had hair then). 

The talent show that year was in the cafeteria. The ladies called their group the Circle 2 Choir and they sang May the Circle Be Unbroken with many individual parts sung by different young female campers doing male roles and their camp leaders, Kay Mills and Cindy M. Mills. They did a great job with their parts. Much to everyone’s surprise, the “Live” cassette started to play and it announced Conway Twitty was there as a finger was twisting behind the sheet. Just as Hello Darlin’ was about to come from his lips, the sheet fell and Russell/Conway turned around and the Oak Grove Opry was born. 

Russell went on to have to do that song and another song, a couple more times that same evening, due to demand. We came home from camp and Larry Kohn, camp director, and I spoke about how we could expand on those two acts, that had started at church camp, and turn it into a full production. Stevie and Bill Mills would build the stage, and add lights and sound in our relatively new family life center. We had the experience and the spotlights from Lanierland so this shouldn’t be that hard to do but would people actually attend and pay to watch people lip sync songs? It would take the entire church working together, year after year to make it happen but it has definitely drawn the church closer through this whole experience. We definitely had some trials and some errors before we finally got to the right formula. 31 years later, they are still coming to support our church camp and people are still participating through now generations. Our Oak Grove Opry began during the saddest of times at our church but it’s brought us some of the greatest of joys. 

I think back to the cornerstone of the Family Life Center that we opened in 1989, the same year the Opry began:

Every year since we opened the doors of that building, we have been using it for the purpose we promised God we would use it for. Because we had a place to have the Opry, we could raise money for church camp and literally hundreds of kids have been able to come to know the Lord because of that. That verse came to me when we were dedicating the recreational center and I didn’t know why until now. If we used that building for God’s glory, He would provide the rest and He has. God’s promises are always true and He will never fail to answer and provide if we will remain true and have a mind to work for Him. Thank you, Lord!

Cindy J. Mills, Opry Co-Director