The beautiful pipe organ located in the sanctuary of the Mid-Century Modern church building at 4711 Westside Dr. will be re-dedicated three-decades after the generous gift was presented to the church.
The re-dedication ceremony will be held on Sunday morning, October 13, at the 11:00 am service. Faith Manning will be the guest organist.
Manning, a native of Dallas, began studying piano at the early age of seven years old. She began her career in music ministry at age ten and added the pipe organ to her instrumental accomplishments when she was 18 years old.
A graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Manning received a Bachelor of Music degree in Pipe Organ Performance from Fisk University in 2007 and a master’s degree in Education from Middle Tennessee State in 2012. She is the elementary music and middle school choir teacher at the International Leadership of Texas School in Lancaster Texas.
Manning currently serves as the minister of music at Faithful Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, The Gathering: A Womanist Church, and New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.
During the re-dedication ceremony Manning will perform a variety of pieces including classical, religious and secular music that highlight the beautiful instrument that was donated to the church by the late Maurice and Ebby Halliday Acers.
Dallas real estate icon, Ebby Halliday, was brought up a Baptist and later became an Episcopalian.
“But, it was Maurice who made me a ‘Christian,’” she often joked, referring to her husband, Maurice Acers and the church she joined and grew to love, Central Christian Church.
Ebby Halliday Acers joined Central (Disciples of Christ) on December 19, 1965.
Maurice Acers, as well as his mother, Effie Acers, had been a member of Central since 1915 when the church was still located in downtown Dallas at St. Paul and Patterson Streets. In 1953, the church moved to its current location at 4711 Westside Dr. It was there that Ebby Halliday married Maurice Acers on Easter Sunday, April 18, 1965.
The couple were wed in a small and simple ceremony at 10 a.m. between Easter Sunday services by Central’s pastor at the time, the late Rev. Dr. E.C. Rowand.
The pipe organ was installed by Dan Garland and the original dedication ceremony was held in October of 1992.
Current Music Director of Central Christian Church, Tim Caffee, has original documents and drawings of the organ and plans for installation from the church archives that will be displayed during the re-dedication ceremony.
The public is invited to this special service. A reception will follow in the church fellowship hall.