The faces and the voices may change from season to season and concert to concert, but the ACTS mission remains constant.

The Adoring Christ Thru Song musical ensemble, which includes a choir, orchestra and drama group, is committed to sharing the Gospel of Christ through the performing arts.

Currently in rehearsal for its upcoming Easter cantata, an ACTS performance usually has 60 choir members and between 20 and 25 orchestra members from churches throughout Butler County, said co-director LaDonna Linamen.

Performers and singers are drawn from a pool of between 200 and 300 people, she said.

ACTS preforms four concerts a year: in mid-October, Christmas, Easter and the Fourth of July.

“The schedule makes it easy on members who are snowbirds and might be around for three but be in Florida for the Christmas event,” Linamen said.

“Each concert has its own rehearsal periods. It's perfectly OK to skip a concert. It allows people to be involved who might not be if they had to keep up with our entire schedule,” Linamen said.

“We do have people who go to Florida over the winter and come back in the summer and spring, “ said co-director Robert Olsavicky II. “We never have 100 percent personnel, we always have some flux. It's just something we work around.”

ACTS evolved out a July 4 concert, said Olsavicky.

“Operation Desert Storm troops had come home, so this was a welcome-home to-our-troops concert on July Fourth,” he said. “We invited all the churches to the Butler County Community Festival Orchestra and Choir.”

The 2001 concert boasted a 60-member orchestra and a 350-voice choir, said Olsavicky.

Singers and musicians from that event, area churches and a Slippery Rock community chorus orchestra merged together, took the name ACTS and established itself as a nonprofit group.

“Actually, when we did our Sept. 11 concert, our members represented 45 churches,” Linamen said.

She said ACTS is an open, multidenominational group.

Each concert takes six weeks of rehearsal followed by a break after performances. Linamen said the Christmas and Easter concerts are scheduled to conclude two weeks before the holiday itself “because members have to work on getting their individual churches' music right.”

What makes it more difficult is the group rarely rehearses together as a whole.

Olsavicky said the orchestra practices on Sundays at St. John's Reformed Church in Butler while half the choir members from the northern half of the county practice Mondays at Center Presbyterian Church in Slippery Rock and choir members from the southern half of the county practice Tuesdays at St John's.

Those doing dramatic scenes work on their own Sundays during orchestra rehearsal, he said. They rehearse under the direction of drama coach Tom Hilliard.

The whole group gathers for a run-through a week before a performance and a dress rehearsal the evening before the concerts begin, Linamen said.

Linamen said anyone from seventh grade and up is eligible for ACTS. Gifted students younger than the seventh grade have to be auditioned, but for the orchestra only.

“Before seventh grade, voices aren't adult enough yet for the choir,” she said.

There are two student instrumentalists in the orchestra right now, she said, both high school seniors. One plays the violin, the other the French horn. Both started with ACTS when they were freshmen.

“It's a very nurturing group,” said Linamen. “It's fun to listen to the interaction, nice to hear them encouraging and coaching each other.”

ACTS, or parts of it, has performed at other events, said Olsavicky.

The choir has sung at the Thompson-Miller Funeral Home's “Remembrances, Tinsel and Tears” service for the past three years and in the Musicians' Concert Band's Christmas concert. The choir has gone twice to Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh for ecumenical services at Christmas.

And the group has appeared on local cable broadcasts.

Olsavicky said, “After 9-11, we did a 9-11 concert at First United Methodist Church, and we repeated it on 9-11 because it was the 10th anniversary.”

“Armstrong Cable broadcast it, and it raised several hundred dollars for volunteer fire companies,” he said.

ACTS will present the Easter cantata, “Love's Greatest Story, Written in Red —An Easter Musical” along with a slide show presentation.“It's a knockout cantata that has some gorgeous music that is appropriate for Holy Week and has some drama to it,” said Robert Olsavicky II, ACTS co-director.“I was introduced to the title by Joy May of May's Music in Butler,” said co-director LaDonna Linamen. “When I heard it, I bought it right away.”Olsavicky said, “Cantata means to sing, in the simplest terms it's a Christian Broadway musical. It has a chorus, orchestra, solos and drama.”The cantata will be performed at 7 p.m. on these dates:• March 18 — St. John's Reformed Church, Route 66 and Benbrook Road, Butler• March 24 — North Main Street Church of God, Butler.• March 25 — Center Presbyterian Church, Center Street, Slippery Rock.