Cleveland church hosts 38th annual Spring Singspiration Saturday night

The music at Cleveland Seventh-day Adventist Church will mark 38 years when Spring Singspiration returns at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 18, drawing neighbors into a tradition that has lasted long enough to become part of Cleveland’s civic rhythm.

This year’s program will feature the Kids on Fire Handbell Choir and the 15-member Community Band, two groups expected to fill the church at 321 5th St. N. with the kind of familiar, shared performance that keeps a rural gathering going from one generation to the next. The event has become a recurring stop for residents who want more than a concert. They come for the continuity of seeing the same sanctuary, the same church family and the same community faces gathered around music.

The 38th annual billing points to a local custom that has endured for decades. A 2022 Gospel Singspiration listing at the same address shows the musical gathering has been part of the Cleveland church calendar before this year’s spring edition, giving the event the feel of a community staple rather than a one-off performance.

The church describes itself as part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a worldwide Protestant denomination with about 19 million members globally and more than one million in North America. The denomination says it operates 173 hospitals and sanitariums and more than 7,500 schools worldwide, while the Dakota Conference of Seventh-day Adventists serves churches and members across North Dakota and South Dakota from its headquarters at 7200 N Washington St. in Bismarck.

That broader structure reaches down into small-town life in Cleveland, where the congregation also lists Sabbath School at 9:30 a.m. Saturdays, worship at 11 a.m. Saturdays and Bible study and prayer at 7 p.m. Wednesdays. For a church in Stutsman County, Spring Singspiration is one more way to keep that connection visible, with handbells, band music and a full house turning a Saturday night into a shared event rooted in place and memory.