Youth stages concert for senior project

Performing for a church youth group once a week is one thing, but staging a concert is something else. Just ask Greenbrier High School senior Lane Perry.

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A member of Wesley United Methodist Church, Perry, 18, is planning a benefit concert with his group, Wesley Youth Band, at the church for his senior project.

"I wanted to do something musical for my senior project, because that's such a major part of my life," he said.

Perry and fellow band members Andrew Campbell, Taylor Haddon and Matthew Coleman have been leading praise and worship music for their youth group for about four years.

Perry has discovered that planning Saturday's community concert is much more involved.

The most difficult part was setting a date, he said.

"Now that that's done, it's really starting to come together," Perry said.

He also has found someone to take care of the lights at the show, promoted the event and lined up his youth pastor, Curtiss Gibbs, to deliver a message at the concert.

Admission is free, but the band will accept donations for Blood:Water Missions, a charitable group that provides clean water for African villages.

This organization is a favorite charity of the Christian band Jars of Clay, whose members mentored Perry.

In November, he went to a Jars of Clay concert in Rome, Ga., arriving two days early to learn how it set up for a show.

His mother, Libby, runs the Web site and answers fan mail for Jars of Clay, and she suggested that Lane contact the band for help.

"It's cool when a band that famous, or well-known, kind of, knows you by name," Perry said.

Gibbs said he can count on the band to show up for the youth group each week, but Perry's project is much more ambitious.

"I'm proud of these guys," he said. "(The concert) will be a lot of fun."

Perry said he hopes the audience will "see God through me."

Pat Williams, the pastor of missions and care, said Perry is a mentor for younger children.

"I have watched his development and maturity grow, not just in the academic world, which he excels at, but at the church as well," she said. "He is really a leader within our youth group."