The extension of the Mother Church is filled with music and the words of our pastor once again, as weekly church services have resumed there. The Extension had been closed for twenty-three months for extensive renovation, and officially reopened Sunday, January 2, 2000. Two days earlier, two organ concerts were held as part of Boston's "First Night" festivities.
On Sunday, December 5, 1999, two thousand members of The Mother Church gathered to enjoy the improved sound of the restored Mother Church organ, and to celebrate the reopening of the Extension. The program included a demonstration of the organ by Mother Church organist Edwin C. Starner, vocal solos by Jennifer Foster and Osceola Davis, a bagpipe rendition of "Amazing Grace" by Mother Church carpenter James Fee, and remarks by the Treasurer of The Mother Church, Walter Jones, and the Clerk, Olga Chaffee. There was a lovely spirit of joy, beauty, and harmony. The program was repeated on Thursday, December 17, for employees of the Church.
These events had a more modest purpose, of course, than the six dedication services held on June 10, 1906. An article in the Boston Herald, reprinted in the Christian Science Sentinel of June 16, 1906, and later in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, See Miscellany, pp. 29-38 . described one of those services: "It was a sight which no one who saw it will ever be able to forget.... the impressiveness of this lay in its very simplicity; its grandeur sprang from the complete unanimity of thought and of purpose. There was something emanating from the thousands who worshipped under the dome of the great edifice whose formal opening they had gathered to observe, that appealed to and fired the imagination. A comparatively new religion launching upon a new era, assuming an altogether different status before the world!"
