St. Paul Lutheran Church in Aurelia hosting ‘Our Musical Heritage’ concert

Melody Turnquist-Steed and Sandra Rhein.

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Aurelia, is celebrating its 100th year of ministry. On Sunday, Sept. 21 at 3 p.m., the church is hosting a concert, “Our Musical Heritage” that will feature native Alta organist and handbell clinician, Melody Turnquist-Steed. The choral director and Music Missionary will be Deaconess Sandra Rhein. A Festival Choir, Praise Handbell Choir and St. Paul Youth Choir will also perform. All are invited for an afternoon of musical experience that spans generations of church music. A reception will follow.

Melody Turnquist-Steed, a native Iowan, received degrees in organ performance from the University of Northern Iowa, University of Cincinnati and University of Southern California. She has studied organ with Marilou Kratzenstein, Jesse Eschbach, Roberta Gary and Cherry Rhodes. 

Until January 2017, she served as associate professor of music and assistant academic dean at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kan., where she was the director of the Bethany College Core Experience and Bethany College Handbell Ensemble, in addition to her duties as college organist. In 2013 she was honored for her service to the college as a recipient of the Mortvedt Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership. Prior to her appointment at Bethany College, she served as organist at the prestigious Westwood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.

 An active recitalist, she has toured Romania as an organ soloist and has performed at regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the International Trumpet Guild with trumpeter Keith Benjamin. Their trumpet/organ duo, Clarion, has recorded three compact discs: Clarion, New Music for Trumpet and Organ (1994), New Vintage (2001) and Ripples (2019). They have concertized throughout the United States, England, Scotland and Hungary, and have been featured on the National Public Radio program, Pipe Dreams! 

Dr. Steed is currently serving as a music specialist at Dr. Walter Cunningham School for Excellence in Waterloo. 

Deaconess Sandra Rhein is called by the LCMS Office of International Mission to serve as a sacred music educator in Asia. In this work she coordinates hymnal projects for church bodies requesting assistance from the LCMS, and fosters the appreciation for church music, worship and hymnody.

Sandra was coordinating editor of the first hymnal for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya, completed in 2012, a hymnal for the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus completed in 2019, and a hymnal for the Indonesian Lutheran Church, which was dedicated in November 2024. She assisted with a Spanish hymnal for Latin and South America and currently is working on hymnal projects for the churches in Taiwan and Sri Lanka.

She is also developing and implementing deaconess training to fit the needs of Lutheran churches in Asia.

Sandra and her husband Robert have four children and 10 grandchildren.