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Jon Polce finds fulfillment in performing Christian music

BY GLORIA LaBOUNTY / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF

ATTLEBORO

John Polce was happily pursuing a professional career as a singer and songwriter in the 1970s when he was stopped in his tracks by none other than God.

Polce had been away from the Catholic Church of his childhood since his teen years, and had been seeking spiritual fulfillment elsewhere, but without success. And although his professional life was going well, his personal life was not.

"I was separated from family and searching for peace of mind," said Polce, a resident of Smithfield, R.I. who at the time was living in Providence.

Then a friend began talking to him about faith, and about the fact that God had a plan in mind for him.

"I opened my heart, and it started to happen," Polce said of what he considers to be a conversion experience at age 24.

He joined a parish, then left his career in 1974 to devote himself full-time to Christian music.

"To be able to do what I love to do is a gift, a blessing," he said.

Since then, he has recorded eight albums and has performed his own music all across the country, but primarily in the Northeast at coffee houses, conferences, parish missions and retreats, and churches of every Christian denomination.

One of his stops was the LaSalette Shrine in Attleboro, where he began playing periodically, and then monthly in 1995 in a unique type of program called Bethany Nights.

He is still there. One Friday night a month, Polce leads an evening of ministry at the shrine that includes singing with the congregation, then performing his own songs, plus offering reflections, scriptural passages and prayerful music to help people absorb the message. Later, healing teams from the shrine make themselves available to anyone who wants additional prayer.

"It is an evening of ministry," Polce said of Bethany Nights, which gets its name from the village near Jerusalem where Jesus would go to gather with friends. Polce's Bethany is in the shrine church, a setting he views as a perfect one to bring people together for prayer and healing.

He draws 50 to 100 people to his Bethany Nights program that is held on the last Friday of the month from January through October, and the third Friday in November. The next program will be on Friday, April 27, at 7:30 p.m.

The intimate title of the program implies what it is, a time with God, Polce said. While music is the focus, he said, this is not a concert.

"It is a worshipful night," he said of his Bethany performances.

He describes his style as acoustic, not folksy, and not the blues sound he exudes at coffee houses. Instead the focus is more on the lyrics and their messages.

It's a informal format that may be appealing both to people who regularly go to church and those who rarely go but who want another way of connecting with God.

That could include those who have turned away from the church in recent years.

"We offer these evenings as a way for people to be reconciled," he said. "The shrine is the place for that to happen," since its primary mission is reconciliation.

His hope is that people will come to know God the way he did.

"When God invites us, there is nothing we have to do except to say yes," he said.

GLORIA LaBOUNTY can be reached at 508-236-0333 or at glabounty@thesunchronicle.com.