After 35 years as music minister for Church of the Crossroads in Moiliili, Don Conover is leaving a job he has loved and will venture down new avenues as a professional entertainer.

Conover, 70, will retire in July, leaving a skilled volunteer choir as well as music and organ scholarship programs as his legacy. He said the church will always be his home away from home, "my soul community" where people are welcome regardless of their race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

"My time at Crossroads has never felt like a job. I have absolutely loved participating in the music ministry at this church," Conover said. "I know that I will tremendously miss serving. But I also know that it is time for someone new, someone younger with fresh ideas who will infuse our music program with inspired energy, with divine spirit and beauty."

As a pianist and organist, Conover’s repertoire ranges from bawdy British pub singalongs to Hawaiian tunes, and he has been a musical director for Broadway musicals in Western New York and Hawaii. Despite his training as an entertainer, he said he does not regard his or the choir’s role as that of performers.

"It’s not a show, just the opposite," he said. "I’d like to think of it as ‘the flow of worship.’ I do everything I can to not look like a concert. The choir is not a showpiece.

"We’re actually singing on behalf of the congregation, who has no time to rehearse. We’re all worshipping together. It’s considered a gift, definitely not a performance. It’s a gift for God; God is the audience."

But sometimes, what he calls his professional "secular side" spills over into his "sacred side." For example, it’s not unusual for Conover to lead churchgoers in singing The Doxology ("Praise God from whom all blessings flow …") to the tune of "Hernando’s Hideaway" from the Broadway musical "The Pajama Game."

On Pentecost Sunday, the annual celebration of the birth of the church by the power of the Holy Spirit is highlighted by a Dixieland jazz band. Occasionally, he’ll have a soloist sing "The Impossible Dream," which has an inspirational message that fits into the theme of the service though it isn’t necessarily traditional church music.

Conover said he has taught the choir to sing all kinds of music, from classic to contemporary, and frequently incorporates percussion instruments. As an example of the choir’s versatility, he once counted 15 languages in songs done by the choir over a one-year period. He likes to quote longtime former Crossroads minister Neal MacPherson, who said, "All music is sacred."

"That has always stayed with me," Conover said. "The way music touches people and reaches within people’s hearts and really illuminates the words spoken" by the minister.

Crossroads, a United Church of Christ congregation usually at the forefront of social justice issues, had only about 10 members and no choir when Conover started there as a substitute organist in 1974. Membership had fallen after a tumultuous period in which the church was embroiled in controversy when it offered sanctuary to military servicemen protesting the Vietnam War, he said.

Conover returned to his native New York to teach music for a few years, but kept his connection to Crossroads through Shizuko Mukaida, a longtime member and professional musician. He returned to Honolulu when Mukaida informed him the church needed a regular organist, and in the 1980s Conover taught music at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus. He also formed the choir that now has 25 members, some of whom have been there as long as he has. Overall, the church now has a little more than 200 members.

In 1980, Conover founded a scholarship program which has awarded 87 $1,000 grants to singers and instrumentalists of all ages to help finance their music lessons.

In 1992 he invited friends to a 50th birthday party, asking them to bring checks made out to the American Guild of Organists, Hawaii Chapter, instead of gifts. Since then, more than 50 students have benefited from the Donald L. Conover Organ Scholarships, formed in response to the dearth of organists available to play in local churches, he said.

Conover has performed at most of the major hotels and many restaurants in Honolulu and founded the "singing servers" at the former LeBon Restaurant. Last year he released a double CD, "The Best of the Rose & Crown Pub, Waikiki," based on singalongs he led there from 1979 to 1995.

These days, he entertains monthly at Bacchus Waikiki, plays piano at the Hawaii Yacht Club and gives mini organ concerts during weekly docent tours at the historic Hawaii Theatre downtown, where he accompanied Broadway legend Carol Channing in a one-woman show in 2005. Once he retires, he plans to work on the release of two piano CDs of island music.