03/26/2025
Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens.”
After many months of discussion, advice, and prayer, the decision has been made to, for now, close the doors of Ben Speer’s Stamps-Baxter School of Music, mainly because our enrollment is such that it can’t sustain the school’s operation and expenses / costs.
We’ve seen a decline in enrollment over the past several years, then the pandemic hit, and we didn’t operate the school for two years. When we re-opened the school post-pandemic, we had to cancel half-way through the session due to a Covid outbreak among the students. In 2023 and 2024, enrollment was down significantly.
Personally, I attended for five years as a student beginning in 2011, which had an enrollment of approximately 130 students, and the enrollment declined further after that.
There are other schools which offer most of the learning opportunities we have provided. A list of similar schools with 2025 dates, locations, and contact information is available at gospelconventions.com/schools.
If you’ve attended Ben Speer’s Stamps-Baxter School of Music, then you’ve experienced firsthand the family atmosphere and climate at the school, along with the commitment to spread the Gospel through music.
The Stamps-Baxter School of Music, in its various forms, has taught thousands of students in its approximately 90 years of existence, almost 40 of which were put on by Ben Speer, his son Stephen Speer, and their family.
Those who have studied at our school have taken what they learned to reach countless hundreds of thousands of people, the number of which may, in all honesty, be over a million.
May God bless you as you develop your God-given talent for use according to His purpose.
Blessings,
Richard Estes
GospelConventions.com is the online home of gospel music singing conventions across America, offering the most comprehensive listing of singing conventions, singing schools, and gospel music publishers available anywhere on the internet today!
