Michigan Baptist competes in ‘America’s Got Talent’

Sean Panikkar wanted to be an engineer. He didn’t really want to sing — he just saw it as a way to pad his resumé to get in good with the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich.

He also didn’t have much pull toward Jesus, or spiritual things in general for that matter.

So imagine his surprise when he got swept away by singing — and by Jesus.

Now more than a decade later, Panikkar prays for Christ to shine through him as he competes as part of an opera trio on the hit TV show “America’s Got Talent.” The tenor trio Forte — made up of Panikkar, Josh Page and Fernando Varela — was voted through the quarter-finals into the semifinals, which started Aug. 27.

“Sean has been invited to be a part of a very large stage, which happens to be cast with shadows and darkness,” said Bert Spann, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church, Saline, Mich., where Panikkar is a member. “I believe that is strategically where the Lord wants the brightest lights. Sean is a mouthpiece, a voice, for the Savior He loves.”

It’s a “thrill,” Spann said, to know Panikkar’s “beautiful singing brings glory to our Lord, even in the strangest places.”

Panikkar said he sees his new limelight as nothing but an opportunity to radiate Christ.

“None of this would be possible without God, and all this started happening after I accepted Christ,” Panikkar said. “One of the things that is commented about a lot online is how I smile while singing.”

It’s a sign of something deeper — a marker of the joy he’s been given, he said. 

And he’s grateful it shows. After all, a good smile is the way he met Jesus in the first place — a smile on the face of Jane Arvidson, a fellow member of the University Choir at the University of Michigan.

She radiated the joy she had in Christ, and “I literally couldn’t take my eyes off of her,” Panikkar said. “I finally got up the courage to introduce myself to her later that week, and I sent her a follow-up email telling her how refreshing it was to see somebody who smiled all the time.”

Arvidson responded with a short email that simply said she smiled because Jesus loved her.

“I immediately thought she was a Jesus freak,” Panikkar said. His mother had grown up Hindu and his father Buddhist in Sri Lanka, so “nothing was really discussed extensively, so I didn’t grow up thinking I needed to follow one way or another.”

But as Panikkar got to know Arvidson, and as she backed up her strong convictions with solid answers to his questions, his false ideas of who Jesus was began to crumble, he said. He even went to church with her at Fellowship Baptist — and saw other people there who smiled like she did.

Finally over Christmas break of their sophomore year, Panikkar sat in his apartment and opened a children’s tract she had given him.

“I opened it, and I just broke down,” he said. “After all the debates and the different books, this little tract explained how simple it was to accept the free gift of Christ. I knelt down and accepted Christ into my heart.”

That’s when things began to change, Panikkar said.

“Shortly after that, I started to be recognized more and more for my singing ability and I began to feel led in that direction,” he said. “Doors began opening for me, and even though I had never dreamed of pursuing music, I began to be given opportunities.”

It’s something he never would’ve imagined as a shy kid whose parents accused him of lip-synching in choir concerts — they had never heard him sing. “I was embarrassed to sing, so to avoid practicing at home, I just had a voice lesson every day,” Panikkar said.

One lesson led to another, which led to the next thing and the next. He was accepted to the University of Michigan’s music program as a dual major in music and civil engineering — his dream, after all, was to own a construction company. Music was just a resumé builder.

But after he met Arvidson and opened the door of his heart to Jesus, Julliard came knocking, too — as well as the Manhattan School of Music and the Academy of Vocal Arts. Panikkar turned them all down to stay and get his master’s at the University of Michigan — and stay near Arvidson.

Not long after, the two were married. Eight years later, they have two children — Maria, 4, and Mark, 1. Jane is the music director at Fellowship Baptist.

And whenever Panikkar performs, Jane prays the words of a hymn over him — “Take my voice and let it be consecrated Lord to thee,” substituting his name in the lyrics.

“My wife has been my prayer warrior from the beginning,” Panikkar said. “Every time I open my mouth to sing, I pray that God would be glorified and that I would give my best for His glory, not my ego.”

His relationship with Christ has enabled him to sing to glorify God rather than focus on himself, he said. That’s helped as he’s been thrust even more in the limelight through “America’s Got Talent.”

Panikkar had just gotten home from singing “La Boheme” in Texas when he got a “very strange” email that a crossover tenor group on “America’s Got Talent” was interested in him. The trio, Forte, had advanced to the next round at their audition then learned one of their members was ineligible to compete because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. 

After praying about it, Panikkar and his wife believed it would put him in a position where he could influence more people for Christ, so he said yes.

“I don’t know what the competition holds for us in the coming rounds. We may be eliminated in the semifinals,” Panikkar said. “Anything that happens with Forte and ‘America’s Got Talent’ is an added bonus. 

“God has blessed me with an incredible opera career that takes me to places I never dreamed of going, an amazing wife and two beautiful, healthy children. I look at them and just think, ‘God is so good.’” 

(Baptist Beacon)