Brian Hehn is the Director of The Center for Congregational Song, the new initiative that The Hymn Society in the U.S. and Canada launches in October 2017.

The Hymn Society is a community made up of hymn writers, song writers, hymnologists, song enliveners, and many other kinds of people. What unites us is a passion for congregational song. We believe that the holy act of singing together shapes faith, heals brokenness, transforms lives, and renews peace. Because of those core beliefs, our work is to encourage, promote, and enliven congregational singing. So, it is a natural fit that The Hymn Society and Music That Makes Community be in partnership with one another. The core values on the MMC website echo much of what our members hold true, and many of our members are a part of both of our communities. 

The Hymn Society is excited for what MMC will be bringing to our conference this summer. Our members will have ample opportunity to dive into the MMC experience with a Sunday afternoon sing and a 2-session workshop on Tuesday. If you’ve never been to a Hymn Society conference before, what you’ll find is a group of scholars, practitioners, pastors, priests, poets, composers, and congregation members who are eager to sing and learn from each other. My first Hymn Society conference was in 2009 and I have never looked back! The combination of hospitality, knowledge, humility and skill with which our members approach their work is akin to the community that MMC is building with its membership. It makes for a wonderful week of singing and learning that is memorable and faith-shaping. I hope you’ll join us.

The other exciting project that The Hymn Society is currently working on is The Center for Congregational Song. When it launches this October, it will be a comprehensive online resource center that connects church musicians to resources, people, and organizations that work with congregational song. The Center will also be a hub for all of The Hymn Society’s workshops and educational opportunities that we provide in local communities. Finally, The Center will be the broker of a national conversation between a variety of organizations and people that represent a wide variety of genres, peoples, and places. By having conversations about the diversity of song available to us with a diverse group of folk, we can change the current conversations from like/dislike or traditional/contemporary into deeper issues such as pastoral care, prophetic voice, and best practices for a variety of instrumentations and genres. We know that we’ll have strong partners, such as MMC, that will help us begin that kind of conversation.

Learn more about The Hymn Society!

Learn more about their Annual Summer Conference in Waterloo!

Learn more about The Center for Congregational Song!