The last time I wrote for the MMC blog, I had yet to move across the country to serve my first congregation, become ordained, live through a pandemic, or behold the kind of transformation that comes with putting roots down with certain people in a certain place. Paperless singing has been part of that journey all along, and has helped me hone my own theology and leadership with it.

There have been times, say when the musician of my small and scrappy internship congregation fell ill on a Sunday morning, when paperless singing was an immensely helpful tool. When I began my first call as an ordained minister, I entered a different setting entirely — one with a resourced music staff and a deep bench, and a variety of music led. There wasn’t a need to be filled per se, so I started introducing paperless tunes small moments of transition, one season at a time. My first year, we sang “Come, O Lord and Set Us Free” during the lighting of the Advent wreath.  We sang “What We Need Is Here” as the Gospel Acclamation in Lent. Over the coming years, that repertoire slowly built. The Caribbean Alleluia, “Our Stories Are God’s Stories,” “Listen to the Word that God Has Spoken,” “All Who Are Thirsty (Come to the Water)”, “Open My Heart,” “Come Light of Lights,” and “Jesus We Are Gathered” are all under our belts now.

Early on, someone off-handedly and affirmatively called them “Liesl-y” songs. But over time, we began to share leadership among pastors and music staff. We built the congregation’s confidence week by week as we learned the song for the season, so that they became more flexible and generous listeners to different leaders. We’ve never been strict about what “paperless” means, either. Often I will teach the choir in advance (sometimes with printed music) so they can become familiar and strong ringers throughout the congregation. Often the words will be printed in the bulletin or on the screen.

Some subtle and remarkable things have happened in these years. None can be attributed only to paperless music, but they all feel connected to me. When a multi-family baptism includes kids asperging the congregation as they sing, “Know that God is Good…” and anxiety about doing a new thing is eclipsed by delight in the spontaneity of the moment. When members in meetings totally unrelated to worship, refer to a trust that, just like we sing together, “what we need is here.” When in Lenten dinner church we practice both hosting and guesting through the liturgy…and in the Easter season stretch into a new program: hosting asylum seeking families overnight in our former Sunday school classrooms.

A theme in ministry, in this place and time, has been “We are the body.” We need each other, and each other’s voices, to enflesh Christ’s body in the world. It’s hard for me to separately theology from song, and heart from practice in this way. It is all a gift to behold as the Spirit wraps around us and winds her way through our lives.

I am grateful to Music that Makes Community for tending the fire of this practice for so many people. I’m grateful to the wise, capable, resourceful leaders on the staff and board who are weaving us together as practitioners, leaders and community members. It's not the specific style of music that matters. It’s what the singing itself unearths in us: a flexibility, perhaps, and an openness to Spirit. The awareness that we are in fact the body we seek: the reign of God is in our midst.

Liesl Spitz is a Lutheran pastor in St. Paul, Minnesota. She loves singing in community, walking along the Mississippi River, and spending time with her spouse and daughter in their untamed and beautiful backyard.

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