So you want to sing MMC style regularly, locally? Or how could I start a local MMC community singing gathering?

We asked several local group leaders to share how and what they have been doing when things work. Spencer Foon from Chicago and Sylvia Miller-Mutia spent an hour with us. Board member Nancy Willbanks provides this summary of what they shared.

Every Thursday night for nearly thirty years, a widely diverse group of 30-100 people gather for worship and a meal at Idlewild Presbyterian Church in midtown Memphis. The irregularity of this service is that it is not comprised of members of the host church, but primarily filled with the men, women, and children of the streets of Memphis.  The service is short and loosely follows the Presbyterian liturgy:  an opening hymn, a sentence or two of confession and prayer, and an acclamation of pardon are followed by a statement of peace and symbolically passing this peace to those assembled.  The second section begins with another hymn and contains a scripture selection and short sermon. After a third hymn, an invitation is issued to a communion table with the Eucharist taken by intinction. The leaders of the service are all volunteer lay persons, with an ordained minister who presides over the communion and for seven years I was one of them. 

An Anti-Racism Triad

Reflection by Nancy Willbanks

For the past year and nine months, I have been meeting monthly in an anti-racism triad. We each had participated in one of the several book groups reading My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem (link to Bookshop.org) under the auspices of Music That Makes Community in 2021 and 2022. (See more about forming a triad in this article: When White Bodies say, "Tell me what to do.") 

We meet on zoom. I knew Jeremy from Monday Morning Grounding, and I didn’t know April at all, before we started meeting. We made a commitment for a year, and we are still meeting because we all find the hour and fifteen minutes we spend together each month valuable. We live in Massachusetts, Arizona and South Dakota. We juggle competing schedules and time zones. We are all in ministry and ordained. Jeremy and I are pastors and April is a chaplain at a community hospital. Jeremy is in a community where the BIPOC population is primarily from the Lakota tribe, while April sees a broader range of ethnicities in the hospital setting, including Native Americans, Latinx, and Black. In my neighborhood, the BIPOC people I see or interact with are Asian (including my daughter), Black, and Latinx.   

Each month we share some of our own noticings about racism that we have witnessed or heard or read about, and we share a somatic practice, often from My Grandmother’s Hands, and we share a song. Sometimes in between our meetings we text.

If you have ever enjoyed the gift of international travel, you may have encountered a mind-numbingly long line to go through Customs. My sister, mother, and I were returning from a trip a year ago and, following a lengthy plane trip and crowds of people at baggage claim, we were next funneled into a room so large, we could not see the far wall of it. Somewhere in the distance, we would be plucked from the line and sent to designated Customs booths to show passports and discuss what was in our luggage.

Back and forth from wall to wall, heavy rope stanchions guided a line of weary, cranky humans of all ages, ethnicities, and dispositions. Muttered curses, groans, and sighs filled the air as we moved glacially along, mere inches at a time.

Among my earliest memories are the 5-hour car trips we used to take to visit my grandparents. My sister and I could while away most of that time singing. Pop songs from the radio, rounds learned at summer camp, show tunes, pretty much any Beatles' song- we could and DID sing for hours on those trips.

Maybe it's no surprise that my first introductions to MMC felt like coming home. Oh! You just start singing? And you invite others to join? 

This had been a part of my life from my childhood. 

At the end of October, Music that Makes Community Facilitators gathered for a playlist party around the theme of “Advent.”  Here are some of the songs we sang:

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.

Greetings MMC community!

Can I share a vision with you? 

The dream is “A Songleader in Every Family, Every Household”. 

That sounds pretty straight forward, but let me tell you how I'm defining songleader. 

I describe a songleader as a “collaborative ritual artist.” Let me break that down… 

• COLLABORATIVE = someone who shares leadership and responsibility 
• RITUAL = meaningful patterns and rhythms of communal life 
• ARTIST = Creator, tender with beauty, grace, creativity, and attention to process  

So a Songleader is one who shares the tending of a creative process of meaningful communal patterns and life rhythms with attention to beauty and grace.  

A collaborative ritual artist.

And if there's a collaborative ritual artist/songleader in every family…

Do you know what this means for spiritual communities?  There’s multiple song leaders in every community!

Music that Makes Community facilitators met online in August to build community, hone skills, and share songs with one another around the theme “Connection in Fractured Times.”  As a gift to the MMC community, we are offering a playlist of the songs we sang to you.  We hope that they may aid your own practice of singing in community as we navigate fractured times together.  

Hi, friends, 

Breen Sipes and I have been doing the behind the scenes facilitation and space holding for MMC’s Monday Morning Grounding this past six months, and because of school changes, Breen is unable to do this in the fall. 

Can you join me and Amy Steenson in holding the space for Monday Morning Grounding this fall. (10 a.m. Eastern, 9 a.m. Central. 8 a.m. Mountain, 7 a.m. Pacific)

Here's an update on the Sacred Lands Playlist Project, a partnership between Music that Makes Community and the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery.  

This post includes two updates.  First update is on the review process and when creators will be notified if their submission was accepted.  Second update is an invitation to a hybrid, in-person and virtual gathering, where songs from the Playlist will be shared.  

You know that something is good, when a clergy colleague on Friday tells you that what you’re doing in keeping Monday Morning Grounding going is a ministry and makes a difference, and then on Monday when the Trader Joe’s cashier asks how your Monday has been and, I can say: I woke up tired and grumpy and because of Monday Morning Grounding, I’m having a better day. 

So, that’s the truth. Monday Morning Grounding can turn your day around and set you up for the week. We sing, we’re playful, we share meaningfully, we are hospitable. We notice and share what we notice. People are welcome to come on Zoom with camera on or off, singing on mute unless we’re passing a song around (which we often do), and as Breen (MMC Board president) likes to say, you can come with your shoes on or off, because this is holy ground. You are welcome and invited!! Don’t think that this is like any other Zoom meeting (non-MMC) that you’ve been to.

The Deadline has been extended for the Sacred Lands Playlist to Monday, July 1st!

The Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery and Music that Makes Community are collaborating together on a community singing playlist project!

MMC is excited to partner with The Coalition, a faith-based movement that seeks to respond to the call of Indigenous communities to the Christian Church to address the extraction, extinction and enslavement done in the name of Christ on Indigenous lands, to support their mission and liberate and spread the power of communities’ spiritual life through singing.

We welcome original* song submissions around the theme of "Sacred Lands." Understanding the land as sacred, not as property or commodity, is an Indigenous worldview -- one which the dominant culture desperately needs, if we are going to actually address the root causes of today's climate crisis. 

My first Music that Makes Community board meeting was on a Saturday morning after what had been a long, hard week at work. A colleague and I had different expectations about a deadline, and as I watched that time come and go without the desired end result, I felt disappointed, then blamed, then just done. My conversations that evening with my spouse were peppered with some of my favorite vocabulary words, and I felt validated and vindicated as I turned up the “not my fault–they’re to blame!” tune in my head to 11!

Needless to say, with this as my evening prior, I was not entering the MMC virtual space with the calm and equanimity I usually experience with the group. My distress increased when I looked over the agenda and saw we would be invited to share a song. “I don’t even have a song! My first meeting and I’m showing up without a song!”

I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, hummed for a few minutes, and this is what appeared:

We are all doing our best
We are all doing our best
When fears are rising
And tempers are flying
We are all doing our best

We are all doing our best
We are all doing our best
Let's care for each other
Be held by Our Mother
We are all doing our best

- Jennifer L. Sanborn and the Spirit of Song, 1/27/2024
(and probably Chanda Rule's In the Heart of God, as I think about it!)

Oof. I felt seen. Or heard. Or called out. Or Loved in. Regardless, I knew I had caught my song to share with the group.

As the board gathered, I volunteered to share first because it’s hard not to fear a quickly-caught song will fly away as fast as it flew in. Somewhat timidly, then with greater strength, I invited these new boardmates to join me in singing, “We are all doing our best.” Could there be a better affirmation to sing when venturing into new, treasured, complex, and important work together?

On Monday, March 4, three members of Music that Makes Community's Board of Trustees, Rev. Breen Marie Sipes, Rev. Nancy Willbanks, and Adam Michael Wood, gathered on Zoom for an open 90 minute Drop-in jam of songs for Holy Week and Easter.  Here's the list they came up with!  It includes many well-known songs and some new tunes you may not have heard before.  May these songs be fodder for your preparations. And when you have a moment, whenever that is, let us know what you're doing in the comments.  We love to hear about new songs you've created and about experiments you've tried!  Everything is a lesson here.

General Resources

- https://www.musicthatmakescommunity.org/tags/lent 
- https://www.musicthatmakescommunity.org/tags/easter 
- https://anahernandez.org/sheet-music/ - search for paperless 

You can find additional songs on the MMC website or in our song resources, Singing in Community and Music By Heart. If you can’t locate a video or sheet music for a song, please reach out and we’ll help.

Lastly, take note of the copyright suggestions at the bottom of the page.  The songs listed here come from a various of sources with some covered by OneLicense and others you'll need to contact the originator directly.  

Dear song-sharing friends,

As we continue our year-end fundraising/friend-raising campaign, I am delighted to officially welcome my dear friend and co-conspirator, Conie Borchardt, as our next Executive Director for Music that Makes Community! I have worked with Conie on the Board for the past two years.  When I came on Conie adopted me as their “Board buddy,” so I have had quite the behind-the-scenes look as she has prepared for the transition into this new role.

(Image:  2023 MMC Board retreat at Good Courage Farm)

Conie brings a wealth of experience and connections to this position, as well as deep passion and care for our work. In addition to being MMC’s Board Treasurer for the last two years and a musician with 30+ years of experience in Lutheran, Episcopal, and United Church of Christ (UCC-USA) churches, Conie has been administering community art projects, writing grants, and fundraising under her business, Points of Light Music, LLC. They have woven Dances of Universal Peace, a multi-faith paperless movement and spiritual practice, into MMC workshops and trainings. Conie is also a Full Voice Coach and a Spiritual Director. All of these experiences give Conie a solid foundation from which to grow and lead Music that Makes Community into the next season.

A message from Breen Sipes, 
Chair of MMC's Board of Trustees

Dear friends,

I am writing on behalf of the Board of Trustees of Music that Makes Community to let you know the bittersweet news that Paul Vasile, our Executive Director for the past eight years, has resigned. He has taken a position as Interim Director of Music at The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, which begins in January of 2024, and we support and bless Paul in this new endeavor.  Paul has given so freely of himself through his inspiring, gracious, and innovative presence among us. He has built deep networks and cares so very much for this work. Paul has set us up well for the excitement of what is next for Music that Makes Community. Paul’s last day with MMC will be December 1st, and we will provide a time for us to celebrate him together through two online good-bye events.  

Here are a few words from Paul:  

After several months of discernment, I notified the Board of Trustees that I will conclude my service as Executive Director on December 1, 2023. While it was not an easy decision to make, my heart overflows with gratitude for MMC’s practices of song sharing, listening, community building, and hospitality. My faith and vocation have been shaped by this work, the songs we have courageously created and shared, and the invitation to pay attention to our experiences and all they teach us. I have learned so much from each of you and the beautiful ways you've shared your gifts. Thank you so much!

As MMC begins this new year, reinforced and galvanized by your incredible support and gifts, there are changes and new beginnings ahead for our community. Most significantly, after three years of service, Charlotte Moroz will transition out of her role as Community Curator at the end of February. While she will happily continue as a future leader and participant in our work, she is being called away to focus on her doctoral studies and explore life in California, where she has recently relocated.

Our bi-weekly Zoom Play Time group brought inventive experiments and heaping spoonfuls of creativity to the table, our first-ever Virtual Summer Retreat opened for registration, and our Summer Singing Celebration was a splash of a party, with Chanda Rule, Conie Borchardt, Ana Hernández, and other MMC leaders bringing over 85 attendees together in songs and visions of peace, justice, and community.

And, not least of all, our first round of Virtual Practice Groups took flight, with five groups practicing virtual song-leadership, building skills and community throughout May and June. Our participants spoke and...they were a hit!

"Centering, community building, and worth it!", reported one participant.

"The Virtual Practice Groups were a great way to meet new singers and to talk together about how to face the challenges of singing in online environments. I really looked forward to my hour of singing," said another.

We've all, by now, experienced myriad Zoom and virtual meetings, but participants thanked our intrepid MMC leaders for offering such a "unique and wonderful experience," one participant going further to say that "while many are busy with the technical aspect of virtual choirs, being in an MMC Virtual Practice Group gave me the opportunity to just sing and enjoy being with others in this new way."

This list of songs and online resources is for communities seeking to be more intentional about taking action to support justice, equity, and dignity for BIPOC lives (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). The list draws from a range of musical traditions and countries. Please feel free to add additional songs in the comments below.

Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round - African-American Spiritual
All Shall Be Well / Another World - Ana Hernández
Another World - Kerri Meyer 

Danos un corazón - Juan Antonio Espinosa

Enviado soy de Dios / Our God Now Sends Us Forth - Anonymous Latin American

Gonna Bring that Light - Kerri Meyer (scroll all the way down)

Hold Everybody Up - Melanie DeMore
Hold On (Keep Your Eyes on the Prize) - African-American Spiritual

Freedom Bound - June Jordan
Freedom, Come - Ben Allaway 
Freedom is Coming - South African Freedom Song

Hamba nathi Mkhululi wethu - South African Freedom Song
Hold On - Gospel Song, arr. Geraldine Luce

Join several MMC presenters for an hour-long webinar focused on online song leadership next Wednesday, April 22 at 3 pm EST. We'll explore best practices for singing in online gatherings of all kinds: choir rehearsals, song circles, worship, and even meetings. We'll share some songs and creative approaches to singing we're finding effective on Zoom and Facebook Live (that might also be useful when we gather in person again).

Register here and after the webinar you're invited to make a contribution, as you're able, to help us continue our work.

**UPDATE** Due to the extraordinary response, we have closed registration for the webinar but will announce another very soon. We sincerely appreciate your patience!

With little preparation, worshipping communities around North America quickly shifted their worship online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While online or streaming worship isn't a new thing, completely virtual worship experiences are unprecedented, and the experience is inviting us to discover new ways (or build on what we already know) to make community.

MMC is especially curious how we make spaces for participation, sung or spoken. How can leaders be present in online spaces in ways that support community engagement and deepening connection?

This week we saw a fantastic Facebook post by pastor, church planter, author, and liturgist Emily Scott (and co-founder of MMC!). Emily’s book, For All Who Hunger, which comes out in May, is about community and connection around tables, even in times of disaster. 

So we got through our first Sunday of offering worship online! Woo!

As we put plans in place for future online gatherings, I continue to believe that many of our congregants need spiritual and social CONNECTION more than they need audio/visual PERFECTION.

People need to hear their names. They need to tell their stories and know those stories are heard. They need spiritually grounding practices they can participate in, not just watch. We have highly produced content thrown at us all the time. How can we make our online gatherings personal and loving? (Not knocking high quality here...just saying it might not be all of our first goal, depending on our context.)

We have all experienced times of uncertainty, fear, and disorientation. And while so much may feel out of our control, singing is a powerful tool to support and strengthen community as we move through challenging, painful, and traumatic experiences. 

MMC leaders have compiled a list of songs that we hope will be useful to you and your community in these unsettled times. While we are writing in the context of a global pandemic, it's certain we'll need singing to face other local and global challenges.

As you think about what to share with your community, listen to your heart and your community as they name their needs, fears, and hopes. Short, simple melodies can be a powerful balm and many can be treated as pocket/zipper songs, which allow us to add words, names, and feelings specific to our context. 

No matter what you sing or how the songs are shared (in emerging online/virtual spaces or safely in person), may these songs comfort anxious hearts and remind us that we’re together in deeper ways than we ever imagined.

Lent is right on our doorstep and perhaps you're still looking for music? We've included a short list of paperless songs below, including some sturdy paperless standards, new tunes written in the past year or two, and a few surprises, as we imagine Lent not just as a season of repentance but an invitation to lives of justice, beauty, and love

If your community hasn't experienced paperless singing yet, try incorporating a short prayer song or psalm setting instead of a lengthy or complicated tune. Consistent, positive experiences encourage and reinforce the practice, and weekly practice helps this style of singing gradually embed. Consider a paperless song while there is movement or ritual action in the liturgy, or moments a bulletin or hymnal might take the focus away from face-to-face connection. 
 
We also suggest teaching at moments when intergenerational community is gathered. The experience of paperless singing is enriched when worshippers of all ages learn side-by-side. Our experience is that children and young people intuitively participate in mirroring and imitative singing, and they can help encourage the participation of more reluctant adults.

Mike Leigh is a former student of the College of the Resurrection and now serving in the North Scarborough Group Ministry and is Area Dean of Scarborough. This reflection on his summer sabbatical was originally published in the Community of the Resurrection Magazine (CR Quarterly).

“Congregational singing….has the power to create community, form and transform the heart and mind, and transport a person completely into a spiritual dimension unlike any other.” - DJ Bull

I’ve always said that it was singing that kept me in the church. I remember that I never really liked Sunday School as a child and the only way out I knew of was to join the choir! I distinctly remember when I was 7 years old we had a visit from the choir master to our school and he talked about needing new boys to join the church choir, so I went home and pestered my mum relentlessly until she gave in and sure enough, I was admitted to the church choir.

I loved the choir; it was my highlight of the week and the thing I enjoyed more than anything. The thing I found though, was that it was not the type of music we sang nor the quality of the sermons that I sat through (surprise surprise) that I loved, but it was the sense of belonging that I found which drew me in. We were a group of children bound to each other, yes, through the singing of Anglican chant and the wearing of cassocks and ruffs (not too dissimilar to my experience of being a clergyman in the Church of England, I have to say!) but we were also bound by the times when we passed jokes and mints along the choir stalls during particularly boring sermons, or played football after rehearsals, or shared sweets bought at the corner shop after a wedding. I loved the choir because it was my community and it was there that I was most at home.

Community has always been something that human beings have longed for, we are created to live in community and we need to find places to meet and share our lives with others. It doesn’t surprise me that in this age where families are more displaced and traditional community activities like social clubs,  music societies and churches are declining, we see other things emerging (very often online like Snapchat or Facebook ) to fill the gaps.

 It interests me then that in this world of changing community we discover that one area of growth is in community choirs. Gareth Malone is famed for resurrecting community singing but I am glad to say that this has been happening for a lot longer than the BBC like to think and in an ever changing world of community, it is wonderful to discover that people still want to sing together. For a long time we have known that singing is good for our health and that it has the ability to draw us together and create community. Why? Because as human beings we have always sung and a quick look at other cultures reminds us that for many people today, singing is simply part of what it means to be part of a tribe or a nation or a race.