Rev. Donald Schell is a Founder of Music that Makes Community and Member of the MMC Board of Trustees. He is also a Co-Founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco.



Rita Pihra-Majurinen taught us the beautiful song Holy, Holiness by Peter and Ellen Allard at our NYC Practice Group Gathering February 20, 2016 in Brooklyn, NY.

As a young pastor in Idaho, over a week of visiting a parishioner who was dying of cancer, I saw him go from conversations to dimmed consciousness to comatose silence and finally stillness except for his slow breathing. When his family was there, I’d talk with them. When he was alone, I’d speak a prayer for him aloud, remembering that hearing persists even in coma.  

For his working life, Joe had traveled the intermountain west as a cattle-broker. And when I first met him, he told me a story from his teenaged years when he’d worked summers as a sheepherder in Utah. Early one summer, alone in high meadow, he’d planned to sleep out, but near sunset, a sudden storm blew in, rain turned to sleet and then it began to snow. There was little cover and no way he could get down from the mountain. He was soaked and ill-prepared for the cold. Not expecting to make it through the night, he gathered the sheep round him, and lay down among them, reciting the 23rd psalm, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” and closed his eyes and slept. First light of morning penetrated the thin layer of snow that covered him and his wooly protectors. He told me that story to explain to his new pastor why he wanted the “23rd Psalm, King James Version” at his funeral.  

Scott Weidler is Program Director for Worship and Music at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Chicago, IL. He is a Music that Makes Community Presenter and has been Board of Trustees Member since 2014.


Find the song listing for Come, Come Whoever You Are in our MMC Songs Database here.

She was an older, Swedish woman who had clearly been a faithful Lutheran her whole life. She knew that Luther’s Small Catechism included the question – What does this mean? – over and over again, each time succinctly providing the “approved” answer.

When I introduced the Rumi text, “Come, come whoever you are,” one Lent, she habitually asked, “But Scott, what does this mean?” Luckily, she’s wise, open-minded and inquisitive. We had a delightful conversation, wandering phrase by phrase through Rumi’s poignant text, discovering that it just might mean different things to different people. It might mean different things to me on different days. The answers to deep questions aren’t always as easy as expected or desired.

Come, come whoever you are:

Really? Whoever I am? You don’t know how messed up I am. Really?

worshiper, wanderer, lover of leaving.

Not enough. Often (even though I hide it well). What might I need to leave behind?

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Which caravan? My life? Our country? The church?

Good reminder because feelings of despair are sadly familiar.

Though you have broken your vows

What vows? Even the ones I made to myself that no one knows about?

a thousand times, come, come again all.

Jesus said to forgive seventy times seven times; Rumi says a thousand times, but God doesn’t count. Forgiveness – the call to reconciliation – is eternal.

For too many, Lent is perceived not only as a time of confession and repentance, but of deep sadness and gloom. Music is reserved, maybe even maudlin. Guilt is often internalized during this seemingly eternal season. But there is a more wholesome (which is very old) way of understanding Lent.

Cricket Cooper is Rector at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Pittsfield, MA. She has been a participant and presenter at many MMC events and has been a member of the MMC Board of Trustees since 2014. 

Like many people, my first introductions to paperless music in 1970’s worship left me with mixed feelings.  Frustratingly, there only seemed to be two “moods”: either a hyper-caffeinated clapping frenzy, or the other extreme intended to be meditative but too often flagging into a sort of sad despondency.  

Music that Makes Community offers a repertoire of paperless music that can span and speak to the entire spectrum of emotions we call upon in prayer.  We also learn that through our leading, we can shift intensity and mood by bringing the volume or tempo down or up, by breathing energy into the music with our whole bodies, or silencing a chant to a hum so that prayer petitions may be spoken over the top.

The beautiful thing about the songs in our website resources is precisely that they are meant to be led “by heart,” meaning that any piece of music that the leader chooses can be used in a variety of situations.

Paperless music can serve as a powerful welcoming gesture, unifying the diverse voices that have assembled, regardless of religious tradition or musical experience. Paperless wedding music provides a unique opportunity for guests to bless the couple with the gift of their voice as well as their presence. Singing together can also make space for the couple and guests to be more fully present, to relax into and savor the moment.

Scott Weidler is Program Director for Worship and Music at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Chicago, IL. He is a Music that Makes Community Presenter and has been Board of Trustees Member since 2014.

Scott Weidler lead Khudaya Rahem Ker at the MMC Presenters' Retreat at Holy Cross Monastery in September, 2015.

When I first got involved with Music that Makes Community and was starting to spread the word across the church, it was not uncommon for people to think I was talking about a workshop on using screens and projection in worship. Sadly, that was the only kind of “paperless” experience they had had.

When I had a chance to describe what we were up to, people very often would respond with something like, “Oh, how wonderful it is when a congregation knows something so well that they can sing it from memory.” Mm, well, yes, it might be wonderful, but that isn’t really what we’re about either. How might a visitor feel in that context?

Richard Bruxvoort Colligan is a Psalmist from small-town Iow. He was a participant at Music That Makes Community in Minneapolis in 2014. He serves events across denominations and publishes via PsalmImmersion.com. 



Epiphany is one of my favorite liturgical seasons because its very theme points to participation: manifest this Holy Presence that we have longed for in Advent and have celebrated at Christmas. 

A paperless song holds the possibility of full engagement by the community, leaving no one out because of reading ability. A few years ago, when I was part of Marcia McFee's Worship Design Studio podcast, I was craving that full-participation feeling on behalf of my community. That's how "Your Light Has Come" arrived as a kind of processional chant. 

The lyrics hover around Isaiah 60, a text that hits "refresh" on the screens of our imaginations: "Pay attention. Something big is happening and you are part of it!" "Your Light Has Come" intents to help us be in touch with that invitation and call. 

       Lift your head, raise your eyes, look around:
            Your light has come! Your light has come!
       Light the world, heal the earth, bear the Christ:
           Your light has come! Your light has come!

Jennifer Baker-Trinity serves as a church musician and writer in the scenic Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania and was a participant at MMC in Chicago in 2011 and 2014.

This experiment Rev. Rob Boulter did with O Come O Come Emmanuel at MMC in Baltimore is one idea for how to use the practice of a paperless song leading to sing Christmas carols with groups who may not know all the words or tune but want to participate. How great would a setting like this be on a busy street corner full of dazed last-minute shoppers?

A few years ago, my husband who is a pastor met with a family caring for their ailing mother with Alzheimer’s. It was Christmastime and my husband offered to sing with them. He began to sing “Away in a Manger,” making the incorrect assumption that they would join in the singing. One woman sang, the mother whose memory was failing her. Her family, however, remained quiet. What kept them from singing? Unfamiliarity with the song? Uneasiness with singing in general? Something else?

When leaders of Music that Makes Community gather people for singing, they are wise not to assume that some are “in the know” and others are not. A leader doesn’t preface teaching with “Well, most of you know this, but...” The assumption is instead that all of us have something to learn; we are in this together.

Now is the season when many church or community groups will go caroling. Songbooks are gathered and groups go out in small or larger numbers to sing for others. It is considered a ministry, a way to bring the gift of music and the holiday spirit to those who are homebound or lonely. Yet as I think about this tradition, I wonder if the experience of MMC can refresh this practice?

Rev. Cricket Cooper is Rector at St. Stephen's Parish in Pittsfield, MA. She has been a member of the MMC Board of Trustees since 2014.

Several years ago, I attended Emily Scott’s workshop on paperless music at the Episcopal diocesan convention in Vermont.  The afternoon workshops were followed in the evening by a large, diocesan dinner for a few hundred people, in a ballroom of a local hotel.

In the midst of the din of food service, clattering flatware, jovial conversations and reunions, suddenly a frightened voice pierced the room, calling for a doctor.   Amid the sounds of scuffling and raised voices far in a corner of the large space, most of us were instantly drawn into that horrible place of unknowing.  What had happened?  How serious was it?  Could we help?  What should we do?