All are welcome to Songs For Our Spiritual Toolkits: a Community SING with Music that Makes Community and co-hosts, Singing Resistance Northfield, on Monday evening, July 13, from 7-8:30 p.m. at St. John's Lutheran Church in Northfield, Minnesota. 

When we sing together, we experience connection with one other and with something larger than our individual selves — whether it’s community or the sacred. Whether in good times or bad, singing together helps us remember we are not alone. Join us as we make music by heart and in community using paperless songs from many musical and spiritual traditions. Bring a song to share and friends who love to sing. 

Join songleaders from Music that Makes Community, Singing Resistance Northfield, and others for an evening of community singing that will fill your spiritual toolkit with songs for many occasions.  

This event is free and open to all who love to sing, regardless of musical experience or training. Freewill donations are welcome and help support the work of Music that Makes Community.

Masks are optional and welcome.  Children of all ages are welcome; though no childcare is provided. Bathrooms are accessible. The event will be in St. John’s Hall, which is on the same level as the parking lot. There is ample parking available in the lot adjacent to the church. 

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Music that Makes Community will be at the American Academy of Religion's Annual Meeting November 21-24, 2026 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO. 

During the conference, MMC Executive Director C. Onyx Li and Becca Whitla from Toronto will be offering a hands-on, voices engaged workshop of singing and theological reflection on how song can be a powerful part of protest. 

Before the conference gets underway, Music that Makes Community will co-sponsor a Singing Resistance Pub Sing with The Hymn Society of the U.S. and Canada near the Denver Convention Center on Friday evening, November 20.  This will be open to the public.  Details will be posted on MMC's Community Calendar when available.  

For more details about the conference, click: https://aarweb.org/event/november-annual-meeting/.  

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Related Events

More Music that Makes Community events will be held during this time in Denver.  Please stay tuned for more details.  

Get a introductory taste of Music that Makes Community at the Fellowship of American Baptist Musicians' (FABM) Conference for Church Musicians, "Lead with Love," on July 19-25 at the Green Lake Conference Center in Green Lake, Wisconsin.

Music that Makes Community presenter and former Board of Trustees Member, Jennifer Sanborn of Connecticut, will be sharing their love of MMC songs and leadership practices. 

For more details about the conference, click: https://www.fabm.com/2026-conference.

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If you'd like to share your love of Music that Makes Community songs and practices, please reach out!  We'd love to support you in spreading the seeds of MMC and welcome your hands and voices in tending this vast mycelial ecosystem of singing individuals and communities.

MMC is offering its first Online Songleader Training for Intergenerational Spaces!

Music that Makes Community is offering our first online songleader training for Intergenerational Spaces on Monday, July 20 from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. ET. This training is intended to be paired with a Virtual Practice Group. See more details below. 

There is growing curiosity and energy for making space for ALL generations to raise their voices in song. Music that Makes Community has been sharing these song leading practices without paper for almost 20 years and we are ready to support this transformation in each of our communities.

Virtual participants will come away from this training:

- with skills to lead paperless singing in their contexts, 
- new songs appropriate for many intergenerational spaces,
- leadership postures and gestures for songleading
- frameworks of what types of songs to use when
- and more ...

Special thanks to Roots & Wings: Intergenerational Formation Collaborative for co-sponsoring this workshop! 

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Suggested Registration Fee:  $25-150. 

We believe that financial access shouldn't be a barrier to receiving training. To honor our community's diverse financial realities, we use a sliding scale. Please contribute what you can with gratitude for the time and skill of our facilitators and consider supporting others' attendance to help create access to events like these. 

To register, click the orange "Register" button at the link below, then select one of the four suggested registration options. You will have two options to donate an additional amount: 1) to cover the processing fees of your registration and 2) to make an additional gift to MMC.

Click here to Register!

Space is limited to 90 participants.

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Additional Virtual Training Opportunities

- Virtual Songleader Training for Social Action on Thursday, Jun 25, 2026, 7-9 p.m. ET.  To register, click here.
- Virtual Practice Groups will meet 4 times over two months.  Tentatively planned for August-September and November-December 2026.
- More Virtual Songleader Trainings are being planned for September and October 2026. 

Watch this website calendar for more details to come.

Music that Makes Community will be attending the Association for Unitarian Universalist Music Ministries annual conference, "Lead with Love," July 29-August 2, 2026 at First Unitarian Society in Milwaukee, WI. 

MMC's Executive Director, C. Onyx Li, and Doe Hoyer from The Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery will be presenting a workshop on the Sacred Lands Project partnership, a collection of paperless, aural tradition songs for community singing intended to inspire and compel communities of faith to organize alongside Indigenous communities defending sacred lands from extractive industries and leading rematriation efforts. Read more about the project and download it here.  

For more details about the conference, click: https://auumm.glueup.com/event/auumm-annual-conference-2026-161747/. 

Music that Makes Community will be attending the Association for Lutheran Church Musicians 40th Anniversary conference, "From Generation to Generation: Now and Forever," July 13-16, 2026 at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. 

Current and past MMC Board members, Amy Steenson and Liesl Spitz, and a representative from The Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery will be presenting a workshop on the Sacred Lands Project partnership, a collection of paperless, aural tradition songs for community singing intended to inspire and compel communities of faith to organize alongside Indigenous communities defending sacred lands from extractive industries and leading rematriation efforts. Read more about the project and download it here.  

For more details about the conference, click: https://alcm.org/2026-st-olaf/.