Music ministers throughout the world are both enjoying these summer months and simultaneously preparing to gear up for the fall. New ensembles and regular rehearsals along with all of the wonder (and anxiety) of the approaching Advent season each hold moments full of promise and expectation for church musicians and parishioners alike.
As you prepare to start back up, let me encourage you to begin with a healthy dose of prayer and discernment. For church musicians, this means setting aside time for a short retreat from the day-to-day to turn our focus to the coming year. A retreat could be as simple as getting out of the office and taking the afternoon in a quiet coffee shop, visiting a nearby prayer garden or labyrinth, or slipping into the backyard for a respite from the world. Your retreat could be as formalized and as elaborate as renting an Airbnb and getting out of town for a few days. Whatever your retreat looks like, the essentials are to set aside quiet moments for prayer and centering prior to diving into the deep end of planning and getting overwhelmed with preparations and to-do lists.
The importance of prayer cannot be understated. As a music minister, it is easy to get caught up in the “music” part of our work and let the pressing needs of the next meeting and rehearsal rule our hearts and minds. When we do so, we let the “minister” part of our calling slide into the background. It is essential to constantly remind ourselves that we are first and foremost ministers, and communion with our Creator should always be our starting point for decisions big and small. When we turn off and unplug from the world, we are much better situated to listen for and respond to the leading of God’s Spirit moving in and through our life and work.
Following our retreat and prayer time, themes are discerned and selected. We work from big to small. How this plays out is a bit different each year, but the basic intent is to make big decisions first. This includes selecting repertoire for big events (i.e. Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Holy Days, etc.), retreats, concerts, tours, and festivals that will be a part of the upcoming season. From there, we whittle down schedules and other repertoire, including a balance of new and familiar anthems. This gives choirs time and bandwidth to prepare new anthems for worship throughout the year in addition to allotting energy to prepare for special events as well.
We schedule retreats for our choirs and youth and adult bell groups. We have discovered the benefits of these times are spiritual, musical, and communal. Over the years, we have done both “away” retreats and “home” retreats. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Advantages of “home” retreats include minimal cost and the convenience of being in your own rehearsal space. Participants can sleep in their own beds and participate partially even if soccer, birthday parties, or other life events conflict with being a full participant in the schedule. Advantages of “away” retreats include more committed buy-in from your church musicians, extra fellowship time spent traveling (we’ve kept our “away” trips to within a two-hour drive from our church), and the shared experience of bonding while traveling together. More stories are told and life experiences shared on retreats than at any other time. When we have scheduled away retreats, we have endeavored to stretch these from Friday to Sunday. This gives a bit more rehearsal and downtime as well as time to unplug from the rest of the world.
Ultimately, the value we’ve found in retreats with our music ensembles is the time we spend together. Yes, these groups make huge strides in mastering new music—often we are able to get four to six weeks’ worth of rehearsal time packed into one weekend. Our retreats have time set aside for worship, prayer, dreaming, and for simply being together. Some of the deepest, most profound conversations I’ve engaged in with my ensembles have been on retreats. This is not accidental. I believe it’s a gift of God and a recognition of us giving of our time and talents. Retreats require a great deal of music ministers in terms of time, planning, communicating with ensembles, and, of course, music preparation and score study. I believe we reap benefits tenfold in group cohesiveness, musical development, and, ultimately, becoming one in Christ with these times.
Once all of the aforementioned building blocks are in place, it’s time to get to work on the minutiae of score prep, rehearsal scheduling, etc. All of these are essential for a music ministry to function well. They are all secondary to our call to be the hands and feet of Christ first and foremost. All of this reminds me of this beautiful and simple hymn based on Psalm 139 by Janes Edwin Orr:
Search me, O God, and know my heart today;
Try me, O Savior, know my thoughts, I pray.
See if there be some wicked way in me;
Cleanse me from ev’ry sin and set me free.
I believe and have discovered in my own ministry experience that preparing the way for our ensembles begins with preparing my own heart first. When our spirits are in harmony with God, our ears are more attuned to listen to the whisper of the still, small voice. We can then stand and lead with the confidence that flows from the fount of every blessing: our music ministry has now tuned its heart to sing God’s grace.
Happy tuning!
