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Friends United Meeting |
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Quaker
Life
April 2002
Touching Hearts Through Song
By Peter Blood-Patterson
The richness of spiritual life shared in a faith community is rooted in the ability of the community to identify and nurture the spiritual gifts of its members. A ministry is a way we are chosen to fulfill a particular purpose in God's plan. Sometimes we are led to do something we never before dreamed of doing. At other times, God finds ways to use activities we have already been involved in, but which we had not seen as having a spiritual purpose. The music ministry my wife and I have been involved with falls into the latter category, with us both being involved in music for years before we saw this as spiritual work.
God uses music in many ways. Music touches a different part of our brain than usual speech and logical thought. People who have lost much of their ability to speak as a result of a stroke are sometimes able to sing without difficulty. Songs have the ability to touch us deeply in a way that hearing the same ideas expressed as words may not.
Singing touches hearts. It can also transform them. It can loosen chains of prejudice or despair, encouraging people to dream dreams not available before. My friend Pete Seeger describes how often people come up and tell him how their lives were changed radically by singing with him years earlier.
Songs also bind people together. People have been singing in groups since before the dawn of history. Most of the great social movements of the past two centuries have been nurtured and empowered by song—from the great revivals of the 19th century to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
Over the years I've led hundreds of groups in song. Songleading is an art, requiring different skills than performing. Although I've never had a great voice (as my wife Annie has) I have learned some ways to help people raise up their voices together with enthusiasm. This involves a kind of "servant leadership," requiring close attention to the energy, gifts and passions of the group you're trying to lead. After I got together with my wife Annie, we began songleading together. Having led singing alone for so long, I had a hard time adjusting to co-leading with another musician!
Having the right songbook is the key. I was frustrated by my inability to find a songbook that worked well for the kinds of sings I was leading. After years of running off informal songsheets, I finally decided to go ahead and create my own songbook, specifically designed for group singing and containing a wide variety of song styles. The resulting songbooks (Winds of the People and Rise Up Singing) have been at the heart of a small renaissance of do-it-yourself singing in this country.
Since then many Friends groups have asked us to lead singing. Meetings often use our concerts as opportunities for outreach to the surrounding community or as a chance to publicize and raise funds for favorite projects.
The traditional way Friends recognized spiritual gifts was by recording ministers, but this was limited to the gift of vocal ministry. Meetings are exploring new ways to do this. Over the past decade our meeting has set up a series of clearness committees to help us test our leadings to travel and to manage the challenges of this work. These have been extremely helpful. Gradually, the meeting came to see our music work as a form of ministry and wrote a series of minutes of travel under religious concern to Friends we were working with.
These concerts touch participants' hearts and create transformation on many levels. Certain songs seem to do this particularly. GodŐs presence is at times very tangible. The group is often reluctant to move on and leave the sense of awe beyond words, it has entered. A concert may settle spontaneously into a period of silent worship. We found ourselves listening more and more to God in discerning what songs needed to be sung in a given group on a given evening.
Two years ago New Zealand Yearly Meeting invited us to spend six weeks traveling among their meetings. At their summer gathering Friends gave us a whole morning to shape as we felt led. We felt powerfully used by God as we were guided in planning a cycle of songs expressing a journey of the Spirit. What a gift to be given complete freedom to let God plan this concert, without trying to figure out whether Friends knew the songs or would "like" them!
Although Annie and I have become comfortable songleading together, there remain many challenges for us in this work. We are trying to put our music work and our lives in general more and more into GodŐs hands.
Annie has felt led to make solo recordings springing directly from her heart and her faith. She has received what she feels is a specific invitation from Jesus to do this. It is hard to find the space to do this among the competing demands of parenting, health issues, her work as an art teacher, the swing band she is part of and the music work we share as a couple. I am balancing this work against my own calls to teach, write and lead retreats.
In order to help us discern God's intentions for us in a more ongoing way, we meet every month or two with an informal "oversight committee," a modern version of the elders who met with the meetingŐs recorded ministers in previous generations to help them remain faithful to their call. We often feel humbled and broken by how many barriers to discipleship appear in us. We have been amazed and full of gratitude for the faithfulness and patience of the Friends in this group. Some of the issues we continue to wrestle with include:
What is the relationship between faithful ministry and bread labor? Non-pastoral Friends have a strong bias against paying their members for religious service. We are not independently wealthy, as some traveling ministers were in earlier times. We have joined a musician's union for itinerant musicians, partly in response to Friends' reluctance to pay for this labor. A few Meetings feel a real "stop" about collecting money or selling songbooks in their meetinghouses.
How does one balance the needs of family with ministry? Traveling ministers in the past usually left a spouse at home to care for children. Because we have usually done this work together, our children have come with us. Last summer, some English Meetings felt unable to provide childcare for our eight-year-old. It has been extremely challenging to find ways to meet Ian's needs fully as we carry out this work without exhausting ourselves in the process.
Traditionally when Friends traveled in the ministry they had another Friend travel with them, both to help them remain faithful to their call and to help with practical matters of the journey. Our oversight committee is urging us to explore ways to incorporate such "elders" into our work, either someone we bring with us or a Friend from the area we are visiting. One key to the success of our ministry among New Zealand Friends was the lengths a local Friend took to assist in every aspect of planning and execution of the trip, including wonderful attention to Ian's needs.
How much do we listen to God's voice in guiding our concert planning—as opposed to creating a setting where participants can just have fun or can guide us into songs they want to sing? It feels right at times to lead a group into unfamiliar territory (perhaps carrying them to a "place they might rather not go" as Jesus said to Peter in John 21:18). Other times people clearly need to let their hair down and just get silly! Discerning this balance usually flows well but sometimes is harder.
Friends from the unprogrammed tradition are often comfortable with an individual breaking into unaccompanied song during worship. Most, however, draw a sharp distinction between Spirit-led vocal ministry and group singing using hymnals or songbooks. Unprogrammed Friends' commitment to Spirit-led vocal ministry arising out of gathered silence need not close us off from the possibility of God utilizing extended preaching or group singing as vessels for ministry. We keep exploring new ways God can guide intimately the singing we share with others.
The good news is that group singing is alive and well among non-pastoral Friends. Our own songbooks have been used widely. Friends enjoy singing together at many yearly meetings' annual sessions and FGC gatherings. The new Quaker hymnal, Worship in Song, has been much more successful than anticipated. Many meetings hold hymn sings on Sunday mornings before or after meeting for worship.
Singing plays a role in the spiritual journey of many Friends, breaking down interior barriers to change, preparing soil for God and drawing the community closer together. May God find many fresh ways for making this happen among us!
Peter Blood-Patterson is a member of Middletown Meeting, Lima, Pennsylvania. In addition to songleading among Friends, Peter is a family therapist and teaches classes in Quakerism and psychiatric nursing. He served on the selection committee of the hymnal "Worship in Song" and was the editor of Pete SeegerŐs book, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography."
Copyright (c) 2002 Friends United Meeting
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