Joyous, spiritual, love-filled music is one of the vital components of a fulfilling worship service. The growth of our church requires a vibrant music ministry. As our moderator announced in his Message from the Moderator, we have a talented and dynamic, newly-hired music director. But now, we need singers and choir members.
We need you to sing in our choir if you:
-- Love to sing
-- Have sung in a choir before
-- Took music lessons when you were young
-- Love to sing
-- Take music lessons now
-- Sing better standing beside a strong section leader (as I do!)
-- Love to sing
We need you in our music ministry if you believe that God is calling you to share your gifts with this beloved community.
We also need church members and friends who have other musical talents to participate in our music ministry in ways other than singing! If you play any instrument, we need you.
The musical tradition of UNMC has always been one of excellent, well-presented and spiritually meaningful religious music. It is my understanding that it has included music from the traditional and classical genres, spirituals and gospel, instrumental, accompanied, and a capella.
We want to continue that tradition of excellence, while we also broaden the repertoire of our music ministry. We want more diversity in musical styles and sources, in order to better reflect the diversity of our congregation. We seek to create a music ministry that meets the needs of everyone who comes to Sunday services.
My dream, as your pastor, is for our music ministry to offer music that touches the hearts of as many of us as possible each Sunday. I know how difficult it is to satisfy the needs of every one every Sunday, but over time, we can have music that touches everyone's heart on any given Sunday.
I want us to have music that speaks of our yearning for God and expresses our gratitude for God's love for us, and music that inspires us to make a difference in the world and encourages us to share God's love with others. I want music that makes our hearts leap and our souls sing. Most of all, I want our music to enrich our lives to give us what we need to be the kind of people that God would have us be.
Studies show that joy-filled churches grow, and our music ministry can help make the difference in our growth.
My prayer, and my hope for our beloved congregation, is that as we enter this new church year with a wonderful, new music director, we will begin to see how music can not only help us grow as a congregation, but help us grow as a religious people.
See you in church!
Pastor Lillie