Friends I’m really proud of the work our music director, Elaine Choi, and our music ministry and sanctuary choir did this past Sunday with Considering Matthew Sheppard. Now, granted, they had some 60 extra voices they brought in as support. I’m not sure when I’ve heard such beautiful sound in our sanctuary—and that’s saying a lot. But our choir leads were still the heartbeat of the performance.
Each of them had a solo at one point. We’ve heard these voices before. But there was something different in this performance. They were singing for something they really believe in: full life for their queer friends and selves. They also moved. Not excessively or theatrically, but indeed they acted out portions of their songs. They erected a symbolic fencepost, like the one on which Shepard was strung up to die. They comforted one another as mourners by it. They didn’t just tell the story. They embodied it.
It struck me that music is the right way for our church to explore how to be as inclusive as Jesus is. We’ve always done music well and been justly proud of it. But our music-making community is more than that. It is a sort of church within the church. They have sung together for years and love one another. It struck me, as a viewer to whom music is often a foreign language, that our singers had to have a high degree of mutual trust to pull off a show like this with such grace.
I sometimes tell people that the old cliché “preaching to the choir” doesn’t work as a dismissal at our place. I feel like if I’ve preached to the choir, I’ve hit the bullseye. Our choir is younger than the rest of us. They’re more diverse in various ways. They’re perhaps a bit more faith-skeptical than some of the rest of us. They’ve seen what churches have done to some of their artist friends, and so, not surprisingly, they can keep up a bit of an emotional fence to guard themselves against hurt.
One of the gifts of Considering Matthew Shepard together is asking our choir to actually lead us, as important and visible figures in our community, into the future God dreams about. That community wouldn’t exist without each one of them—Ryan, Jane, Dan, Annika, Andrew, Olivia, Josh, Dave, and more. Thank you, friends. We are not ourselves without you. And that exemplary community within our community wouldn’t exist without Elaine Choi’s skill as a musician, a leader, but also as a human being, a Christian.
And none of it would exist without God, to whom be the glory.
If you would like to view a recording of the concert, please email us at temcmusic@gmail.com. Due to copyright restrictions, recordings are available by request only and cannot be made publicly accessible.
