Have you ever been captivated, healed, or transformed by the power of singing together with other people? I certainly have.
I grew up leading worship in church as a pastor’s kid. Even then, finding songs to sing together in church every week that resonated with who the group was and what we believed was sometimes a challenge, and I began to write songs for us to sing together. I ended up recording some of those songs, and some of them began to be sung around the world. Songs like Friend of God, Say So, Beautiful Things, The Earth is Yours, Crags and Clay and many others ended up becoming staples in many congregations for a worship style that was centered in love, hope, and beauty while also striving for authenticity around questions and doubts. Then sometime in the early two-thousand-teens, my questions and doubts proved to be a little too much for some. Headlines like “you’ll never believe who doesn’t believe the Bible anymore” began to appear alongside of cancelled events and thousands of angry internet comments from people who wanted me to believe in the literalistic interpretations of the Bible that they assumed I had when they sang my songs in their churches. For the next several years after that, I kept my distance from church. It had seemed the church didn’t have room for me and my uncertainty about the big questions of existence.
Fast forward to the last few years to me stepping back into church for the first time in a long time. Why? I’m still figuring that out to be honest. There’s just something about community that feels important and fundamental. I can go meditate by myself in the forest all day long, and it’s beautiful and sacred, but there is just something unique and sacred about actually being in a room with others, and more than just being together—singing together. There’s something about singing together that is just incredibly powerful, healing, and unitive. I would get tastes of it at concerts I would go to, but as beautiful as a group of fans singing together at a concert can be, there’s still something about that experience that often felt to be primarily about the person on stage. And rarely are the songs you’ll find at a concert written with the intention to be sung by a group of people. So at most concerts you have the hardcore fans singing all the words, and the rest of us humming along to the couple of songs that we sort of know. And again, as beautiful as an experience as that can be, it’s not quite that experience that I had in hundreds of church services where the lines between you and me and the Divine and all our voices melt into this one, glorious Loving Presence. There’s just nothing like that.
So last year, I began a journey through all sorts of denominations and types of groups to try to find a “home” for this type of communal experience. While I met a bunch of wonderful and open-hearted humans, I also discovered that a lot of the music sung at these churches didn’t match the kind of inclusive, open-minded, and love-centered theology or approach of the people. It almost felt like a lot of the songs felt more like the national anthem or something—songs that just had “Christian” sort of lyrics in it that seemed more like an attempt to get us to identify as a specific belief-based “us” group (as opposed to “them”) more than it did a mystical diving board into our shared Love/Being. And the odd thing is that when I have had conversations with a lot of the leadership of these churches, they feel the same way. As I remember from my local church worship leaders days quite well, sometimes it’s just hard to find songs to sing week to week that actually resonate fully with you. So you just get by with whatever you can find and pull off.
As I began to look more and more into this, what I discovered was that there are three elements to church (or group singing) songs that all seemed important in my estimation:
Musicality—without some sort of interesting or heart-moving musicality, songs don’t really have the power that they can have when the music is right.
Singability—the world has no shortage of amazing songs, but a surprising shortage
Theology—songs that are expressions of divine love and unity rather than fear or shame songs that simply paste on “Christian” language for the sake of “us and them” identity formation
And so the idea of “The Mystic Hymnal” was born. The Mystic Hymnal is a project that intends to create and curate a library of musical, singable, and theologically kind (loving/unitive) songs for people to sing together. There are two ways that you can get involved in this project today.
Patronage
If you’d like to get early access to the music that’s being created for this project as well as eventually get additional resources like tracks and charts, or if you’d like to be a part of the weekly round table call where we listen to one another’s songs and offer feedback and sharing within a community of likeminded musicians, creatives, and liturgists, becoming a patron is the way to access all of that. Join the community, contribute, collaborate, and receive inspiration and material for this vision.
2. The Mystic Hymnal Songwriter’s retreat
During the Mystic Hymnal Songwriters Retreat, we will embark on a journey of personal and creative growth. Our program will be filled with engaging workshops, collaborative writing sessions, and valuable insights into the creative process.
The Mystic Hymnal Songwriters Retreat will take place from September 26-29, 2024, at the enchanting Glen Eyrie Retreat Center in Colorado Springs. Surrounded by the awe-inspiring beauty of the Garden of the Gods, this location will serve as the perfect backdrop for our creative journey. Immerse yourself in the serene atmosphere, find inspiration in the natural surroundings, and connect with like-minded individuals .
To secure your spot at the Mystic Hymnal Songwriters Retreat, reach out to us in the contact section and let us know that you want to do it. We will get back with you and want to hear some piece of your songwriting work. It doesn’t have to be fancy or anything. Even a voice memo from your phone would do. But we do want to ensure that this event is the right one for you, and hearing your music can help us create the most beneficial and enjoyable experience for everyone who will be involved.
Whether it’s at our Wednesday meetings, or at the Mystic Hymnal Songwriters Retreat, or even if it’s just listening to the music that will eventually be released under this project, I’m excited to participate in something extraordinary with all of you.