congregational singing

MC Canada invites submissions for virtual choir

A virtual choir sings as part a launch event for the Voices Together hymnal in 2020. Mennonite Church Canada is inviting Canadian Mennonites to join a virtual choir for Gathering 2022. (YouTube photo)

Mennonite Church Canada is putting together a virtual choir for Gathering 2022, and you are invited to join.

The choir will record “Greater Things Than These,” a song that Winnipeg pastor and songwriter Phil Campbell-Enns composed for the event.

On being a musician during COVID-19

Matthew Boutda conducts the choir at Leaside United Church’s hymn festival in June 2019. (Photo by Murray Fenner)

Matthew Boutda playing the organ. (Photo by Matthew Boutda)

Matthew Boutda

For some musicians during COVID-19, the landscape of music making, performance and choir conducting transformed into environments for community resilience. As a recent graduate from Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto, with a master of sacred music degree, Matthew Boutda reveals the ways musicians are conductors of human connectedness.

Together, in song

(Photo courtesy of Mennonite Church Canada)

The last time my church sang together was March 8, the second Sunday in Lent. Since then, my singing has consisted of one backyard, physically distant, “Happy Birthday” and my lone voice following the congregation’s pre-recorded music on the screen.  

MennoMedia: Do not sing together if you are gathering physically for worship

(Image by 微博/微信:愚木混株/Pixabay)

With stay-at-home orders being lifted across much of the U.S. and Canada, churches are thinking about what it will look like to open their doors again. Yet because the COVID-19 pandemic is still very much with us, it is up to churches to consider how to do so safely. 

Sundays without singing

(Image by PublicDomainPictures/Pixabay)

Never thought there would be Sundays without singing. 

Like churches across Canada, ours has been shuttered as a precaution against the novel coronavirus. I understand why this must be, but I sure miss getting together and joining our voices.


'Singing solo is lonely,' writes Carl DeGurse (pictured).

Watch: A virtual Mennonite Easter choir

More than 25 Mennonites from across North America participated. (Photo courtesy of YouTube)

In the past few weeks, it’s likely you’ve seen a video of people singing together virtually.

When the members of Winnipeg’s Prairie Voices choir had to cancel their 20th anniversary concert as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, they channeled their disappointment into this video

Music leaders sing hymnal preview

Musicians, in foreground from left, Merrill Miller, Alissa Bender, Perry Blosser, Rosene Rohrer and Andrea Weber Steckly accompany a song during the Worship and Music Leaders Retreat on Jan. 10-12 at Laurelville retreat center in Mount Pleasant, Pa. (Photo by Kreg Ulery)

In the 1980s, Ken Nafziger drew inspiration from publisher and camp association president Levi Miller, and began leading a music retreat at Laurelville.

The purpose and joy of congregational singing

Worshippers sing at Mennonite Church Canada's Assembly 2016 in Saskatoon. "We sing... because it is a unique corporate experience," music professor Curtis Funk says. (MC Canada file photo by Matt Veith)

“I turned the key and the stillness of the morning was shattered by the uneven rumbling of the engine. Everything was ready for the day’s work. In a few minutes, the pickup would drive onto the farmyard and empty its load of Mexican labourers. But for now I was alone. I eased the clutch out and the tractor lurched forward, pulling the portable packing shed behind it into the orchard.

Queer hymns now online

Cedar Klassen presents the new collection to The Hymn Society. (Photo courtesy of The Hymn Society)

Songs for the Holy Other is a project of The Hymn Society. (Photo courtesy of The Hymn Society)

Cedar Klassen is the coordinator of the working group that put together Songs for the Holy Other. (Photo courtesy of Cedar Klassen)

Growing up, Cedar Klassen loved singing hymns.

On harmony

I’ll be honest right from the beginning: when it comes to music in worship, I’m a hymn-person. Always have been. Especially as a youth, when everyone assumed that because of my age I must be a fan of praise-and-worship music! It’s one of the things that I love about worshipping in a Mennonite congregation: the sense of echoing the faith of those who have gone before us in Christian history, the evocative, poetic theologies of several verses of carefully crafted lyrics, and, of course, the rich, four-part harmonies, blending many distinct voices into a communal act of praise.

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