No one stands alone, we’ll stand side by side.
Draw the circle, draw the circle wide.
Singing Mark Miller’s setting of these words, 30 children, 20 youth and a handful of adults marked the end of a summer choir camp and the beginning of a new way to connect music and mission in all of our lives.
When events surrounding the death of Freddie Gray altered a planned choir tour to Baltimore in 2015, the response from youth, parents, committees and staff was: “When will we go?” Over the previous dozen years, the experiences of outreach events in our annual mini-tours (such as a pediatric hospital concert) and past week-long summer mission and music trips (preparing meals and singing for shelter residents, singing and jumping rope with Head Start preschoolers, sharing VBS songs with the children of migrant laborers) had prepared me to hope something new could be possible. I had experienced the ways in which music, carefully chosen, can provide an opportunity to widen the “performer’s” circle far enough to erase the lines of performer, listener or leader when everyone can take part.
In this hope I reached out to The Center, a mission retreat program of the Presbytery of Baltimore, led by Kate Foster Conners who connected us with Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church. Brown Memorial has collaborated with The Center to offer a summer academic camp for children in an underfunded school and had recently begun an after-school choir program. All these relationships made it possible to offer a summer choir camp for the neighborhood children with Abington Presbyterian Church’s youth (and supporting adults) serving as counselor/mentors while I shared musical leadership roles with Brown Memorial staff.
And what did we “do” for the camp? The itinerary looked busy: breakfast, small group rehearsals, games, handchimes, lunch, choir. But I found it most revealing to say to friends who asked about the mission of this week, “We just sang together, played together, ate together.” Beyond the singing, we really learned what it meant to make space to welcome the children and their gifts, to listen to the heartfelt wisdom of our youth and see how much our adults (including me!) grew. The culmination of this growing together in music and love was a shared dinner and a concert for family and friends, which included folk songs, anthems and arrangements of spirituals. By the end of the night we were all standing together, side by side, singing our hearts out! Much laughter and more than a few tears marked the end of the week.
When we returned home, our youth led the way to repeat this camp the following summer, requiring us to widen our circle by partnering with another church. A highlight of returning was the joy of recognition from returning campers and sharing this experience with our new partners. I hope the camp becomes an annual event, but surely another church would have to join this circle to keep the music resounding. Is that you? Can you widen the circles you currently inhabit to experience this holy and joyful work?
John Sall is the director of music ministries at Abington Presbyterian Church in Abington, Pennsylvania.
