Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Jan 25, 2011
Ten years ago, on a January afternoon, I sat down on the living room floor with our then-3-year-old son, and sang, for the first time, “God’s love is for everybody, everyone around the world…” Little did I know that this song would open the floodgates, and that a new vocation was being born. 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of this ministry of “building up the body of Christ by creating and sharing songs of faith for small and tall” (although that mission statement and the name “SmallTall Music” weren’t formulated until a couple of years later). It’s hard to believe. I am deeply grateful that, after about a decade of various forms of ministry, a new vocation emerged that brings together my passions for biblical study, theological reflection, church leadership, worship, ministries with children, youth, and adults, peace and justice, ecology and care for creation – and, of course, music! This 10th Anniversay year promises to be an exciting one, with lots (and I mean lots!) of projects on the go. Stay tuned (watch this space, visit the STM Facebook page, subscribe to the e-mail list near the top of the right-hand column of this website), and I’ll do my best to keep you posted. Can’t wait to see (and hear and sing) what the coming decade(s) of ministry will bring! Thanks be to...
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Jan 17, 2011
It’s a rare podcast/interview indeed that covers everything from music to farming to faith to climate change to Bruce Cockburn and John Howard Yoder and the vocation of the church… rather far-ranging for a 20 minute podcast, even if for some reason I seemed to be speaking rather slowly that day (I must have been particularly pensive… or perhaps the coffee was decaf that morning…) Anyway, click here to hear the podcast based on an interview we did a bit ago, in anticipation of the Sustainable Food and Farming conference in Laurelville, Pennsylvania, where I’ll be leading worship at the end of February. (That weekend will be the beginning of the spring/summer tour, which will take me to 4 Canadian provinces and 7 US states in the next few...
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Dec 17, 2010
Make room, make room, make room There’s something here that God wants to do You can be a part of it too So open up the door and make room In a little town there lived a young girl Engaged to be married to a carpenter When the stranger Gabriel came on through And said: Have I ever got a job for you… Make room, make room, make room There’s something here that God wants to do You can be a part of it too So open up the door and make room A busy night at the hotel Business was going pretty well Exhausted couple shows up at the door You’ve got no room, but they can’t take it anymore… Make room, make room, make room There’s something here that God wants to do You can be a part of it too So open up the door and make room So many things on the go How to get them done, I don’t know But there’s a gentle stirring, something new Once again, it’s time for me to choose… will I Make room, make room, make room There’s something here that God wants to do I can be a part of it too If I’ll just open up the door and… Make room, make room, make room There’s something here that God wants to do You can be a part of it too So open up the door and make room (words and music by Bryan Moyer Suderman. Copyright 2010 SmallTall Music. Part of the November 2010 “deliver of songs” to the members of the STM “community supported music”...
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Nov 22, 2010
Long-time readers of this blog and its predecessor may have noticed that I used to blog more about ecology and sustainability than I have for the last while. There are a number of reasons for this. 1. I started blogging about the same time as I started my “community supported music” initiative, patterned after the “community supported agriculture” (CSA) movement. When this first began, I found that it took a long time to explain to people what this was all about, what was (is) the philosophy behind it, etc. It seemed that very few people had ever heard of this stuff before. In fact, that was a significant part of why I began blogging in the first place – I wanted to have an accessible online “library” where I reflected on these things, and to which I could direct people with whom I am in conversation. (You can find these writings under the “community supported music” and “sustainability and music” categories in my former blog.) By now it seems that this “CSA” concept/philosophy/approach has become far more common, familiar, and (dare I say it?) mainstream. Whereas before it took me a while to explain it, by now all I have to do is reference the CSA concept and most people immediately know what I’m talking about. I now see articles on this in very mainstream publications all the time. And there are more and more people doing exactly what I’ve been doing – not only participating as members of CSAs (which are multiplying all over the place), but adapting the concept to all kinds of other ventures – community supported fishing, community supported restaurants, community supported theatre, community supported art, etc., etc., etc. This is, I think, a wonderful development, and it’s great to see. It has also meant that while what I’m doing is still somewhat unique, it no longer seems nearly so strange or weird or in need of in-depth-and-constant explanation. 2. A second and closely related reason why I’ve not been blogging about ecological/sustainability issues as much lately is simply that, in the past few years, it feels like these concerns/observations/analyses have gone from being kind of “way out there” to becoming, to a significant degree, very mainstream and commonly articulated-and-argued, if not universally accepted. When folks like Gwynn Dyer (hardly someone who people would write off as an environmental fanatic) are doing detailed and widely-read analysis of the geopolitics of climate change, it seems clear that voices articulating the need for major change from “business as usual” no longer sound like wacko “voices in the wilderness” and are resonating loudly in much more mainstream circles. Again, this strikes me as a very good thing. 3. Perhaps the biggest reason why my blogging about these matters has dropped off lately has to do with my own personal circumstances, and those of my family. It was easier...
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Posted by Admin on Nov 11, 2010
I bet you think that’s a typo in the title of this post, don’t you? On Sunday morning I spoke/sang/led worship at “the red brick church” in Niagara… it was Peace Sunday… and the bulletin announced the hymn just prior to my input as “HWB #407 – We Are People of God’s Pace.” Our “keynote text” was 2 Corinthians 5:16 – 6:2 … new creation, God’s reconciling work, our role as partners, ambassadors, co-workers in this “ministry of reconciliation”… And the statement that “We are people of God’s pace” struck me as profound, powerful, and timely. So as we explored scripture, stories and songs (including one of the rare times I’ve sung “Peace in Public” in public), I kept coming back to this statement, riffing on its implications… for me, for us, for the world… What does it mean for us to live into this vocation as “a people of God’s peace”… and “God’s pace”… Typo? Perhaps. But a compelling assertion and reminder...
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Sep 30, 2010
One of the joys of going “on tour” is connecting with colleagues and co-conspirators all over the place. Last weekend at CMU it was good to re-connect with various colleagues in the world of academia. I love the way Walter Brueggemann, in his essay “Texts That Linger, Words That Explode,” articulates the partnership between the “scholarly” and “poetic” vocations in the life of the covenant community… I have found this to be very helpful in understanding my own vocation, as I often find myself working at “translating” insights from the worlds of biblical and theological scholarship into forms that we can sing together… the work of “imaginative re-utterance” of the ancient text that is sensed to be, again, “the right text” in and for this moment… And the set list from any given concert is a reflection of the fact that we are co-conspirators together in this “ancient, urgent cause”… Singing “Our God is a God Who Makes Friends” with a community that has been experiencing just that… singing Tim Chesterton‘s “Jonah” song in Carrot River, just down the road from Arborfield where he served as priest in the Anglican parish… singing “Peace in Public” with the folks in Osler, who have been the instigators of the “Peace in the Public Square” initiative… singing “In Our House” and “It Takes All Kinds” and being hosted by folks who are making ecological, economic, and community sustainability the three pillars of their farming operation… singing “Infiltrating The World” while re-connecting with co-conspirators that I’ve gotten to know in Costa Rica, Paraguay, Colombia… In the CMU chapel last Friday I shared something of my various vocational musings and meanderings… the irony that I graduated in such a hurry to “change the world,” and now I find myself writing “songs of faith for small and tall”… which is slow, patient, and humble work… you can’t really draw straight lines and point to causal connections between this song and that particular change-for-the-better… And yet maybe a song, well written and well placed, really can help to encourage, cajole, and strengthen the community of faith to be what it is called to be and to “do its thing” in the world… Connecting with communities when I’m on tour really is a vivid experience of the fact that “it takes all kinds to make the body”… and “we are partners all together in God’s great big wonderful...
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