sharing the song: a reflection on Alice Parker as teacher and song leader

May 16, 2024 by Paul Vasile in Article, News, Leadership

Like so many, my first encounter with Alice Parker was through her music, specifically the hymn and Spiritual arrangements found in almost every church and academic choral library. But it wasn’t until I had a full-time church job and continuing education funds that I plucked up the courage to apply for her Score Study Workshop advertised in The American Organist. While I knew she was a brilliant and respected musician, I had no idea how profoundly her teaching would shape my life and work over the next 18 years.

celebrating the journey

August 27, 2019 by Paul Vasile in News, Pilgrimage

I’ve been on an extraordinary journey this summer, a pilgrimage that invited me to step away from familiar spaces and routines and give myself over to the grace of the road.

I’m returning today with a full heart and suitcase, having received incredible gifts along the way: abundant hospitality, lovingly prepared food, soul friendship, new songs, time in stunning wilderness spaces, collaboration and creativity, as well as opportunities to teach, share, and connect with a life-giving network of new and old friends.

autumn update

October 19, 2018 by Paul Vasile in News

How can it already be mid-October, friends?! The last weeks have passed quickly and joyfully, with visits to Lebanon, PA, Roanoke, VA and Chicago, IL alongside my semi-regular commute between St. Louis and New York City. There's been a lot of focus on Advent music and planning, including several workshops focused on creative planning for the season.

Read my fall newsletter to find out where I’ve been and where I’m headed in the coming months!

learning to befriend our fears

August 17, 2016 by Paul Vasile in Congregational Song, Leadership

Learning spaces are challenging spaces. To gain a new skill requires humility and resilience, flexibility and fortitude. When we come up against our limitations, it can bruise the ego and cause us to doubt our ability or value. But what I’ve experienced through Music That Makes Community is that learning can be a joyful, enlivening, liberating experience. While we can never ease the discomfort that comes from learning a new skill or the jitters before sharing a new song, it is empowering to name our fears, to befriend them, and look for the surprising lessons and gifts these uncomfortable spaces offer to us.

how much paper does a congregation need?

November 07, 2015 by Paul Vasile in Church, Congregational Song, Leadership, Worship

Earlier this year I served as a guest musician at Broadway Presbyterian Church, where their pastor, Rev. Chris Shelton, presented a summer sermon series exploring the context and themes of the New Testament. To begin, we invited the congregation to imagine a time before worship bulletins, before hymnals, even before the letters of Paul and the Gospels were written. We created a worship service that was paperless, participatory and poetic. And we used story telling, communal song and images as primary vehicles for the expression and transmission of faith, like the earliest followers of Jesus.