St. Andrew’s, Lethbridge, Alta., is like many Canadian Presbyterian congregations: the majority of active members are older and there is a constant concern about declining numbers.
When I became the choir director in 2008, I accepted these concerns as perfectly normal. When I was approached by session two years ago about restarting a junior choir, my first thought was, “With whom?” Did they expect me to have a choir of four? Then I remembered El Sistema, a music program I once nearly moved east to work for.
El Sistema was founded in 1975 by Jose Antonio Abreu, a musician and educator in Caracas, Venezuela. The stated purpose was to provide “free classical music education [to] impoverished children.” Forty years later there are 400 music centres in Venezuela with 700,000 students getting four hours of training and rehearsal per week.
Graduates of the program have gone on to become leading professionals not only in music, but in other fields such as medicine and education. I worked with a musician who said the program got him out of poverty.
Lethbridge is far from Caracas, not only geographically, but culturally and socially; yet poverty exists. Food banks cannot keep up with the need; homeless shelters are overflowing. There is a need for something here.
I gave session a counter proposal. Make it a free music program, open it to the community and allow anyone, grades one to 12, to attend. The spark was ignited. Permission was granted at a special congregational meeting. The project had a three-year term.
I quit my day job to run El Sistema, and in the fall of 2013, the St. Andrew’s Music Program (StAMP) began with four children in the basement. By the end of that first year, we had taught about 28 kids, including preschool children in a “parent and tot” music group. We also created two seniors’ music outreach programs to perform in local care facilities. We finished our second year in June with attendance peaking at 40 children and 30 adults.
Has this program solved the problems of the church? Well, it certainly hasn’t hurt. The new Sunday school coordinator has seen an overall jump in attendance. Youth no longer need to attend other churches because of the lack of programs at St. Andrew’s. And our seniors have been given more opportunities to minister to the community through StAMP. Between the seniors’ music outreach and the youth performance group we entertained at least 1,000 residents in local care facilities over the last two years.
I still hear grumblings about how we’re not seeing a direct effect on the congregation—which, I presume, refers to increased membership and financial support. However, we have attracted people of other denominations and many non-religious to our afterschool music programs, with a few starting to attend on Sundays. If the only reason to run a program like this is to increase membership, then we’ve lost our purpose. The goal is not to convert, but to build bridges and show how through music we are all connected.
A huge obstacle now faces us: the funding has all but run out. This type of program, unfortunately, is ineligible for many arts grants because it is associated with a church. Will the congregation still be willing and able to keep this program going after its third year? We don’t know, but we are seeing some truly amazing effects. A mother with a child in the afterschool program told me that she had recommended the program to another family from her church. One day, the new student approached his mother and the mom who told them about the program. He asked his mother, “Is this the woman who changed my life?”
Sometimes we never know the influence we have on others. Sometimes we just need the chance to try something new, and a congregation that is willing to go along for the ride.
