Church’s free music lessons transform the community

Key factors:

• Haven United Methodist Church has served the East Windfall, Rhode Island, neighborhood for practically 150 years, however it has been experiencing each monetary and congregational decline over an prolonged interval.
• When the Rev. Juhee Lee was appointed as part-time pastor in 2019, the congregation determined to grow to be a mission-oriented church.
• The church’s Neighborhood Music Venture has grow to be its most vital ministry.

Haven United Methodist Church has served the East Windfall, Rhode Island, neighborhood for practically 150 years, however it has been experiencing each monetary and congregational decline over an prolonged interval. The time when lots of of worshippers would come to service is lengthy previously.

The New England Convention had even thought of closing the church till the Rev. Juhee Lee was appointed there as its part-time pastor in 2019.

As quickly as Lee arrived, she discovered that the continuing monetary decline had pushed the members of the church into survival mode. Its ministries and actions had grow to be inward-focused, inflicting the church to lose its central function locally over time.

Lee and the congregation mentioned the way to navigate the course of the church and got here to the unanimous determination to grow to be a mission-oriented church.  

The church now has about 30 in-person worshippers with a number of extra attending nearly. Nevertheless, its doorways are open seven days per week for numerous ministries comparable to 12-step restoration conferences, youth basketball, a thrift store and a neighborhood music mission. These ministries attain about 500 individuals weekly.

The Neighborhood Music Venture has grow to be essentially the most important ministry of the church. It makes use of Lee’s musical expertise: She is a violinist with a grasp’s diploma in music. Nevertheless, this system needed to begin from floor zero. Lee and the church leaders didn’t know what number of college students would be a part of this system, and he or she was the one trainer.

“I chose to found the Community Music Project because we believed it was the most effective way to reach out to our community and reorient our church’s mission toward God’s purpose,” she mentioned.

Lee’s preliminary imaginative and prescient was to share her musical reward with the underprivileged youngsters and youth locally. Nevertheless, her perspective of the ministry has broadened as multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic — Hispanic, Russian, Cape Verdean, Korean and Chinese language — and even multigenerational individuals joined this system. It has now expanded to a joint mission of the higher East Windfall space neighborhood and past beneath Lee’s management.

Because the music mission continued to develop, Lee realized that she was not capable of train all the scholars by herself. By happenstance, Sabrina Chiang, a Brown College orchestra member, visited her church and have become a volunteer trainer.

“God sent her to help the CMP,” Lee mentioned.

Chiang grew to become instrumental in recruiting different lecturers for the mission. Now, there are 11 further volunteer lecturers, all from Brown College, and it has expanded to offer classes for violin, viola, cello, piano and small-group ensembles.

“There are many students here for whom English isn’t their first language, but through music, they have one of the most powerful tools to communicate ideas and emotions,” mentioned Kevin Kwon, who joined the mission a year-and-a-half in the past as a violin trainer.

Haven United Methodist Church in East Windfall, R.I., is open seven days per week for ministries comparable to Alcoholics Nameless, Narcotics Nameless, youth basketball, a thrift store, and a neighborhood music mission. The church serves about 5 hundred individuals weekly. Picture by Rev. Thomas E. Kim, UM Information.

Lee mentioned one problem the Neighborhood Music Venture has encountered is a scarcity of musical devices.

“The more the number of student children grow, the more we need musical instruments,” she mentioned.

That’s the place the encompassing neighborhood stepped in to assist.

Johnson String Instrument, a Massachusetts music retailer about 45 miles away, lends 13 violins to mission college students freed from cost. A pizza restaurant subsequent to the church gives free weekly lunches for the volunteers.

Each Saturday, Lee is busy assigning numerous rooms within the church to accommodate 46 college students, their mother and father and 13 lecturers. On the finish of each semester, lecturers and college students have a live performance that draws a mean of 150 attendees.

Luba Dumarevskaya, a doctorate pupil from Russia whose 9-year-old son takes classes in piano and violin, mentioned the mission is a blessing. 

“The program helps him to read and play music, gives him confidence in himself, and also makes him more responsible for being ready for a concert,” she mentioned.

Lecturers from the Neighborhood Music Venture give classes throughout the fall semester of 2022. Picture composite courtesy of Haven United Methodist Church.

The Rev. James Chongho Kim of First United Methodist Church in Flushing, New York, visited the church on Jan. 27 to ship a grant from his church to help the mission. Kim likened Haven’s music ministry to El Sistema, the publicly financed music training program that started in Venezuela and unfold to different international locations.

“The mission of El Sistema is ‘Music for Social Change’ through offering free music education for underprivileged children. The mission of The United Methodist Church is ‘Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,’” Kim mentioned.

He mentioned he’s “proud and grateful” to Lee and Haven United Methodist, and hopes his church can proceed supporting the music mission sooner or later.

Lee mentioned the preliminary imaginative and prescient for the ministry has been evolving from music training to neighborhood formation. It has been concerned within the bigger neighborhood mission and prolonged its optimistic impacts on the neighborhood.

The Rev. Wanda Santos-Pérez, superintendent of the Seacoast District, affirmed its important impacts on the neighborhood and past. 

“The CMP has achieved success in numerous aspects and has borne many fruits. It has evolved into a diverse community, embracing people of various races, cultures, ethnicities and generations who come together to experience unity and friendship through music,” she mentioned.

Santos-Pérez shared that a number of college students and lecturers have undergone private transformations by means of their involvement within the music mission.

“It has had a positive impact on people in our town and beyond,” she mentioned. “The CMP is a tangible means of participating in God’s mission in the world.”

The Neighborhood Music Venture has held 14 therapeutic concert events at nursing houses and well being care facilities, in addition to 10 profit concert events that supported Ukrainian refugees, an area neighborhood coalition, a homeless ministry, Guatemalans in want of cataract surgical procedure, and people affected by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria from 2020 to 2023.

Lee additionally discovered one other space to make use of her musical abilities past her neighborhood.

Through the pandemic interval, Lee and Rev. Yohan Go got here collectively to document free hymns and particular music to be used throughout the Lenten season and on Easter Sunday in 2021.

That they had labored with different musicians to document 47 songs and made them obtainable on Google Drive for any church that wanted music to make use of freely, so any church with a CCLI license might use them for its on-line worship with out worrying about copyright.

“When we realized that small churches, much like Haven UMC, were struggling to find worship music resources, we decided to record worship music and share it with others,” mentioned Lee. “Our music resources became a benefit for churches across different denominations nationwide.”

Despite the fact that the music mission’s mission has grown in numbers and high quality, Lee mentioned it does not essentially translate into church progress or a disciple-making ministry. She is raring to seek out the way it can function a channel to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

“I continue to pray to discern how the CMP can serve as a channel of God’s grace for participants, ultimately inviting them into a relationship with Jesus Christ,” she mentioned. “I believe that God is still at work, and as the Scripture says, ‘for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.’”

Kim is director of Korean and Asian information at United Methodist Communications. Contact him at 615-742-5470 or [email protected]. To learn extra United Methodist information, subscribe to the free Each day or Weekly Digests.