Beer & Hymns and plenty of thoughtful conversation

LOUISVILLE — The “Sounding Board” podcast team of hosts Sarah Abushakra and Jeremy Roberts took advantage of attending the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship & Music Conference last month to record their show near the Montreat Conference Center as part of one of the week’s most enjoyable events, Beer & Hymns, held with great enthusiasm at the nearby Wild Horse Black Mountain venue.

Fortunately for everyone involved, composer Mark Miller was also present, and he joined the hosts on stage for an interview during Beer & Hymns and, later, played a pair of his compositions on a keyboard. Watch the most recent edition of “Sounding Board” here, where the hosts also interview Worship & Music Conference attendees and staff.

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For 20 years, Miller has been a lecturer in Sacred Music at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music and Divinity School. He’s also Professor of Church Music, Director of Chapel and Composer in Residence at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey and is the Minister of Music of Christ Church in Summit, New Jersey.

He told the hosts he grew up playing piano and then organ at the family’s church in New Jersey, where his father served as a United Methodist Church pastor. He began his musical career as church organist there at age 15. Decades later, he ran into a parishioner who told him, “actually, Mark, we weren’t sure you were ready. Can a 15-year-old take up the task of getting up on Sunday morning to play two services?”

“I was so thankful that someone gave a teenager a chance,” Miller told the hosts.

He recalled growing up going to music camp, alternating between “Rise and Shine and Give God the Glory” and Bach compositions. “Somewhere in between there, I feel like I found my voice,” he said. “Hymns were really important to me. Billy Joel was really important to me.”

Someone has since told him his music sounds like “liturgical Disney,” which he called “one of my best compliments.”

Miller said he was privileged to direct the senior high school choir at the 2015 edition of the Worship & Music Conference.

“The energy and the enthusiasm and the commitment of the young people really made it special,” he said.

It was weeks after the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting, and his friend and collaborator Lindy Thompson quickly sent him lyrics “she was moved to write,” he said. “I saw the words and, as I often do with Lindy, the music just seemed to happen.” The result was the powerful “I Choose Love,” which Miller taught to the senior high choir that week.

“I talk about it with my students: music is an ambiguous power,” Miller said in response to a question by Roberts. “You can use it to foment groups that lift up division or hatred of others, and so I think we have to be intentional about the words we put into our mouths and the music as well,” including “looking around and saying, ‘Who’s singing with me?’ I think that’s a thing as well — who’s there in the group singing with you? How can you continually reach out for different contexts, different cultures or races or generations or beliefs?”

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As he collaborates with various lyricists, “I’m looking for how we stay rooted in being a follower of Jesus, but I want my music to have broad values that all of us can lean into,” including justice, inclusion, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace-building and Earth care, Miller said. “Those are the pieces that are going to speak to the generations coming and all of us who are here.”

Miller said he’s gone through “a lot of hardship and a lot of loss lately. Music is how I talk to God.” Last year he wrote “Sing Me Home” with a PC(USA) pastor, the Rev. Sarah Speed. “Sing Me Home” concludes with these lyrics: “And when the time for parting comes, God’s love is still flowing. So let us join that song of love, which even now is growing.”

“When I’m feeling like I’m lost, just sing me home. I believe that,” Miller told the hosts. “I believe in the power of singing together.”

When asked what brings him joy or what’s been helpful in some way, Miller said he “was going to make a joke about Beer & Hymns. Those are two things that bring me joy,” and the crowd applauded.

He said he’s been reading a book by historian Charles King on Handel’s “Messiah” called “Every Valley.”

“It reminds me of the context of hard times,” Miller said. “I always thought of Handel being a superstar who had it easy, but he didn’t. He struggled. The book helps me think of things in context and our life together.”

Miller and his husband have two grown children. Their daughter recently gave birth to a baby boy, and they’re living with her fathers.

“Being a grandfather has brought a whole new dimension to our life. No matter what’s going on in our world — which is significant — or in our personal life, to hold that baby is one of the most healing things, and I give thanks.”

Miller even named a hymn tune after his grandson. The hymn, written with David Bjorlin, is “Can Anything Anywhere Hinder God’s Love.”

Abushakra asked Miller one final favor: “Can you lead us in the next couple of songs?”

Miller smiled and obliged, sitting at a keyboard to help those gathered sing his snappy version of “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” and his tender “Child of God,” for which he wrote the lyrics.

Previous editions of “Sounding Board” can be heard here.