Voices Together committee holds final meeting
A stack of paper containing 780 songs and a binder of 320 worship resources greeted each member of the Voices Together committee when they arrived for their 10th and final committee meeting in early October. In nine previous meetings, the committee had discussed content to include in this new worship and song collection for the…
Voices Together hymnal discounts extended
HARRISONBURG, Va.—Due to a high response rate, MennoMedia is extending the Voices Together case quantity discount until Dec. 1, 2019. The quantity discount was to be for the first 10,000 copies of the pew edition sold. But presales surpassed 10,000 copies by the first week in October. The case quantity discount for Voices Together—5 percent…
A farewell to the ‘blue hymnal’
Over the span of a single weekend, Sean Goerzen sang or played every single hymn in the blue-backed Hymnal: A Worship Book. All 658 of them. “I feel like I know the hymnal in a very intimate way now,” he says with a laugh. Goerzen organized Sargent Avenue Mennonite Church’s hymnal sing-a-thon, a two-day event…
Voices Together taking pre-orders, website redesign goes live
HARRISONBURG, Va.—MennoMedia is now taking pre-orders for Voices Together, the new hymnal releasing in fall 2020. Pre-order sales of the new worship and song collection coincide with the launch of the newly designed VoicesTogetherHymnal.org website. The updated site includes information on the hymnal’s table of contents, FAQs, bundles and ordering information, samples of projection edition…
Come to the table
For two evenings in March, Sarah Kathleen Johnson led an Anabaptist Learning Workshop focused on the ritual of communion, at Rockway Mennonite Church in Kitchener. Johnson, who is the worship resources editor for Voices Together, the Mennonite worship and song collection currently being developed, led participants from several churches in exploring communion from a variety…
Bringing diverse voices together
Mennonites are stereotyped as people who love singing and forming committees. Anneli Loepp Thiessen fulfills both of these stereotypes. The 23-year-old is one of 12 people from Canada and the United States who make up the Voices Together committee charged with making a new Mennonite hymnal planned for release in 2020. Voices Together is a…
Voices Together visual art chosen
Visual art for the Voices Together hymnal has been chosen by the Mennonite Worship and Song Committee. The 12 visual art pieces selected will appear in the forthcoming hymnal—including the pew, worship leader, digital app and projection editions. These pieces will be placed throughout Voices Together, inviting worshippers to encounter God creatively in ways that engage…
Eastern Canada youth sing from hymnal-in-progress
SAUBLE BEACH, ONT.—Mennonite Church Eastern Canada hosted its annual youth retreat on the first weekend of February at Silver Lake Mennonite Camp, Sauble Beach, Ont. This year, more than 40 youth from seven regional churches attended the retreat, says Jean Lehn Epp, interim youth ministry resources coordinator. This number has declined in recent years, with…
Is there such a thing as a Mennonite song?
How many of the songs in our Hymnal: A Worship Book (HWB), and the two supplements Sing the Journey and Sing the Story do you think are Mennonite? What does that even mean? If it means songs that are embraced by Mennonites in worship, well, the answer might be all of them. If it means songs with what…
Singing a new song
What will the Mennonite church in North America look like in the next 30 years? No one has a crystal ball, but one group of forward-thinking people is helping us imagine how we might be doing congregational worship in the next generation. Last weekend, I attended a one-day resourcing event on Voices Together, the new…
