Singfests keep Mennonite hymns in the spotlight

Their inspiration was a marathon - a group of college students singing 658 hymns for 30 straight hours.

But Forrest Moyer, the archivist at the Mennonite Heritage Center in Harleysville, decided to spread out his version of the long-distance music run. His interpretation calls for local music lovers to gather and together croon more than 600 songs in just 12 sittings this year.

The result is a series of monthly two-hour a cappella singfests that are part of the Heritage Center's 40th anniversary celebration, a kind of Year of the Hymn that also salutes the Mennonite songbook.

Founded in 1975, the Heritage Center is a museum and library that chronicles the history of Mennonites in eastern Pennsylvania. "It was the 1970s when we began to realize that we could lose the memory of our people if we didn't start preserving our history," Moyer said.

That history includes The Mennonite Hymnal, the 1969 collection of hymns that was groundbreaking for its blend of classical, folk, and cross-cultural hymns from two Mennonite traditions. It also has become the songbook for the center's monthly hymn sings.

"Welcome and thank you for coming," Moyer said to a group of about 50 who showed up last month for the first sing.

With hymnals in their laps, the singers sat side by side on the plain wooden pews of a room in the center that resembles an early meetinghouse.

"I'm not sure we can get through 48 tonight," Moyer told them, standing up front and referring to what had been his goal for the inaugural gathering. "But stay for what you can."

Moyer, 32, was inspired by a marathon hymn sing in November at Goshen College, an Indiana school affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA.

Over 30 hours, a group of 100 students there sang every verse of the 658 hymns in Hymnal: A Worship Book, a successor to the 1969 collection.

But in Harleysville, "we certainly couldn't expect our people to go straight through," Moyer said.

So, at 4 p.m., on the second Sunday of every month, anyone who likes to sing is invited to join. After the first meeting, the group this month had swelled to about 70 attendees.

But don't expect to hear just a simple melody. With the first words of the first song in the hymnal - "Holy God" - the group delivered the kind of resonant harmony expected of a well-rehearsed choir, not a casual group of residents who got together to sing a few hymns.

Even Moyer was impressed.

"Well, that really sounds good," he said.

That's just tradition in the Mennonite church.

For years, members learned four-part harmonies because instruments were not allowed. The congregation's voices were the orchestra.

Starting in the mid-19th century, song leaders traveled to farming communities and taught residents how to sing, said music historian Mary Oyer, 91, executive secretary to the 1969 Joint Hymnal Committee.

Song leaders would help out with the farming by day and meet at night to teach singing, said Oyer, of Goshen.

"It was about recreation and joy," Oyer said. "It is one of the things that makes Mennonite singing social as well as religious."

Ruth Nafziger, 88, of Souderton, attended a church singing school when she was a teenager. She spent evenings singing with her family, gathered around a pump organ at home.

"I'm old, so I love the old [traditions]," Nafziger said.

At January's hymn sing, "there was a man sitting beside me who had a tenor voice like my [late] husband, Andy," Nafziger said, "and I loved that."

During that session, Moyer began with the first hymn in the book, "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name," planning to work his way through the songs in order.

But soon, singers began making requests, and numerical order gave way to personal favorites.

The group will focus on a different theme each month, Moyer said. In March, the Passion story will be sung.

That subject - and any song about faith - demands more than just singing, said Ted Hughes, 81, of Souderton.

"You have to feel it," said Hughes, a baritone who takes his hymnbook with him to pass the time while he waits for his wife to shop. "You have to interpret the music, and then you become part of what is on that page."

Hughes says he worries that the church is losing the tradition of a cappella four-part singing.

To become more modern, many congregations have added worship teams with instruments and singers who lead praise songs with the congregation singing along to the melody.

"Nobody has time to learn to sing" anymore, Oyer said.

At Rockhill Mennonite Church in Telford, the congregation sings only two a cappella hymns a month, said Sheila Allebach, 31, of Souderton, who attends the church. A worship band leads the remainder of the singing.

Allebach, a church musician, attends the Heritage Center's hymn sings to learn the old songs that she doesn't get to hear during services.

The hymns "give you more to meditate on," Allebach said.

Moyer maintains that the a cappella tradition isn't going anywhere.

Groups of young people, like him, love the old hymns and are keeping them alive, he said.

Moyer is doing his part with the hymn sing.

During the summer, he plans an outdoor sing-a-long. In December, a carol-filled session will close out the year.

Singing together in harmony without music generates a connection, Moyer said.

"You breathing with them, listening to them, and tuning your voice," Moyer said. "It becomes a rich, community-building experience."

12

a cappella singfests are to be held

this year.

2

hours for

each singfest.

600+

hymns to be

sung this year.

70

singers participated in the February singfest.

40

years since

the Heritage Center was founded

in 1975.

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