Conway FUMC Music Department

07/20/2026

This past week I have been studying and working alongside colleagues and friends from all over the United States learning new music and exchanging ideas at the Sewanee Church Music Conference, which takes place each July at the University of the South. We gather to sing together, learn, and to celebrate the Holy Eucharist each day. Not only is this one of the longest standing convocations of church musicians in the country, it is among the most venerable. Most importantly, it offers those who minister in music to the faithful a needed week of retreat, to enter into the sacred mysteries apart from leadership for introspection and quietude outside our regular daily duties to God, Church, and the liturgy. I am grateful to FUMC, Conway for this opportunity of mindful rest.

Here is the link to the video recording of this year's choral evensong in All Saints Chapel. Choirmaster: Huw Lewis; Organist: Bruce Neswick.

https://vimeo.com/1205567593?share=copy&fl=cl&fe=ci&fbclid=IwZnRzaATK-OVwZG9mAWZkaWQWUK6czAde5D3sn5YuSW3sHJ2X_7v0QGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR7sB1w9K7dB2HGYM_1L-PsJON-Z4zUx8nWgnTjkqtkEYACE7z7cpTyyN9mY-w_aem_ChFbKwpElTzSIePLKgJOUA

This is "Worship at All Saints' Chapel" by Sewanee Media Services on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

07/01/2026

Outreach in Music: Sharing the Light
Jason Saugey, Director of Music and Worship Ministries

I love the United Methodist acolyte practice of relighting the wands from the altar lamps as the worship service concludes. What clear and profound symbolism, that from our sanctuary where we have just encountered God face to face in Word and Sacrament, the Light is taken out into the world. That's a transformative action by a people transformed, made new in the eternal light of the Holy Trinity, carrying the Light on our journey and illuminating and inviting others to join the walk.

What happens to us on Sunday mornings as we kneel at the rail and listen attentively to our Lord as the Gospel is proclaimed in our midst isn't the result of what we do in the week, but rather has as its result what we do when we go our separate ways together, carrying the Light. Worship isn't a reward (or award) AFTER the journey, but food specifically FOR the journey.

This ancient notion of sharing our Light means we're not meant to operate in isolation. And we can't. Wesley himself reminds us of such. And that vocation of the Christ-follower extends to every ministry in the church, including music. On a very basic level, the hymns we sing and the choral anthems offered are part of this spiritual food. They are meant to be taken along out into the world to accompany the faithful in our life and work with and among others. Further, the work we do in music itself extends outside our walls into the community and thus invites the community into our own faith community. Our external interaction, our musical outreach, takes the Gospel message to the streets and opens our doors to a world yearning to learn more, experience more, to find out more what it means to journey in faith. God speaks always, even through the bricks and columns that look out onto Clifton.

The music department of FUMC, Conway has for generations sought always to carry out and share the Light with the world through outreach to the community of Conway and Central Arkansas both in faith-based and civic contexts. Here are some of the ways we do and have done that most recently:

Our choral scholars sang as an ensemble at an ecumenical prayer service in Veterans Plaza, Conway.

Our Chancel Choir assembled mid-week (many using their lunch hour) with our Messiah scores to sing a Halleluiah Chorus flash-mob at the ribbon cutting for Conway's Pink House.

We hosted, along with St. Peter's and the central Arkansas organ guild, 30 children from across the area of various faith traditions in a day-long organ introduction program called Pedals, Pipes, and Pizza.

Each year in early summer, we offer a week-long music camp for children and youth, open to parishioner families as well as any child or young adult in the community.

Yearly in Lent, we invite the community to Noonday Prayer on Fridays, which features ecumenical prayer and lessons from the Scriptures, incorporating a brief, themed organ recital played by a central Arkansas organist. The event draws organists and faithful each year from all four corners of the state to pray, worship, and contemplate in our sanctuary.

We offer residency to two exemplary music communities in Conway: the Conway Composers' Guild and the Diamond State Women's Chorus. Their programs and concerts are free and open to the public, many of whom would never otherwise experience what music is like under our dome. And how our Lord turns hearts heavenward.

Annually, our Chancel Choir collaborates with the choir of St. Peter's either to offer combined choral evensong or to sing a major choral work of the sacred repertoire. Next year, we are thrilled to announce our choirs will be joined by the treble voices of the Diamond State Women's Chorus to offer Henry Purcell's stirring Funeral Antiphons for Queen Mary and John Rutter's beloved Requiem. That choral event will take place at St. Peter's.

Pentecost Sunday, 2026, our Chancel Choir participated in a convocational service of Pentecost hosted by Salem UMC, Conway, we, along with several other Arkansas UMC choirs, shared anthems, worshiped, and prayed together on this feast of feasts. A way to strengthen choir and worship communities and an outward sign of unity within the church.

If you missed any of these several outreach events this past year by the FUMC music department and friends and wish to take part or attend similar events in the future, watch for event notices on this page and/or read, mark, and inwardly digest the announcements insert in your bulletin and look for posters around the church.

One way to be certain never to miss out on any of our musical events is to become actively engaged in music at FUMC. Become a singer in one of our vocal choirs, join one of our bell choirs, or even volunteer in the department as an adult helper for children's programs or even by assisting in music cataloging and filing. If you have children or youth, register them in our music program this fall for young people. Of course, if you're not a singer, but play some other instrument, there is room for you too.

Come, join with us as we carry the Light and share the kingdom by singing the song of the Light of light, not only to and with those who worship here regularly, but to the entire kingdom of God outside our walls.

06/24/2026

Lessons learned from ancient stones
Jason Saugey, Director of Music and Worship Ministries

Today is the feast day of the birth of John the Baptizer. It's a time to remember the one who called us to prepare the way. A relative of Jesus he was, and his peer. The first to recognize Jesus as the Christ, even before birth, when he leapt in the womb as the Blessed Mother came to visit his mother Elizabeth to tell her of good news.

St. John is also the patron of my family's ancestral church in Leopoldshall. The church was dedicated 150 years ago, in February, 1876 and has maintained a congregation since, even through the years of communism. It saw the first and second world wars — my great uncles are remembered on the plaque in the narthex, Paul and Georg — and the reunification and its rebirth, having been restored to its original appearance, its stained glass lovingly repaired.

I first saw it myself in 1990, not long after travel into the former east was open to everyone. Before then, the church, our house, and the town were all the subjects of real, but seemingly imaginary myths. They existed, but for us, only in memories.

In 1990, the church stood dark and sad in the square, as if it were a jagged, mournful stone cliff thrust up from the earth through the weedy cobbles around it. The buildings that lined the church square were no more cheerful than St. John. Grey, forlorn, blank. The bustle of a town center in the stories I knew was long past. Whatever life was still here was hidden, private. Embers of a fire buried deep from sight to smolder for rekindling at a later time.

St. John's windows were dusty, many panes broken out, some boarded over. But the bulletin board near the door indicated a current service schedule. There was life here, despite all this. And, the door was open. The sexton was there tidying up the space to prepare for Sunday.

Inside, St. John was just as tired. My mother often described the nave, beautifully stenciled, the apse painted a dark blue dotted with gold stars. A celestial canopy for the altar. Today, the entirety of the church wept a pale mauve, likely the only paint available to whoever had connections. A blessing, paint. One did what one could.

Nonetheless, people gathered here weekly for worship through those decades. They kept St. John alive in what little ways they could. Regardless the risks.

There's a groundedness in that way of thinking. A rootedness, a heritage. Not a clinging to the past — for those who remained, that was gone after Potsdam and Yalta — but an adherence to an identity and a purpose as creatures of God. Lutherans who had defied the NS regime as a confessing church in the 1930's and 40's (having lost several pastors in the process) and who had persisted afterwards in the shadow of Honecker's.

On Palm Sunday, 1944, a group of 14 year olds were poised to receive confirmation. My mother's class. They had withstood their public questioning before the congregation from the catechism and Holy Scripture the Sunday before. As they came forward from the front pew to kneel, the sirens wailed. Bombs. As American shells thundered and quaked the earth around Leopoldshall and neighboring Staßfurt, St. John trembled, glass rattled, the chandeliers swung across the nave. Parishioners ducked under the benches.

The faithful persisted. They did not flee out into the street once the planes had flown on. They remained. And they worshiped. The youth were confirmed, and the Holy Eucharist was celebrated.

A congregation full of joy yet no strangers to adversity. And they certainly weren't slaves to convenience.

Growing up, Sunday mornings were set apart. The only two circumstances to kept us from attending were contagious, debilitating illness or flooded or otherwise impassible roadways.

"I was confirmed as the bombs fell." Was the quote that rendered any possible excuse not to head churchward on Sunday morning utterly invalid. Likewise, proposing participation in any other event on a Sunday between 8am and 1pm was tantamount to dividing by zero.

No doubt that fidelity was rooted in a collective heritage far older than me, any of my siblings, or even my mother. Not so much a sense of obedience, as one of obligation. A necessity to render thanks. A recognition that on Sundays, there are no options other than that.

These are things of sacred mystery. Of Christian heritage. A living practice of worship rooted in the journey with the Most Holy Trinity. A yearning for worship in the beauty of holiness. All else we do originates in this face-to-face encounter with the divine.

On this day, I remember St. John as he pointed to the Lamb of God. And I remember our ancestral parish church that has through 150 years done the same. And I am thankful every day for the example of the saints. Who persisted. And insist that we do too.

04/26/2026

Congratulations and many thanks for a splendid singing this afternoon of the Mozart Dominicus-Messe, K. 66. The Mass was sung in concert format by the combined choirs of First United Methodist and St. Peter's Episcopal. The stellar solo quartet: Kyla Blickenstaff, soprano; JoAna Rusche, mezzo; Gregory Church, tenor; Benjamin Thorburn, bass.

Choral music and in particular sacred choral music bridges and unites. An outward expression of God's kingdom now. This is the power of worship in the beauty of holiness: it seeks not to mimic the secular, but truly to be counter-cultural by offering a glimpse of something far beyond ourselves, a blessed opportunity to enter into sacred mystery.

12/24/2025

The Liturgy and Sacred Music of Christmas
Jason Saugey, Director of Music and Worship Ministries

“But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” – Luke 2

Worship is a response of the soul to the quiet economy of the Holy Spirit through the encounter with sacred mystery, an outward expression of the Trinitarian life. Christ-followers gather for a sacred meal, prayers and song — for the liturgy — in which we come face to face with God: God making themselves real to the human senses and to the intellect though Word and Sacrament.

We are no mere visitors observing a sacred rite, but active participants, witnesses to God’s salvific work which itself transcends time, ever on-going in God’s eternal and glorious Now. The eve of Christmas Day anticipates the birth of the miraculous, and in these final hours of our shadowy Advent waiting, we are afforded the first glimpse of the wondrous Luminescence begotten of Light. Such a light like a precious pearl formed from the shimmering, prismatic inner surface of its shell.

Apart from the liturgy, sacred music is of itself not worship, but in combination with it, music expands the spoken word, magnifies it, and gives it dimension, shading, and color. Through gesture and word, the liturgy manifests the beatific vision, and it is in this resulting participation with the Divine who speaks through and meets us in the liturgy that worship logically follows.

The music of Christmas Eve guides our hearts and minds as we, through the working of the liturgy, come to kneel in the stable with the shepherds. Peter Warlock (1894–1930) brings us to the City of David with our introit, Riches Everlastingly. The 11th century text recalls the birth of our Lord, that he came into the world a noble King, yet lapped in rags, a King both human and divine, his royal chamber a stable, his bed a trough. Before us: God revealed. An exhortation to worship.

Stephen Paulus (1949–2014) paraphrases Christina Rosetti’s timeless Christmas poem in his anthem Snow had fallen; Christ was born. Rosetti’s depiction of the nativity is decidedly European with a cold December, snow, and ice. Far from what we know would have been the conditions in the Middle East, at whatever time of year historically Christ entered the world. Nonetheless, the bitter cold of Rosetti’s verses gives us a sense of the adversity into which the Child came, not only the austerity of the stable, but more broadly, the agony ahead: his important work for our salvation, his passion and death. We rejoice today, for tomorrow, this newborn Savior King dies upon the gibbet of the cross. We bring him gifts at Christmas that will soon line his winding path to the Skull Place, including us ourselves, his death the price for our human disobedience.

Pablo Casals’s (1876–1968) breathtaking anthem for women’s voices, Nigra sum, sed formosa, sets a beautiful text from the first chapter of the Song of Solomon. The Beloved, ruddy, yet shapely, is invited by the King to arise and enter into his bed chamber. Through their union, the winter passes, the rains cease, and flowers spring up in the land. Yet with this floral abundance comes also the pruning season (tempus putationis advenit). Here in the Scriptures, we encounter our Lord Christ with his Bride, the Church, recognizing in this text at Christmas, what will be. And, that, despite the resplendent manifold blooms, cutting them back will be necessary: there is still penance to do, soul-reflection, making amends. The work is not done. But: all gardeners know that judicious pruning ensures greater and constant abundance. Through pain and sacrifice there is growth. Here is our faith-journey, a journey that begins in Bethlehem.

The service concludes with Francis Poulenc’s (1899–1963) beloved motet for Christmas, O magnum mysterium, O great mystery. It offers a most intimate text taken from the Matins of Christmas. We are called to ponder on the scene in the stable: what wondrous sign is this? What mystery is taking shape here? What is this that has taken on flesh? And of what worth am I that this should happen? Certainly a weighty personal inventory to recall in the dusty light of the manger. Our answer does not come from Joseph or the shepherds or even later from the magi of the Orient, but from the child’s blessed Mother, who holds all these things in her heart. From the time of the annunciation when the angel appeared to her, her Yes made of her the handmaiden of the Lord, the Theotokos, the God-Bearer. The vividly worded Latin text speaks of viscera, customarily translated “womb”. But this word is so much more: Mary’s insides, her innermost parts. Such a precise image, clearly expressing that the Child, both divine and human, was intimately part of his Mother’s body. Mary was the human vessel that held God, a miraculous child. Indeed a great mystery. And here also the animals look on, themselves important aspects of God’s creation. Mention of them here harkens to another similar liturgical text, customarily sung on Good Friday, when, at another place, many, including his Mother, gather around to witness our Lord in adversity. At Golgotha, where animalia refers to the two crucified with him. A notion rudely shocking to our modern sensibilities. Yet, with deeper reflection, we come to realize that the two with Jesus in his final hours were outcasts, seen as less-than, accused and found guilty. But nonetheless they too bear witness to his life-bringing death, just as the beasts in the stable watched as hope was born. At the manger we witness not just hope for some, but hope for all. For everyone. For all of creation.

At Christmas we hear announced to us angels’ message. We gather with the animals, the shepherds, with Joseph, and with Mary at a splintery, rough-hewn manger. Through Word and Sacrament we are made active, full participants in the mystery of the incarnation as the liturgy and her sacred music open up to us in majestic splendor all which we currently see only in part. It is the heralding of God’s kingdom. The start of our journey with our infant Lord.

The Chancel Choir, the First Service Singers, the Chancel Ringers, the Bells of Grace, and I wish you all peace for a merry Christmas and a blessed and prosperous new year. Like Mary, the Mother of God, may your time spent in quiet adoration of our rag-lapped King for ever remain in your hearts throughout your journey with Lord Christ and in relationship with the Most Holy Trinity.