By Michael Brenner
Church of the Beloved is a unique congregation, and it has the online catalogue to prove it.
With several albums available on its website for download and online listening, the congregation has unabashedly taken its unique approach to living the gospel directly to the people. The music reflects the congregation’s creative style, which is a melding of theology, music and liturgy. There are new approaches to commonly sung liturgical pieces such as “Let us Pray” but also numerous worship and contemplative songs in diverse styles and voices.
“We started with a number of musicians, writing music that was theologically rich, relatable and at the same time within musical sensibilities that were natural to us,” says Ryan Marsh, who goes by the title of “architect,” as well as pastor.
The congregation’s first album has now been downloaded 10,000 times, and a subsequent album was crowdfunded through the website Kickstarter. The quality of the albums, in both sound and cover art, is impressive for a small and relatively new congregation in Edmonds, Wash., 15 to 20 miles north of Seattle.
The music started eight years ago, when the congregation made music wherever it could find the space – friends’ places, living rooms, sanctuaries and wherever else it was possible. Inevitably, the idea came to fund the congregation with album sales, but the group decided against it. Instead, downloaders can name their own price – even if that price is zero.
“It would be a greater gift to the church if we were able to offer it for free,” Ryan says. “We want it to be a gift.”
Still, the music is just a portion of Beloved’s unique style. The pastor himself is not a pastor in the technical sense. Ryan is not ordained, thus the “architect” title, although he is currently working toward a Master of Divinity. At the founding of the ministry, he was brought in as a mission developer.
Unique congregation with a unique outreach
Beloved’s uniqueness was deliberate from its beginning. The congregation’s genesis came in 2004 when a committee attempted to address the declining church attendance among the local population. In the Seattle area, the statistics were particularly discouraging – among the three most populous counties in Washington, only 6 percent of people were in church on Sunday mornings.
“It seemed to me that we were constantly losing contact with the populations we’re in,” says Gary Rothenberger, a member of that committee.
The initial target was the millennial generation, but the committee soon found itself targeting a mindset rather than a specific demographic. The vision of the new congregation soon began to consist of creative, experiential worship and an effort to create a sense of community in a diverse and fragmented society.
Ryan came aboard in 2006, and by early 2007 Church of the Beloved was organized with an emphasis on being authentic, honest with itself and inviting others to be completely honest with themselves as well.
“A lot of what we do is just say yes to new opportunities,” Ryan says.
A non-musical example of this was a twist on a recent phenomenon in which people confessed their sins and secrets via mail. But rather than indulging in this type of voyeurism and confession without absolution, they’re accepting postcards with a written prayer with the intention of praying for that particular person.
As the congregation continues to reach out and embrace new opportunities, newcomer Jacqueline Cuayo has become integral. She is the community ministry coordinator, which means her main role is to facilitate communication between groups and church members, and also between the congregation and the community. She creates an “almost weekly” newsletter, manages and recruits volunteers, creates prayer teams and generally creates organization when needed.
Her role is more than simply logistics, though. Having been a member of the church before she became part of its organizational structure, she has been involved in the creative and theological direction of the congregation for several years. Like her dryer, managerial role, the congregation’s creative branch is also about facilitating and passing information from one place to another and helping people connect. In the case of music, the hope is that God becomes a part of the communication loop.
“We are a group of people that want to worship God and follow the way of Jesus in a way that we can connect to in a modern-day language,” Jacqueline says. “How do we say the same thing but in a way that traditional non-religious people might connect with it?”
Michael Brenner is a graduate of Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, a legal researcher and a former journalist.
