Singing: A Mennonite Voice

by Marlene Kropf, Kenneth Nafziger, John Bell (Foreword)

A collection of stories and reflections gathered from ordinary Mennonite worshipers throughout North America. The scores of people interviewed by Marlene Kropf and Kenneth Nafziger show again and again that singing is a Mennonite sacrament. A companion cassette or CD, Signing: Treasures from Mennonite Worship, is also available.

Genres: Music

173 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

Reviews

[Brendan E-M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps not as meaningful in its stories as I expected - I wanted to read a greater number of personal accounts - but I still connected deeply with this book. Reading it in my senior year at a Mennonite university that is addressing contentious church issues, I resonated with the questions about how a religious culture forms and what unites a group of diverse people. Especially interesting to me were the rules of song-leading that I had never considered, and they apply to leading hymns and contemporary worship music. Most importantly, a congregation feels respected when it is given space to produce most of the sound. Don’t allow the music up front to overpower the music coming from the congregation, or they will stop singing because they no longer feel their voice is necessary. Kropf & Nafziger see this as a theological problem, and I guess I would, too.

My favorite parts of the book were Part IV (“What the Song Is Becoming”) and the Epilogue (“What Have We Learned?”). I wouldn’t press this book into just anybody’s hands, but for the reader who is interested in church politics or church music, this is the book to read.