The Place of Music and Faith in Community Building

I went to the Augustana Lutheran Church for the first time in 2023. I was working with a Catholic Non-Profit healthcare system, we had just launched a large, once in three decades brand campaign and I wanted to inject a sense of community, joy, and interdenominational solidarity. What better way to accomplish that than with music?

I called LaRhonda Steele, an award-winning First Lady of Portland, Oregon Blues. Among her many accomplishments, she founded and has led the Portland Interfaith Gospel Choir for 15 years. The call started like this, "Hi LaRhonda, you don't know me, but I've watched you perform and would love to talk to you about doing a concert to support a healthcare organization." She said yes and let me proceed to the ask. I outlined 5 or 6 songs that I thought would be inspiring for the moment and fun for the audience. I understand now it was a pretty ridiculous ask. She was patient and gracious but quickly set expectations, "You know this is a gospel choir of community members, right? Not a band." I had unwisely started my ask the way i might select songs for a karaoke session. She said she'd get back to me with some ideas and what she came up with was beautiful. She recommended performing at Augustana Lutheran Church. The performance would be taped for us to use in social and other marketing channels. This particular church had been doing livestreams of their services so they were comfortable with the Audio/Visual tech so we didn't have to provide it.

Five months later, the choir performed the songs as a group and highlighted a couple of soloists. She transformed a couple of the songs to fit the ensemble and the band which featured a saxophone, bass, and her husband on the piano. She even changed the lyrics of one of the songs to include the name of the healthcare system. They knocked it out of the park.

Sitting in the front pew listening to the concert with friends I reflected on how powerful music and faith are in reaching our hearts and souls and how important connection is when we are building community. Music and faith are accessible to anyone who wants them, engaging with them can be a solo effort or done in groups. There's very little friction.

The church they performed in is beautiful both in reality and in vision. It's an incredibly progressive church and though its services are rooted in Christianity, the culture is very all-are-welcome. Those of Christian, Muslim, Catholic, and Protestant faiths, or just those of good will. I hadn't attended church in Portland and I was sold on both the substance of the messaging and the cultural vibes.

In a recent service, the newer Associate Pastor led the church in a couple of songs taught to children. Ones that resonate even if, like me, you don't attend services on the regular. Nearly everyone, young and old, members and non-members of the church, knew the words and joined in.

The building is solar-powered. The Pastor likes to say it is powered by The Son and the sun. It's a sanctuary church that provides sermons, services, and community outreach. The Sunday Service in English is followed by a service in Spanish. It embodies the philosophy that we can root ourselves in small, meaningful communities by starting wide.

All are welcome. How you participate is up to you.

In marketing and communications we often say, "Show, don't tell."

• You don't have to tell me you support our Hispanic community when you create content in Spanish.

• You don't have to tell me you care about the earth, when the building you occupy is sustained by solar power.

• You don't have to tell me you lead, when you were one of the nation's first sanctuary churches.

• You don't have to tell me you want your message to go wide when you provide it in-person and in a video livestream.

• You don't have to tell me you believe in diversity when your musical rotation includes classical, contemporary, jazz, and gospel.

• You don't have to tell me you're inclusive when your tagline is, "When you're here, you're home."

• You don't have to tell me you believe every single human is worthy, accepted, and loved when you invite every race, religion, color and creed to your house of worship.

We often craft our marketing campaigns to grow a business, build community, and/or retain customers and loyalty for our brands. We do that with content. But that content can't just be pushed. It also needs to be pulled. In a church, Pastors and other leaders, and the choir or band create the content, but we are invited to participate. We are pulled to be a part of it.

Curation of the content (the Holy Bible in this case) allows for deeper engagement. For women's month the church highlighted passages that tell the story of the women of the bible:

• The Discarded Women - Hagar & Tamar in Genesis

• The Royal Women - Ruth & Bathsheba in Ruth, Samuel, and Kings

• The "Wicked" Women - Delilah & Jezebel in Judges and Kings

• The Warrior Women - Deborah & Jael in Judges

• The Marys - Across the Gospels

I'm not an expert on the bible. I don't know about you, but I have never been more compelled to learn more about these women. The curation is the key. They're the stories that already exist, inspire, and teach. They didn't create new content. They reframed it to resonate and to be more relevant.

They are screening films and documentaries acknowledging the role women play in justice and equality including RBG, The Six Triple Eight, and Brave. All furthering the goals and objectives of the church: reduce suffering, share wisdom, create community, and make the world a better place. Those are lofty goals and objectives with exceptional strategies and tactics. In this case they didn't use their own content, they used content that already matched their mission and shared to the benefit of the art and the people. Excellent illustration of how to reach one person, one community, one city, one country at a time and potentially impact the whole world.

The content that is created in the church; the sermons, the music, the programs, the onboarding of new members, the acknowledgement of those who are young or visiting, the participation and loyalty of members — are all steeped in the culture that all are welcome.

That's a solid, sustainable marketing strategy that can be measured by the size of a congregation, participation at events, and reach of the video content. But the real magic is happening in things you can't measure. As we say, "Not everything that matters can be measured."

We can't measure the joy of the congregation gathering, the insight or laughter when the Pastor connects a lesson from the bible to our current day lives, the little bit of cringe and mostly connectedness we feel when we are asked to look to our left and right and tell that person they are worthy and loved or may God be with you. We can't measure it, but we can feel it. The shared connectedness that happens when we sing together with our voices strong and weak, good and not so good is immeasurable and important. All are welcome to sing.

Concerts and festivals are built around community in much the same way. We attend Phish concerts and have a Phish family. I have attended Billy Idol concerts with one of my best friends for years. When he is nominated for the Music Hall of Fame we celebrate as if it were our win.

Trust is built in communities when trust is both given and earned. The Pastor speaks about his thinking evolved in college with all-night discussion sessions with friends. He shares his experiences, good and difficult, of being part of a mixed race couple. He shares that, you might not know it now, but he used to have long hair and wear platform shoes. Those stories do more than tell who he is. It shows that we are all diverse, interesting, complicated people and the only way to get to know each other is by sharing authentically and being curious.

Improving marketing performance, strengthening a team, building community, teaching (and changing) best practices, solving problems, and standing up for values is rarely accomplished solo.

Collaboration and content align us when we feel like there is nothing that can bring us together. If we just push (our content, our campaign, our story) without pulling it diminishes opportunity to create community. Done well, that collaboration and community-building grows because it's so good we want to share it.