Widening the Welcome,
Just two months ago, our stirring festival worship service - "Then Sings My Soul" - filled our sanctuary with an unexplainable energy and spontaneous expressions of praise. This was a bold and fitting conclusion to a year finally free from the grips of COVID-19, a year filled with broad and deep growth for Music & Arts at Centenary, some expected and some downright surprising: the birth of our Atrium Gallery and an 'Art in the Atrium' Series, a more-than-double increase in Children's Music & Arts Camp attendance, a well-attended Lenten Noontime music series, a Community Kindermusik Collaborative which now averages nearly 30 children and families each week, and a Chancel Choir whose roster is exploding. These are not the marks of a community strapped by the fatigue of COVID, but of one "eager to walk in God's beauty, beauty that soaks our sanctuary beauty that sets our hearts ablaze beauty that spills into the city streets beauty that heals our broken world."
I shared those thoughts about beauty in an edition of Centenary's now inactive publication Through Centenary Windows soon after my arrival in August 2019. And as we embark on this new program year, I believe deeply - deeply - that we are on the precipice of widening our welcome, expanding our embrace, offering profound expressions of beauty, and co-creating with God a community and culture beyond our imagination.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
The recent recommendation from Centenary's Trustees to replace the first five rows of sanctuary pews with movable sanctuary chairs signifies an immeasurable shift in the trajectory of worship at Centenary and, more broadly, in our Music & Arts programming. As we approach our centennial and continue to seek to be a beacon for vital worship, music, and arts, the implications of this infrastructural change are inestimable.
Our sanctuary will now be more equipped than ever to welcome and embrace our congregation and our community. Our 2023/24 Music & Arts initiatives, many of which are highlighted in the pages that follow, will reflect this:
• We will engage more intentionally with the Piedmont Wind Symphony, the Winston-Salem Symphony, UNCSA, and even Piedmont Opera as the Stevens Center undergoes a multi-year renovation and closure.
• On September 14, we will launch the "Youth Choir Collective on Fifth" for 7th-12th graders, an outreach venture designed to reignite youth interest in choral singing among youth in local churches and across the city, county, and region.
• We kick off our Art in the Atrium Series with an installation by Nicholas Burton Bragg, former Executive Director of Reynolda House, including a September 10 open house in the Atrium Commons which will likely draw wide community support. Later this fall, we invite Centenary members (including youth), Arbor Acres residents, and Winston-Salem Street School students to submit art for our Neighborhood Showcase! Proceeds from both exhibits will benefit the Street School.
• On October 15, we welcome world-class professional choir Conspirare in a program not to be missed, including a collaborative component with the Chancel Choir and new Youth Choir Collective.
• We will embark on a reimagined season of Children's Music & Arts, now a part of Wednesday-night NOURISH, with a program whose chief aim is to cultivate more regular, more varied worship leadership opportunities for our children.
• We will mark the expansion of our handbell program with a Wednesday night NOURISH class for adult beginners. (Give it a try!)
• We will develop and host a 2024 downtown choral/hymn festival, a tradition already a part of Centenary's heritage, an initiative that will again unite downtown congregations, engaging adults and youth alike.
The list goes on, but the focus is clear. We are poised to open our doors, our arms, and our hearts in ever-widening ways. As worship compels us to reach up and to reach within, our Music & Arts programming will equip us to reach out, to carry and spread the undeniable power of music and art, a power that always drives us to break down barriers, to transcend those things that divide us, to experience the transformative power of God's beauty, to co-create with God the kin-dom of heaven, here and now.
May that beauty soak our sanctuary, spill into our city streets, and heal our broken world.
Jonathan Emmons Director of Music MinistriesTO
