Yes, it’s true! Just 7 months after the release of “Detectives of Divinity” – the “latest and greatest” SmallTall Music release – there’s ANOTHER new CD in the works. How can this be? I’m glad you asked!

We are putting together a “compilation album” of songs drawn from my 5 CDs released over the past 10 years. Brian McLaren and Dave Csinos have written a wonderful introduction to the project, and we look forward to sharing it with a broader audience!

You can pre-purchase the CD here.

This project was sparked in conversation with Dave Csinos, organizer for the “Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity” conference in Washington, D.C. on May 7-10, 2012, which will include speakers like Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, the Wallis family, Ivy Beckwith, John Westerhoff, Tony Campolo, and many others. I was delighted to be asked to lead music at the conference and to be one of the co-planners/leaders for the worship times, and in our conversations the idea for this project bubbled to the surface. Of all the songs that I’ve written and released over the past 10 years, what would be the “top 15″ that Dave Csinos and Brian McLaren would want everyone at the CYNKC conference to know and to share with their communities when they returned home?

Well, the selections have been made… we’re calling the compilation “New World Coming,” and it’s available for pre-purchase here… These are the tunes (and their source albums), including a brand new recording of “You’re Not Alone,” with the inimitable Charlene Nafziger on piano…

1) New World Coming (from Detectives of Divinity, 2011)

2) God’s Love is for Everybody (from God’s Love is for Everybody, 2002)

3) Peace Meal (from Detectives of Divinity, 2011)

4) You’re Not Alone (new recording, featuring Charlene Nafziger on piano)

5) I Will Bless You (from A New Heart, 2009)

6) Disciples-In-Training (from God’s Love is for Everybody, 2002)

7) A God Who Makes Friends (from God’s Love is for Everybody, 2002)

Take Good Care (from My Money Talks, 2007)

9) Enough For All (from My Money Talks, 2007)

10) When You Learn to Follow Jesus (You Will Act A Little Strange) (from God’s Love is for Everybody, 2002)

11) Thank You (from Can’t Keep Quiet, 2005)

12) Infiltrating the World (from A New Heart, 2009)

13) No Longer Strange (from Detectives of Divinity, 2011)

14) Peace Be With You (from Can’t Keep Quiet, 2005)

15) Detectives of Divinity (from Detectives of Divinity, 2011)  You Can Shine (from Can’t Keep Quiet, 2005)

What do you think? What would YOUR “top 15″ list look like, from the past 10 years of smalltall songs?

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The mystery, horror and hope of this season – so central to Christian faith – is something that I have struggled to find ways to sing. How to understand the meaning(s) of the cross… how to SING this… continues to be a challenge for me.

On Monday we had a great session in the studio, recording a new version of “You’re Not Alone” with Charlene Nafziger on piano. The timing of the session hadn’t really struck me until we started recording this song, all about solidarity in suffering – our solidarity with each other, and God’s solidarity with us. Doing this at the beginning of Passion Week was especially moving for me, and especially with the recent awareness of new suffering and pain in the lives of a number of people I know.

I received a note this week from someone saying that she and her family are spending time with my song “For You All Things Are Possible” – a setting of Jesus’ words during his time of struggle in Gethsemane, just before his crucifixion. The conviction that “for you all things are possible,” and yet the intense wrestling match between “please take this cup from me” and “not my will but yours”…

“Lofty Words,” the last track on my latest CD, is a setting of 1 Corinthians 2, and includes these words:

I have decided that I know nothing

Nothing but Jesus, and Jesus crucified.

What kind of wisdom is this, you may ask me

What kind of power can be revealed in one who died?

There is power revealed in weakness

There is Spirit in this mess

This is far from human wisdom

It’s the power of God I guess…

And I hadn’t really thought of “Infiltrating the World” as an Easter song, but as I wrote an e-mail today, and debated what to say, I realized that this lyric said it:

I pray that you’ll be strengthened for all that lies ahead

And I pray we’ll pay attention to what the Spirit says

As we’re not-so-secret-agents in the ancient urgent cause

Of the One who died and rose again, infiltrating the world with the love of God…

Those lyrics represent a little bit of my struggle, anyway, and my prayer for you, and for all of us, this Easter.

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Here’s an introduction that Brian McLaren and Dave Csinos have written for the new project I’m working on (aiming to have it ready for release at the “Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity” (CYNKC) conference in Washington, D.C. in May).

We dream of a church (and a world) in which the young and old (and everyone in between) join hands as they walk in the way of Jesus. But so many resources seem to divide the faith community into different age groups instead of uniting us in a common mission. Bryan Moyer Suderman’s music invites many generations to come together to sing a new song to the Lord. Bryan takes up the challenge of uniting the old and the young, the tall and the small, with songs of faith that echo the depth, beauty, struggle, complexity, and unconventionality of walking in the way of Jesus.

Bryan is a minstrel, a prophet, a visionary, and a follower of Jesus who invites listeners of all ages to join him in “infiltrating the world with the love of God.” His music is captivating, his lyrics are theologically-rich and thought-provoking, and his voice invites us all to live God’s kingdom wherever we are. Whether reminding us that we are “Disciples-in-Training” or encouraging us to “Take Good Care” of the earth, Bryan’s music offers a glimpse of a new kind of Christianity, one in which the tall and small join together to worship God, disciple one another, and seek peace and justice in the world.

This new collection of Bryan’s songs is drawn from five albums released over the past ten years. We like to think of it as a “best of” album, not only because these songs have become favorites in homes, congregations, and communities around the world, but also because they offer some of the best messages that a new kind of Christianity has to share with our world, messages of peace, justice, unity, curiosity, responsibility, and cooperation.

Brian McLaren – Author, Speaker, Activist   Dave Csinos – Founder of CYNKC

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When I opened my Inbox this morning I found three different messages (from three different people) with stories of how a song of mine has touched them or proven useful to their community.

An online devotional reflecting on the text of “You’re Not Alone,” and the experience of singing (and hearing/receiving) it in the company of many others… a pastor sharing a sermon structured around the refrain “When You Learn To Follow Jesus (You Will Act A Little Strange)… and another pastor looking forward to singing “New World Coming” with her congregation, as she prepares to preach an apocalyptic text…

All this, as I continue to ruminate on the sermon that I heard at yet another church last Sunday, which has sparked at least 2 or 3 new song ideas that I am looking forward to delving into…

Amazing how this works… reminds me of the “water cycle” (or “carbon cycle” or “nitrogen cycle”) depicted in my son’s science textbooks… what goes around comes around… maybe we can call it the “inspiration cycle”…

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Judging by the many friends who are going on a “Facebook Fast” for Lent, I am tempted to observe, given my very infrequent blogging as of late, that perhaps I should give up NOT blogging as a Lenten discipline this year… (GRIN). Well, I won’t promise any kind of dramatic up-tick in blog posts, but there are some significant developments in this music ministry that I want to let you know about.

The mission statement of SmallTall Music is “to build up the body of Christ by creating and sharing songs of faith for small and tall.” 10 years on, this continues to describe very well what this music ministry is all about, I remain passionately committed to this mission (sporadic blogging notwithstanding), and am grateful to have such humble-but-important work to do, and so many colleagues and co-conspirators in the cause.

Waaaay back, when I was first dreaming what it might look like to take this songwriting thing seriously as my “main thing” instead of as a “side thing,” I was doing a lot of thinking about the nuts-and-bolts of how such a ministry might be structured, including its economic structure. Fairly early on, the diagram came to include 5 main “revenue streams,” and this “business model” has remained remarkably durable: Performances, CD sales (which has come to include songbooks and digital downloads), Publishing, Special Projects (a bit of a “catch-all” category for one-off contract work that comes up from time to time), and the Membership system.

As far as a “business model” goes, it’s that last category – based on the “community supported agriculture” or CSA model – that I saw as the most innovative, and that I hoped would grow to be a major means of support for the long term viability and sustainability of this music ministry. I thought about it a great deal, blogged about it quite a bit (here’s a series of blog posts, if you’re curious), worked hard to envision an economic structure that could be coherent with my faith and my values and the way I understand my music ministry to function.  Much to my surprise, I found this thinking/dreaming/analyzing/strategizing to be an energizing creative outlet in itself!

These were the days before Facebook… days when it took a lot of time and energy to explain to most people what “community supported agriculture” was, much less to try to describe what I had in mind by adapting this model to a form of “community supported music.” After working on this idea for a few years, I officially launched my “CSM,” invited people to join, and made my first “delivery of songs” in October 2006. Since then I have made 19 “deliveries” of songs to the “members” of SmallTall Music – some 60 new, original songs over that time, including mp3 audio files, lyrics, chords, notation, thoughts and reflections and activity ideas for how the songs might be sung and used in different kinds of settings.

It has been – and continues to be – an interesting journey, to say the least! The concept of “community supported agriculture,” of course, has spread dramatically in the past number of years. Now, instead of launching into an extended explanation of the concept and philosophy behind my CSM, all I have to say is “it’s kind of like a CSA, except with music,” and most people get the basic idea right away. And the concept of “community supported music” (and art, and theatre, and fisheries, and restaurants, and so on), in various forms, has also caught on in a “poly-genesis” kind of way, with sites like kickstarter.com making it easy to adopt elements of a “community supported” approach for all kinds of different projects and initiatives. I think this is a good thing.

At the same time, as I evaluate my own “community supported music” initiative, I have been coming to the conclusion that it is not sustainable in its current form. So I’ve begun re-thinking it from top to bottom and from the inside out. I’ve decided to put this CSM membership system “on hold” for a while, during this re-thinking process, which I expect will likely last a year or so. I expect to be posting further thoughts on this as time goes on.

Remember – the CSM is one aspect (in terms of the “business model,” it is one of the 5 “revenue streams”) of SmallTall Music. It’s a piece of the puzzle, but it’s not the whole picture. So I want to be clear – SmallTall Music is not “going away” – this music ministry continues to be very active, with a busy performance schedule and a number of exciting new projects on the horizon (I’ll try to keep you posted). The work of “building up the body of Christ by creating and sharing songs of faith for small and tall” goes on. It is a delight and a blessing to hear how this is happening, as these songs are “finding a home” in families and communities in many different places.  I am deeply grateful for this vocation, and for the encouragement and support expressed by so many people in so many ways.

And I am looking forward to discerning and taking the next steps for “community supported music” as we sing our way into the future…

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It’s a Christmastime conspiracy
There’s something going on that we
Might catch a glimpse, what can it be?
This Christmastime conspiracy…

Wise ones heard that it was said
In Bethlehem will be the bed
Of a ruler who will reign instead
Of those who think they know…

It’s a Christmastime conspiracy
There’s something going on that we
Might catch a glimpse, what can it be?
This Christmastime conspiracy…

In the fields way out of town
Out of touch, out of bounds
Watching sheep they heard the sounds
A message from a choir…

’bout a Christmastime conspiracy
There’s something going on that we
Might catch a glimpse, what can it be?
This Christmastime conspiracy…

Unlikely people seemed to know
Emmanuel, God who shows
Up in a manger, not a throne
How can this be true?

This Christmastime conspiracy
There’s something going on that we
Might catch a glimpse, what can it be?
This Christmastime conspiracy…

So pay attention here my friend
This plot it hasn’t reached the end
There’s more that’s coming round the bend
And you can play a role…

In this Christmastime conspiracy
There’s something going on that we
Might catch a glimpse, what can it be?
This Christmastime conspiracy…

(words and music by Bryan Moyer Suderman. Copyright © 2011 SmallTall Music. All rights reserved. Part of the December 2011 “delivery of songs” to the members of Bryan’s “community supported music” initiative).

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One of the delights of “doing what I do” is when someone else teaches me my song. This happens so often, and in so many ways.

It happens in the recording studio, when we’re crafting an arrangement of a song that, in many cases, I’ve been singing for a long time. But then one of the musicians I’m working with will bring something new to the table – an instrumental riff, a structural tweak, a change of tempo or “feel” – and suddenly the song is new for me and will never be the same again. I have been taught my own song, by someone who has picked it up and played it in their own way.

This is how Steve Hogg “taught me” Listen Up People (the picking pattern/counter-melody that forever changed the way I play/sing it), and how Darrin Schott “taught me” New World Coming (the little guitar “tag” at the front end of that song that has now become a “hook” that I use throughout), how J.K. Gulley and Rick Hutt “taught me” Take Heart (the slowed-down tempo and slightly revised structure that salvaged the song from the dustbin and landed it at the heart of the new CD).

Even more amazing and fulfilling, to me, is when I am “taught my own song” by a community that has embraced it, and sings it, and adapted it in whatever way to become part of who they are as a community. I’ve just come back from two weeks on the road (one week in Ohio, and another in Manitoba), where I experienced this repeatedly:

- in Stryker, Ohio, where they “taught me” Take Good Care as a simple refrain sung by the children, with actions… and “Peace Be With You” – again with their own actions and way that they have developed to use this song to bless one another.

- in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, with the request to sing “God’s Love is for Everybody” as part of a sending/commissioning service for a family moving to a different community… the moving way this commissioning was done brought out multiple meanings and levels in the song that I hadn’t realized were there…

- in Brandon, Manitoba, where the community sent me out after the concert by singing to me, as a congregation, my own “Sending Song,” as a blessing on my way (and a blessing for each concert-goer on their way)…

- in Archbold, Ohio, where after the concert the pastor approached me and asked for notation and words for the song “For Just Such A Time” because she wanted it sung at her ordination service the following week. It had become her song already…

- and on and on and on it goes.

A few years ago I was doing a concert in Saskatoon, and a little girl was in the front row with her family. They were obviously familiar with my music, and the rest of the family was singing along heartily, but she just stared, mouth open, all the way through the first 3 songs of the concert. Then, partway through the 4th, she hollered out:

“Mom! OUR music is coming out of HIS mouth…!”

What an honour, and a privilege, and a joy. When a song is embraced and adopted and adapted and transformed by a community into something that is deeply and truly their (“OUR”) own…

What more could a songwriter ask? I am deeply grateful.

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It’s here! The new CD has arrived!

You can:

- download the album from iTunes.

- buy the physical CD online with credit card (via IndiePool).

- buy the CD over the phone (via MennoMedia: 1-800-631-6535).

- buy the CD with a cheque via snailmail, directly from SmallTall Music.

You can read some more about the new CD here and here…

Can’t wait to get this music into your hands (and ears, and hearts, and families, and communities)!

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Here’s an article that appeared in Christian Week a bit ago.

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I have been invited to lead music in worship at a conference next May in Washington DC called “Children, Youth and a New Kind of Christianity.”   The event is being organized by Dave Csinos and Brian McLaren, and here’s the event’s home page, with a video clip of Brian McLaren introducing the theme. Contributors include Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne, Jim and Joy Wallis, and others… I’m guessing that if you’re reading this blog you likely have an interest/passion for this agenda as well… I’m looking forward to it and I hope you can come too!

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