March 6–8, 2026 at Castleton UMC
Music That Makes Community is rooted in the belief that community is a basic human need and song is a basic human language: Healing, transformation, and wholeness can flow when these are tended with care.
Music That Makes Community is coming to Indianapolis!
Rooted in Christian contemplative and activist traditions, Music That Makes Community invites worshippers, congregants, musicians, and song leaders into a three-day experience of communal singing. Together, we explore how singing can heal our spirits, nurture our shared life, and help us imagine a more just world.
This gathering is especially for worshippers and congregants, including those who don’t think of themselves as singers or musicians. Trained musicians, choral singers, clergy, and music leaders are also warmly invited. We come together to explore more participatory, community-centered ways of making music.
Over the weekend, we will sing, listen, move, and learn together in spaces designed as laboratories of learning, discovery, and communal joy. These are not performances or lectures, but shared practices rooted in curiosity, playfulness, deep listening, and embodied participation.
Here Is The Weekend Schedule
Register to join us for one or all of the following events.
Friday Night Community SING
Friday, March 6 | 7:00-8:30 PM
an open, welcoming evening of shared song
Saturday Community Singing Workshop
Saturday, March 7 | 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Hands-on, embodied learning centered on participation and shared leadership. Lunch provided.
Sunday Morning Worship, Lunch and Workshop
Sunday, March 8 | 10:00 AM – 2:00pm
What to Know For Our Weekend of Music
Whether you’ve never sung a note in your life, or you’re a seasoned musician, the Music Makes Community Weekend will be special for everyone.
You do not need to:
- Read music
- Sing alone
- Have prior musical training
- Consider yourself a “singer.”
If you can breathe, you can participate.
What we practice together:
- Participation over performance
- Affirmation of skills, personhood, and experiences
- Radical welcome, inclusion, and hospitality
- Shared leadership
- Noticing rather than judging
- Culture making that is compassionate and dream-worthy
- Centering those who have been on the margins
- Making room for many kinds of voices, bodies, identities, and experiences
- Fully embodied music-making, including movement, sign, and space
If you are a musician, song leader, or choral singer:
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Develop skills they didn’t teach you in school and college:
- How musical leadership builds community through deep engagement
- What happens when musicianship serves community rather than performance
- Practices that engage the whole body: voice, breath, movement, and attention
- Ways of singing that shape our spiritual lives, our relationships, and our shared values.
- How music can help communities practice belonging, trust, and justice
Many “musicians” (we are all musicians!) find this work both refreshing and challenging because it reorients the work directly to our W(w)holeness. It asks different questions about leadership, listening, creativity, and what our skills are ultimately for.
This residency is part of a yearlong effort at CUMC that explores communal singing as sacramental presence. The project is made possible through a Vital Worship, Vital Preaching Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan, with funds provided by Lilly Endowment Inc.
Register Today!
Complete the form below to reserve your spot