March 8th, 2026 - "Wilderness Survival Guide: Musica Divina" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris and the Music Staff

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us

online at FUMCbentonville.org, or check us out on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: So i'm gonna let Matt and Ken come on up here.

We're gonna do a panel today.

You're gonna get to hear from the music staff.

Um, Garrett before you disappear.

We have such phenomenal musicians as part of this church, but we were talking the

other day of all the musicians that we have, at least that play instruments.

Garrett's our longest running accompanist, so let's give Garrett a thank you,

Ken Weatherford: but by longest.

I need you to understand something

by, by longest.

I really need you to hear this.

I'm, I'm the longest sitting staff member currently at about 11 years now.

Mm-hmm.

He's been here double that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like he's been playing music here since he was in high school.

I'm so grateful we get to make music with him each and every week.

He's so, so tech.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: He probably pays bass deliberately to stay in

the background, but every once in a while we gotta bring you forward.

Um, okay.

So we are working our way through different spiritual practices

and appropriately for jazz.

Sunday we're doing music at Davina, which is encountering the Divine through music.

And you have a sheet in your bulletin that talks a little bit

about how to connect on that.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute.

And of course, we've been using the Psalms to get through this whole

series and how appropriate to use the Bible's hymn book for today.

So hear a little bit from Psalm 92.

It is good.

Give thanks to the Lord to sing praises to your name most high,

to proclaim your loyal love in the morning, your faithfulness at nighttime

with a 10 stringed harp with the melody of the liar, because you've

made me happy, Lord, by your acts.

I sing with joy because of your handiwork.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord.

Open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes.

That we might see and know the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray, amen.

So as I mentioned, we're gonna do a panel and I will tell you we've done this in

all three services and we're answering different questions in all three services.

So if you want a full exploration of music at this place and kind of how

it music drives each of us, then I encourage you to go back and watch

the early two services as well.

So today for 11 o'clock, we're going to start with this question.

What happens in a worship space when people sing together physiologically,

emotionally, spiritually?

What does communal singing do?

That listening alone does not.

I know you have an answer, Ken.

'cause we almost talked about it last time.

So you wanna go ahead and jump in there?

Ken Weatherford: You want to go, John?

I'll jump.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, uh, I, I grew up choir dork.

I've said this in all three, three services now.

Um, and, and like in high school, that was kind of the, the space

that I found myself singing a lot.

I was in two choirs, thank God, because, uh, that was the only reason

I graduated with like a 2.97 GPA.

Because I had two guarantees.

He said three point, he said, I mean, it really wasn't three.

It was, it was under it's confessing in this face.

It was a little un, you know, thank, thank God for those, a's you know.

Anyway.

Um, but choir was like, where I, I really learned to love music and it

was so cool finding an article and now it's, you know, this is 15 years

ago now, but, but scientists have literally put heart monitors on a choir.

And, uh, to see like what's going on physically with

people when they're singing.

And the really, really cool thing is when we sing together.

Our hearts, literally the rhythm of our heartbeats sink up as one.

It's absolutely one of the most incredible phenomenon to me in, in all of the world.

Uh, music literally physically moves us.

Together.

Uh, that's what's going on when we sing together.

So it's, it's a powerful, powerful part of, of worship.

It's a powerful part of just music in general, I believe as well.

But, um, singing together I think really can flat out change the world.

Yeah.

'cause it, it really.

Turns us as one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: You have anything to add, Dr. Ray?

Well,

Rev. Dr. T. Ray Wheeler: probably just the, the chance choir probably

has one heartbeat all the time,

so, uh, no, I totally agree.

And, and that, and that causes, for me, choir was always, the sum of

the parts were so much greater than the whole, and when we sing as a

congregation, the sum of the parts are, are so much greater than the whole.

Because there's something else that happens.

You know, there's some other thing that connects us and it's really beautiful.

Yeah.

I did hear, uh, uh, I went to a lecture, uh, a guy that puts electrodes on the

brain when people are playing music, playing keyboards or singing or whatever.

And uh, he was a musician, but he was doing this research, she said,

with these scientists who could do all this brain stuff, and they

would say, music is so amazing.

'cause the whole thing is lit up when you're listening, especially.

They, that whole, your whole brain is engaged and, and they, they think

it's pretty, they don't, honestly, they don't know what it means yet.

But it's really cool that you're, that you're lighting up in there.

You know, scientists won't say, you know, we know something

unless they know something.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Right.

Matt?

Matt Nelson: Um, I can also attest to, in, in addition to singing, playing

instrumental music in the same room as people I'm talking about specifically

with, um, acoustic instruments.

Um, you know, a piano, an upright bass, uh, a a a drum set, a horn of some kind.

Could be somebody singing, playing instrumental music

in a room with somebody.

The vibrations just like when you're singing or you're

literally kind of sinking up.

Um, I don't know if it's the, if it works the exact same way, but it's,

I feel like it's a very similar phenomenon and it's easy to get kind

of lost in the music and become one.

Uh, one thing, you know, something that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Yeah.

Um, I'll say, of course I study, you know, you learn all this stuff about church when

you're a pastor, and one of the things that they, that is proven is that people

that go to church actually live longer.

And there's a lot of reasons for that.

Uh, but one of them is communal singing because, um, because

it helps hold back dementia.

It does slow your heart down, you know, kind of improve that.

There's regular breathing that takes place so it centers you, and so it is one

factor of why being part of a community of faith is actually really good for you.

Then theologically, there are times I don't know about y'all.

Sometimes I feel like, I don't know if God is hearing me, but when we're all singing.

And we're blowing the roof off when Ray says that's some

good method of singing, right?

When we're blowing the roof off.

I'm like, okay, you can't miss that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I know you hear that, God.

So it's just so, so powerful for me to hear people sing together.

Alright, second question.

How does style traditional hymn, contemporary worship, instrumental

improvisational shape, how we experience the holy Does God sound different?

In different styles.

Matt, take it.

You got Mike.

Yeah.

Um, you know, I, I think there's many styles of music or genres, however,

however you wanna think about it.

Duke Ellington famously once said, there's two kinds of music.

There's bad music, and there's good music.

Um, I like good music and, and you know, that's, that's obviously,

obviously somewhat subjective, but that, that transcends, um,

any label you can put on music.

And I think what moves you, that's the music that you ought to be singing.

Um, if it's something that causes you to feel closer to God, that's it.

And I think that's one of the wonderful things about this church.

We do have different styles of worship, different styles of music in worship.

Um, and even here in the traditional service, we'll incorporate gospel

hymns and, and things that sort of widen the scope a little bit.

That's a wonderful thing.

Yeah.

God shows up in music of all kinds, at least for me.

Rev. Dr. T. Ray Wheeler: Yeah, I agree with it.

It's what speaks to you.

It's what makes you, uh, it's what opens your heart to the spiritual.

So whichever style does that.

But I agree.

There's only good music and bad music.

I mean, if you, if you go, so I attend the Gathering and I, and well, I usually

all three services and the music is sacred and holy and moves me in every service.

'cause you know, I'm kind of, now I'm used to hearing.

All of the cool things we do in, in the contemporary service as well.

So, so I'm, I'm moved by hymns and I'm moved by, you know Yeah.

The, the, the, the songs we have in gathering.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Yeah.

Ken Weatherford: I wanted to speak, especially to the,

like, you know, does God.

It sound different, and I'm gonna say this, and please, this is not about you.

Okay?

But I've been doing this for 25 plus years now, and mostly in a contemporary setting,

but I studied classically and I used to sing opera and I love to sing Broadway.

You still sing opera well, um, not when we let you, when, yeah.

Every night.

So I, I have a, a deep appreciation for a whole breadth of music and.

Unfortunately, throughout a lot of my career, I have found myself feeling

very unwelcome in traditional spaces and that used to really, really bother me.

And so I did a lot of reading and research on it and like, what's going on there?

And one article really stuck with me and it kind of compared the two.

Very basic standards of what we're calling styles here.

Uh, traditional, contemporary, you know, obviously there's a massive

depth and range within all of that, and that goes without saying.

But the comparison though was in a worship setting specifically the traditional

space is like gathering around the piano together and you're all looking

at each other and, and singing together.

And so it's this very communal.

Experience and, and way of worshiping, and then it compared

today's contemporary instead to what we see so many people today.

I, I was just walking through Denver airport yesterday and the amount of people

that had headphones on, it's immersive.

You, you kind of get lost in your own space and in your own head, and that

contemporary can kind of be that.

Yeah.

Neither one of those is wrong.

They're just different in how we experience music.

And I think that's what I went, oh, we're just experiencing these

things differently and we want others to experience the way that we do,

the way that we enjoy doing it.

And so it's maybe not anger, but we're like, well, I, I experience it this way.

Why aren't you?

That might not be the thing that resonates for you.

Maybe it's this thing over here or, or something totally different.

Yeah.

And I think that God can move in so many more ways than

those two simple definitions.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I love that musically in this church.

I mean, we were talking about this.

That, you know, this is our traditional space, but you guys do Broadway, you

do spirituals, jazz, all that stuff.

We're not really as boxed in as labels might imply, and I think that that's a

very healthy theological thing because we're pushing against boxing in God.

And when I think about how I encounter God, you know, music

for me is a very eclectic space.

You'll see, I'm gonna share some information on some playlists in a little

bit here, but I built the playlist and they're very eclectic because I am just

in all kinds of different musical spaces.

And it's not that God sounds different to me, so much as how I relate to

God is different based on the music.

Like it may cause a different emotional reaction.

It may.

Bring to mind a different scriptural setting.

Those kinds of things happen to me.

So I think that the connection to God changes with me based

on the music, but that God is meeting me in all of those spaces.

So, um, that's kind of how I would see it.

All right.

What is your process for creating music?

Y'all we're.

So lucky in this church we have such gifted musicians

and they are all composers.

So what is your process for creating music, and does your process vary

based on the purpose of the music?

Rev. Dr. T. Ray Wheeler: Hey, before we end this conversation, I will say

thanks to Pastor Michelle, because composing music takes a lot of time

and Michelle about, well, every couple of times a year we go on a

retreat where we do nothing but com.

Well, we eat, we eat, we fellowship, and we compose all day long.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, you can write a lot in that time period.

So I appreciate that you're giving space for us to, to be able to use that.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Yeah.

So Matt?

Matt Nelson: You

know, I could say that there's several, there's many, many different ways to

compose a, a song or a piece of music.

You know, you could construct it purposefully from the ground up, like work

of construction, you know, like you're building a building, uh, make a blueprint

and you kind of build it piece by piece.

I found that when I'm composing, although I can do that, I

had to do that in college.

I do that for hire sometimes, but more often than not.

I need to have a place of quiet and allow my mind to quiet, which

it takes some effort sometimes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We have to carve out a, uh, some space and time and what I do and

all the sediment kind of falls to the bottom and I've got quiet.

All these ideas start coming to me and I just need to capture them.

Whether it's playing something out or singing it into a recorder.

Um, or writing.

Writing down a few notes.

And then it's more like a sculpture, you know, starting with this, this

idea that I kind of whittle it down until it's just where I want it to be.

And if somebody hires me to write something for, say a commercial

or something, it's usually a different kind of process.

Yeah, yeah.

Organic composition, that's how it usually works best for me.

Yeah.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Ray?

Rev. Dr. T. Ray Wheeler: Yeah.

Um, well, I have composed since, uh, well since I sort of started in

music and, um, I always write for the choir that's in front of me or

the people that are in front of me.

So look at y'all.

Yeah.

So when I'm writing for the chancellor choir, I'm thinking about these voices.

How do these voices sound?

Who would be a good soloist for this thing?

And so I kind of hear their voices in my head.

So that's, you're my inspiration.

You're my inspiration anyway,

but, uh, and, and as far as, uh, tunes, oh my, oh Lord.

I just, tunes are coming all the time.

My long suffering wife, Pam, you know, we're on a, we're on a road trip and

I. We stop at a rest stop or something.

And I'm in the bathroom singing into my phone.

I have, I think maybe Matt is too.

So I have in my phone, memos have this tune.

He just came to me.

It's gonna be perfect.

And a lot of times I'll get the tune and the text all in one sort of swoop,

like er came, you know, as a, so the tune and the text went together somehow.

But I don't, you know, it's all unbidden.

It's a product of.

I probably need to see someone about all these things that come in their head.

Ken Weatherford: I,

I think for me, um, more often than not, it leads out with lyrics.

I'll find like a simple lyric that becomes like a chorus.

Or Casey, my wife, she was an English major and is a poet and

wonderful, wonderful writer.

And so almost all of the songs that I've ever written have her

hand on them lyrically and she'll, she'll gimme a poem or something

and kind of starting from there.

We used to do that.

And then I remember when Aiden was born in Edinburgh, our oldest son, we

were living in Edinburgh at the time.

We were like, oh, we've got a kid.

We're gonna be so inspired.

This is gonna, we're gonna write so much music now.

We went more than 10 years without ever writing a song, and,

and so it's been really, really fun to all of a sudden find ourselves.

With two retreats a year.

Yeah, it's not a ton, but having five or six days annually that I get to set aside.

And go do that again.

And now it's different.

I feel like too, it's, you know, the process has changed somewhat.

Casey hasn't been able to join me necessarily on that.

I have brought one or two of her lyrics with me, but others

have been bringing lyrics.

Rich Carville gave me a poem once and we turned that into a song, and so

it's been really, really interesting to kinda revisit songwriting again.

Sometimes it, it's different.

You know this, this last retreat.

We focused on the advent series that we did this this past year with,

with Scrooge and, and everything.

And so that was kind of the driving focus of the thought and

the thinking around the song.

So everything I kept kind of going, all right, well, how does

this relate to Scrooge and how does this relate to that story?

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Yeah, I don't write anything but lyrics.

I cannot do the musical side.

The notes have to come from someone else.

But it is also fun for me to reclaim that sort of poetic voice.

I wrote my first poem when I was in first grade, so it's been fun to do that, but.

Whether I could contribute lyrics or not.

When we started talking about doing this, these music retreats, we

talked about what the expectations were and I'm like, I don't know.

We're gonna see what the Holy Spirit has for us.

Right?

And they were like, you don't want a specific number of

songs at the end of this.

I was like, no.

Right, let's just see what happens.

And I said, I remember sharing with them, I said, look, the amount

of musical talent that we have.

It seems like an offense to God.

To not give them the space they have been gifted in such powerful ways

and to not block off time and space for that giftedness to flourish.

I just, I didn't wanna have to answer God for that to be honest.

I really didn't.

And so I'm grateful that we are able to kind of find that space and that

it then benefits both our church and then we share it more widely

for other churches to use as well.

So it's just a rich musical space.

Thank you all for your part in it.

Thank you all for singing together.

Thank you all for, I hear from so many of you.

Wow.

You know what the thing I love the most about this church is it's music.

And I'm not gonna take offense to that, that you didn't say it was my sermons.

It's okay.

Um, because really I know that music is that kind of universal

language, and you may not remember the sermon when you walk outta here,

but you will remember the songs.

And so the fact that they carry that.

They give you that vehicle to carry the gospel out into the

world is an amazing thing.

We're gonna encourage you this week to connect to music in your own way.

That's what this sheet is about.

Explains music at Davina.

Basically, it's just intentionally opening yourself up to hearing

God through a piece of music.

On the back, on the reflection page, you'll note that there's

a little description here.

It's if you need some music recommendations, I have.

Prepared two playlists on Spotify.

You do not have to have an account with Spotify.

You can listen to Spotify for free.

You'll just have to hear ads and you can't listen to it in order.

But especially the instrumental one, there's not really an order.

The Holy Week one does go in the order of Holy Week.

So just kind of pay attention to the regular order of the playlist and you

can tell where it is in Holy Week.

So you can look for music of Dina Instrumental or Music of Dina Holy Week

and created by Reverend Dr. Michelle, and that's where you will find them.

Or if you got the eNews, you can click on the links there as well.

Let's give all of our musicians another round of applause.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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Grace and Peace.