For the last four weeks, I’ve been inviting you to share your feedback and suggestions for this program through our first listener survey. Thank you to those of you who took the time to respond. We are busy reading through your comments and analyzing the data and will use what you shared to inform our program planning into the future.

If you missed out on the survey, don’t fret! You can always share your thoughts with us through our website, ministrymonday.org.

Many of our survey responses told us that you appreciated hearing voices from the past – audio recordings from conventions or workshops from ten, twenty, or even forty years ago. Of course, one of the challenges of bringing your archival recordings is that the sound quality is often rough, and there is only so much I can do to improve it. Many of you also shared that you found topics related to the spirituality of ministry to be helpful and impactful.

So, today, we’re going to try to hit two targets with one episode. We are pleased to share with you an article on the spiritual life of pastoral musicians and liturgical ministers. Originally written for the April 1987 issue of Pastoral Music Magazine, author and composer Ken Meltz shares ways for we who are music makers to ground ourselves in liturgical spirituality. Titled, “Stepping Outside the Routine,” Ken reflects on the proliferation of the term “spirituality,” and on the fact that we pastoral ministers often do a poor job of feeding our own spiritual and prayer lives.