AUGUST 2025

Dear UCCMA members,

Hello from your new Director of DEI and Member Education! My name is Amanda and I’m a hymnwriter, sacred music composer, and church musician in Colorado Springs, Colorado (as well as a sociologist and antiracism trainer). Having recently joined the UCCMA Board after several years of membership, I wanted to start a column in the newsletter to help us think about what our church music work has to do with justice. I’m calling the column “Micah 6:8 Reflections” because it is my favorite Bible verse. It reads:

“God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Holy require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

The words and actions of Jesus show a similar commitment to justice, and so we are invited in our musical support of UCC (and other) congregations to keep the same commitment to justice.

What does a commitment to justice look like in a church music context? To get started, let’s review our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement as created and approved in 2024.

The UCCMA DEI statement reads:

“Recognizing that people provide musical leadership in every congregation and that the congregations where they serve differ in many ways, we seek to welcome and support all who serve as congregational musicians, regardless of their musical education and experiences, by providing resources that help congregations to love, support, and seek justice for people of all kinds.

We are dedicated to fostering a rich tapestry of individuals on the UCCMA board by actively recruiting people from a wide range of ethnicities, gender identities, ages, locations, socio-economic status, and congregation sizes to serve on the board.

We seek to be mindful of the different worldviews among musicians and congregations. Therefore, we strive to celebrate and respect those differences which can include but are not limited to sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, race/ethnicity, different abilities, mental health, socio-economic status, immigration status, cultural background, age, experience with incarceration, addictions, or homelessness. In order to make UCCMA membership available to all, we are working to establish an endowment fund that will allow us to offer free membership to all UCC congregations, pastors, and musicians.

We acknowledge that the UCC includes congregations that vary widely in age, size, location, history, financial stability, and worship style and that all are part of the UCCMA mission.

We also welcome participation from musicians serving congregations of other denominations and are happy to share our resources and events with any persons or communities that find them helpful.

We seek to assist and learn from all who minister through music and the arts.”

This statement, though focused on DEI, also references justice. What do the two have to do with one another? While that question deserves its own column and will be my focus for the next newsletter, one connective point is the idea that since all people are made in the image of the Sacred (Imago Dei), any work for justice that will allow all people to flourish requires a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in a society that is clearly not currently committed to any of those. I hope to use this column to help us church musicians and music directors think more creatively about our possible roles in the prophetic work of justice.

If there’s a topic that you’d like to see me cover in future columns, please email me and tell me about it. I’m also happy to try to answer your questions about these issues, or to direct those questions to people who can better answer them.

Until next time, may you be held in sacred care.

All peace,

Dr. Amanda Udis-Kessler

amanda@amandaudiskessler.com