SmallTall Ministries

This article gives a good sense of what Bryan Moyer Suderman has been up to, including why there haven't been a lot of posts to this SmallTall Ministries page. Looking forward to being part of this annual event as the featured musician for the Network of Biblical Storytellers Canada. Registration opens tomorrow.

Featured Musician Bryan Moyer Suderman | NBSCanada An interview with our Festival of Biblical Telling 2023 delightful Story Concert performer.

Does this CD cover look familiar to any of you?

This week is the 20th anniversary of the official "release" of my first little collection of songs. For a few months I had been writing some songs, intended to be a way for us to sing our faith with children, and as part of the new "missional church" emphasis that was part of the birthing of newly-restructured Mennonite Church Canada. I had sung some of them at different events here and there, and there was a sense that they ought to be shared in some way with the broader church.

So we made simple recordings at the (then named) Faith and Life Studios in Winnipeg, with just me and my guitar, and 50 copies of a CD with half-a-dozen songs were burned by Darryl Neustaedter Barg in his basement. Those 50 copies were brought to Abbotsford, BC, as part of a "missional church travel bag" of resources put together by folks like Kathy Giesbrecht, Jim Loepp Thiessen, Ingrid Loepp Thiessen, Elsie Rempel and others, to be made available at the Mennonite Church Canada Assembly happening there at the beginning of July.

Those 50 copies were snapped up very fast, and someone went home to burn more copies (the number 200 sticks in my mind, but I can't be sure). Yes, burned CDs - this was in the days before downloads and social media and "shares" and "likes" on Facebook... in fact, it was several years before Facebook existed...

These songs started to find their way in the world, being sung by different communities. And the reception of these songs, and the encouragement I received and my own sense of call, gave rise to a new vocation of songwriting that became my almost-full-time self-employed vocation for 17+ years.

20 years ago this week. I am grateful.

How can you tell Bryan Moyer Suderman misses travelling and singing with different communities? Lovely time last night with Mennonite Children's Choir of Lancaster, who asked Bryan to be one of their “guest artists” this semester. They are preparing “virtual choir” videos of a couple of his songs, and last night was a live Zoom session, with singing, questions, and more singing. So much fun, and rather emotional to pull out all these instruments that don’t get out much these days...

A couple of recent publications that feature Bryan Moyer Suderman and his work:

- Voices Together (new hymnal for Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA) - includes 3 BMS songs
- Making Waves: 50 stories about Sharing Love and Changing The World, by Judy Clemens, author of several YA books who heard Bryan sing/speak/teach in Ohio several years ago

(see comments for links)