by Dan Baumgartner

“See, I am doing a new thing!” - Isaiah 43:19

Sometimes you just have to try something new. Stick your toe in the water. Move the right direction, and see what unfolds. And that’s what the Bethany community gets to do with a concept called “ByFor,” a project of former Bethanyite Lance Mansfield and Christian artist Michael Card. It includes an event, a product, Lent, a concept, mentoring, arts patronage and shared artistic license. We’ve never done it before. The most immediately visible pieces are a Lenten concert at Bethany and a CD, but there’s more to it.

The idea is to get together several Seattle musicians who have been in a local church over a number of years, who have been involved in worship leading, who have written their own music and who have recorded. Bethany’s Kurt Dyrhsen has been picked to be one of these. How does Kurt feel about this? “I’m extremely excited for this opportunity! Getting to write songs for use in the larger Church seems like a great way to share my gifts. And of course, getting to work with Michael Card will be amazing.”

Here are the components of the project:

Songwriting Each of the musicians will write at least three songs that connect with the Lenten focus of their local church and could be used in worship.

Mentoring The Seattle artists will fly to Nashville in January to be with veteran singer/writer Michael Card. They will work with Michael, share music and put on a “Songwriter’s Concert” while there. Music will also appear on a radio project of Card’s.
CD production The musicians, along with Michael Card will produce a CD in Tennes-
see that each church will have for sale.

Music Rights The musicians donate their rights to the music, and it becomes part of the Creative Commons License website. This makes it available at no charge to churches, church musicians and others to use and/or modify to best fit worship settings. The best analogy for the Creative Commons idea is probably Linnux software sharing.

Patronage of the Arts For many centuries, the Church was the primary encourager and patron for the Arts. This has obviously not been the case for many years. ByFor allows Bethany as a church to explore supporting and developing an artist (Kurt Dyrhsen in this case), and the sharing of work (Creative Commons) on a project basis.

Collaboration/Concert Each of the Seattle churches involved will host a concert with the musicians, including Michael Card, in weeks leading up to Holy Week. Bethany’s concert will be held on Friday, March 7th, the weekend of Palm Sunday.

Though the 2008 budget includes a bit of funding for the ByFor project, we actually hope to pay for all of it through ticket sales for the concert and CD sales.

Lots of details are still being worked out with our Worship Elder Tara Taylor, Arts Elder Larry Chen, our staff and obviously Kurt Dyrhsen. Are there questions? Of course! We’ve never done this before. But the project has great possibilities, and we look forward to seeing what God may do through it.

“See, I am doing a new thing!” Sometimes you just have to stick your toe in the water, move the right direction and see what unfolds!