About

The Congregations Project is structured to encourage pastors, musicians, and other leaders to reflect on their own congregations’ strengths and challenges. Together we ask:  How do our ministries in music, worship, and the arts glorify God and increase love of neighbor?  How might they do so more fully?   

Each year a given theme provides focus for a three-day conference on the campus of Yale University. Throughout, the focus is on congregations and the ways in which they are engaging the theme in their ministries of worship, music, and the arts.

The schedule alternates between shared events for all participants–lectures by nationally recognized faculty, daily worship, and special musical events–and workshops in which work from the represented congregation is discussed.  In the workshop sessions, congregational leaders both get feedback and contribute to the mutual learning at the heart of this conference. By exploring how different congregations live out responses to the theme, we share concerns, practical wisdom, and inspiring examples, for the good of those in attendance and for the sake of the larger church’s mission.  This form of exchange is at the heart of the Congregations Project and part of what distinguishes it from other learning opportunities.

The Congregations Project is intentionally ecumenical and practice-oriented. It is particularly useful for parishes who send both pastor and musician. In contrast to numerous large, open conferences designed for either pastors or musicians, the Congregations Project offers a more intensive, integrated approach. This unique model draws on and draws together the distinctive gifts of pastors, musicians, and lay leaders at every step along the way. 

Past participants have come from small-town, suburban, inner-city, and downtown congregations, from campus ministries, and from many parts of the Christian tradition, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox.

The Congregations Project is a program of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, an interdisciplinary graduate center that prepares students for careers in church music and pastoral ministry, as well as in other endeavors in music, worship, and the arts in Christian communities, diverse religious traditions, and public life.