Haven United Methodist Church has served the East Providence, Rhode Island, community for nearly 150 years, but it has been experiencing both financial and congregational decline over an extended period. The time when hundreds of worshippers would come to service is long in the past.

The New England Conference had even considered closing the church until the Rev. Juhee Lee was appointed there as its part-time pastor in 2019.

As soon as Lee arrived, she found that the ongoing financial decline had pushed the members of the church into survival mode. Its ministries and activities had become inward-focused, causing the church to lose its central role in the community over the years.

Lee and the congregation discussed how to navigate the direction of the church and came to the unanimous decision to become a mission-oriented church.  

The church now has about 30 in-person worshippers with a few more attending virtually. However, its doors are open seven days a week for various ministries such as 12-step recovery meetings, youth basketball, a thrift shop and a community music project. These ministries reach about 500 people weekly.

The Community Music Project has become the most significant ministry of the church. It utilizes Lee’s musical talent: She is a violinist with a master’s degree in music. However, the program had to start from ground zero. Lee and the church leaders did not know how many students would join the program, and she was the only teacher.

“I chose to found the Community Music Project because we believed it was the most effective way to reach out to our community and reorient our church’s mission toward God’s purpose,” she said.

Lee’s initial vision was to share her musical gift with the underprivileged kids and youth in the community. However, her perspective of the ministry has broadened as multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic — Hispanic, Russian, Cape Verdean, Korean and Chinese — and even multigenerational people joined the program. It has now expanded to a joint project of the greater East Providence area community and beyond under Lee’s leadership.

As the music project continued to grow, Lee realized that she was not able to teach all the students by herself. By happenstance, Sabrina Chiang, a Brown University orchestra member, visited her church and became a volunteer teacher.

“God sent her to help the CMP,” Lee said.

Chiang became instrumental in recruiting other teachers for the project. Now, there are 11 additional volunteer teachers, all from Brown University, and it has expanded to provide lessons for violin, viola, cello, piano and small-group ensembles.

“There are many students here for whom English isn’t their first language, but through music, they have one of the most powerful tools to communicate ideas and emotions,” said Kevin Kwon, who joined the project a year-and-a-half ago as a violin teacher.

Lee said one challenge the Community Music Project has encountered is a shortage of musical instruments.

“The more the number of student children grow, the more we need musical instruments,” she said.

That’s where the surrounding community stepped in to help.

Johnson String Instrument, a Massachusetts music store about 45 miles away, lends 13 violins to project students free of charge. A pizza restaurant next to the church provides free weekly lunches for the volunteers.

Every Saturday, Lee is busy assigning various rooms in the church to accommodate 46 students, their parents and 13 teachers. At the end of every semester, teachers and students have a concert that attracts an average of 150 attendees.

Luba Dumarevskaya, a doctorate student from Russia whose 9-year-old son takes lessons in piano and violin, said the project is a blessing. 

“The program helps him to read and play music, gives him confidence in himself, and also makes him more responsible for being ready for a concert,” she said.

The Rev. James Chongho Kim of First United Methodist Church in Flushing, New York, visited the church on Jan. 27 to deliver a grant from his church to support the project. Kim likened Haven’s music ministry to El Sistema, the publicly financed music education program that began in Venezuela and spread to other countries.

“The mission of El Sistema is ‘Music for Social Change’ through offering free music education for underprivileged children. The mission of The United Methodist Church is ‘Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,’” Kim said.

He said he is “proud and grateful” to Lee and Haven United Methodist, and hopes his church can continue supporting the music project in the future.

Lee said the initial vision for the ministry has been evolving from music education to community formation. It has been involved in the larger community project and extended its positive impacts on the community.

The Rev. Wanda Santos-Pérez, superintendent of the Seacoast District, affirmed its significant impacts on the community and beyond. 

“The CMP has achieved success in numerous aspects and has borne many fruits. It has evolved into a diverse community, embracing people of various races, cultures, ethnicities and generations who come together to experience unity and friendship through music,” she said.

Santos-Pérez shared that several students and teachers have undergone personal transformations through their involvement in the music project.

“It has had a positive impact on people in our town and beyond,” she said. “The CMP is a tangible means of participating in God’s mission in the world.”

The Community Music Project has held 14 healing concerts at nursing homes and health care centers, as well as 10 benefit concerts that supported Ukrainian refugees, a local neighborhood coalition, a homeless ministry, Guatemalans in need of cataract surgery, and those affected by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria from 2020 to 2023.

Lee also found another area to use her musical talents beyond her community.

During the pandemic period, Lee and Rev. Yohan Go came together to record free hymns and special music for use during the Lenten season and on Easter Sunday in 2021.

They had worked with other musicians to record 47 songs and made them available on Google Drive for any church that needed music to use freely, so any church with a CCLI license could use them for its online worship without worrying about copyright.

“When we realized that small churches, much like Haven UMC, were struggling to find worship music resources, we decided to record worship music and share it with others,” said Lee. “Our music resources became a benefit for churches across different denominations nationwide.”

Even though the music project’s mission has grown in numbers and quality, Lee said it doesn’t necessarily translate into church growth or a disciple-making ministry. She is eager to find how it can serve as a channel to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

“I continue to pray to discern how the CMP can serve as a channel of God’s grace for participants, ultimately inviting them into a relationship with Jesus Christ,” she said. “I believe that God is still at work, and as the Scripture says, ‘for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.’”

This article originally appeared at UM News.

Rev. Thomas E. Kim is director of Korean and Asian news at United Methodist Communications.