Music as Ministry: Finding God in Groove, Grief, and Grace

In another part of my life, I lead a band that plays jazz and blues. I write original songs—some of which have won awards—and perform in venues far removed from the walls of a church. Yet I grew up singing in the church choir (stereotypical, I know), and I was always acutely aware that some religious traditions treat secular music with suspicion, even outright condemnation.

But that has never aligned with my lived experience. I’ve felt—viscerally—the healing power of music, both in my own life and among my audiences. I’ve watched music soften the hardened, uplift the weary, and bring strangers into communion. Something sacred happens when sound transcends speech and becomes something more than entertainment. It becomes presence. Connection. Maybe even grace.

For a long time, though, I carried the tension between that sacred experience and the religious formation that seemed to draw sharp lines between what was holy and what was profane. That changed a few years ago during a conversation with a Catholic priest who had come to see a friend’s show. We stood in the glow of the stage lights after the final set, and our talk turned quickly to theology, vocation, and music. He affirmed something I had long suspected but hadn’t dared claim aloud: music can be ministry—even when it doesn’t sound like church.

Music That Preaches Without a Pulpit

That conversation invited me to revisit the Ignatian idea of going forth to set the world on fire. Preaching, in the Jesuit tradition, doesn’t always happen from a pulpit. It can take the form of a homily, yes—but also of a melody, a lyric, a rhythm that touches something deeper than words. Music has a way of reaching the soul sideways, slipping past the intellectual defenses and speaking directly to the heart. It can preach through groove, lament, joy, and improvisation.

And what does that make of the musician? If preaching can take sonic form, and music can heal, teach, or awaken, perhaps the musician, too, is a minister. Not always in an official sense, but in a vocational one: called to service, to presence, to accompaniment.

I’ve seen this happen many times, when an audience member, having just heard my stories, decides to confide in me about what’s happening in their life. I wrote about one magical night where that happened in the song Strange Angels.

Where Consolation Lives

Ignatian spirituality teaches us to find God in all things—not just in sacred texts or quiet prayer, but in the world as it is: messy, complex, beautiful, broken. It invites us to see our deepest desires as potential signs of God’s calling, and to treat our work, our gifts, and our relationships as sites of grace. Under this lens, music isn’t just expression, it’s discernment. It’s accompaniment. It’s presence.

I’ve seen this most clearly not in applause, but in quiet conversations after the show. More than once, a parent of a disabled child has come up to me with tears in their eyes to thank me for my song Hey Bully—a piece that was once part of a national anti-bullying campaign. They don’t just hear a melody. They hear advocacy. They feel seen.

Then there’s Memory, a song I wrote that seems to strike a nerve with those caring for loved ones with dementia. Nurses and adult children alike have approached me, sometimes in tears, always with stories. One woman clutched my hand and said, “That’s my mom in that song.” In moments like these, I’m not just a performer. I’m a companion on the road of grief, of memory, of letting go.

And then there’s the joy—the mysterious grace of getting people up to dance, to move, even when the world outside feels uncertain or heavy. There is something profoundly sacred about bodies in motion, about music that loosens the grip of fear or fatigue and replaces it, even for a few minutes, with joy. In Ignatian terms, this is consolation—a surge of spiritual aliveness, a moment of being “in tune” with the divine.

A Third Way

I’ve learned there’s a third way—a path that doesn’t ask me to deny the sacredness of church, nor the gritty beauty of the stage. It’s a way that sees the Spirit moving not just in hymns and homilies, but in blues riffs, protest songs, and love ballads. It’s the way of integration—where jazz and justice, memory and melody, all become threads in the same tapestry.

Ignatius taught us to find God in all things. Not just in the clearly labeled “holy” ones. If we take that seriously, then no stage is off-limits. No genre is beyond grace. And no song is too raw, too real, too secular to speak of the divine.

Sometimes, music doesn’t just reflect ministry.

It is ministry.