Why We Support LSM
We believe that good music feeds the human spirit, and that good church music enhances the worship experience—and enhances the Word of God.
Michael Hovland, Bjorn Hovland (LSM 2007), Nancy Jones
LSM parents Michael Hovland and Nancy Jones of Iowa City have made a 3-year commitment to support LSM through the Strength & Stay Campaign.
Why were you motivated to give to the campaign?
We are grateful for the experience our son had at LSM in 2007 and hope that more young people can have the benefit of professional musicians who care about music and care about its role in the church. Our son had always been a motivated cello student and had sung in a high school choir. But LSM was the first time that he really became excited about choral music. He ended up enrolling at St. Olaf where he played in the orchestra and sang in a choir every year and took cello and voice lessons every semester, even though he wasn’t a music major. We believe that good music feeds the human spirit, and that good church music enhances the worship experience—and enhances the Word of God.
What do you hope your gift will accomplish or inspire?
We want all the LSM faculty to know that their work is valued, and that they serve as models for the young people whose lives they are touching during the summer month they all are working together. (Thus, we are happy to support individual LSM studios.) While our church has very extensive and high-quality musical resources and groups, we know that many congregations do not. For LSM students who come from such congregations, LSM represents a vision of what high-quality church music can be.
Is there a larger personal value that your gift represents?
Our gift to LSM falls at the intersection of many things important to us personally. Anything we can do to help develop individual skills and promote good-quality music in congregations is important to us. We are both musicians and are actively involved in the musical life of our church. We have a strong interest in making sure that high-quality church music—choral music, organ music, instrumental music—remains a part not only of the Lutheran tradition but of the Lutheran future.
In a culture that spends so much time and money on sports, including on Sunday mornings, we want to support families and young people who see another path for themselves, through music.
It is increasingly difficult to fight the tide of low-quality church music, and groups like LSM are part of the solution. Interestingly, there’s perhaps never been a time when we’ve had so many high-quality church music composers, many of whom compose for a living. And if churches don’t purchase and perform their music, why would people continue to write good quality music? Churches and organizations such as LSM have an obligation to support such composers. We support them indirectly through our church, which buys a lot of their music. And we hope that our financial gifts to LSM will encourage such support as well.
Michael Hovland
Nancy Jones
January 14, 2024