A word from our founder:

I've spent 40 years of my life performing, teaching and designing in the marching arts (marching band). Throughout, I have been a Christian who was saved at age 6. (See the "Our Faith" section of this site to know what "saved" means to me.) Over this 40 year period of music I never lost my beliefs, never doubted the reasons why I was saved, never stopped being a Christian. However I didn't always live it. The schedule demands placed on those who do this activity are tremendous. Marching Band used to be rehearsals from 6-9pm Mon, Wed and Thurs with sectionals after school on Tuesdays, football games on Fridays and then rehearsal Saturday morning from 9am until we had to pack up and ride the busses to the competition that night, which we rarely got home from until midnight. As you can imagine, getting up for church on Sunday wasn't exactly "fun". So I didn't go, a lot! I wasn't learning, wasn't studying, wasn't around others who were like-minded in our faith and could provide advice and/or wisdom that was grounded in our shared beliefs. I was a Christian in the sense that I believed, but I let my love for the marching activity take precedence. I certainly could have done a better job, and not just by getting my butt out of bed for church on Sunday mornings, but I allowed the excuse of my schedule to get in the way of doing anything else to stay closer to God and the life I should have been living. This story is at the core of the idea to create The Rhythm Mission.

I was on a men's retreat in the Pocono mountains with our Men's Ministry leadership team in November of 2022. We were asked to find a quiet place to complete a worksheet that was intended to explore ourselves toward the goal of finding our calling in life. We were to do it alone and had 45 minutes to complete about 8-10 questions. I began the worksheet and on the very first question I listed answers about times and places, jobs or activities that I can look back on and categorize as bringing me joy. Simple, right? I made a list, band stuff, church, camps/retreats, cooking, and a few other things. I didn't even get to the next question when I looked at my list and thought "is there any job I could do that would involve all of these things, and the aspects of them, that I was describing as bringing me joy?" Again...duh, so simple. I proceeded to start to scribble ideas, names of a would-be company or service, programs we could offer, ways to fundraise, big plans to open a camp for kids some day, all with a percussion theme. I literally couldn't stop from wriitng as tons of ideas flooded my thoughts! I scribbled all over the back of the first page of the worksheet that I was supposed to be completing. From that moment, epiphany, awakening, whatever you'd call it, I wanted to build something that would give opportunities to others to participate in this most incredible activity that is the marching arts and not lose their faith in the process. How could we create programs to make it easier to stay connected to God, to his teachings, to the reminders of the person we as Christians were supposed to be? With that, the idea for the programs you see here started to take shape. It is a mission to maintain our faith while interspersed with rhythm, (because I am a percussionist and that was my passion in band) music, marching , traveling, teaching, and all that comes with it.

I hope at least one of our programs is something you can utilize to maintain and grow your faith while still capitalizing on the opportunity to be in the marching arts, one of the greatest activities of my life.