This year Bethany got a new choir director named Bradley Kaufman. Funnily enough, this isn’t his first time teaching here. He directed the orchestra here in 2005-2007. However, his wife’s and his careers have taken them a lot more places than that.
Bradley grew up on a farm in Logan County, Ohio with an older and younger brother. He grew up in a musical household and helped with the community choir that his father directed until he was old enough to sing in it. There weren’t any good music programs at the public school he was in so he turned pages for the pianist in the community choir instead.
He went to Goshen College where he met his wife and his love for music. He always enjoyed music but only discovered his passion when he took his first music theory and directing classes freshman and sophomore years. He graduated with a degree in music education.
He and his wife then stayed around the Elkhart area while she was in seminary and had their oldest child, Lucca.
They then moved to Iowa for a teaching job at Iowa Mennonite School (IMS), now called Hillcrest Academy. Bradley taught there for a few years before he went back to school at Iowa University to get his master’s degree. There his wife had a ministry career, and they had their second child, Rowan.
After getting his masters there he went to yet another state to teach choir. His family moved to Kansas where he was the Hesston choir director for 8 years.
Again, their careers led them somewhere else and they moved to Cincinnati. His wife had a job pastoring at a church and he stayed home for one year. Then a big opportunity presented itself to Bradley. He had the opportunity to direct the project for the new hymnal.
This project took multiple years of writing and compiling music for a new hymnal. About half of the content wasn’t previously used as a common resource. He took this opportunity and enjoyed it.
But then both he and his wife went on the job market at about the same time that a teaching position at Bethany opened up. So he came back to the same town he first went to college to teach here at Bethany.
He has been connected to Bethany his whole life. Bradley grew up with a friend who moved to Bethany and he wanted to board in Goshen to go himself. He also was always connected to MSEC schools as well. He taught at Bethany for two years in 2005, and now as the stars aligned, he finds himself here again. He always liked Bethany’s respect for the arts, especially when compared to the poor music programs at his public elementary school.
He says he has a lot of good memories when making music, like his choir tours in Europe with his Hesston choirs. However, he always loved English and love to write. He still loves finding meaning in writing and loved that part of the new hymnal project. He also loves humor and thinks it’s an important part of making music. His love for music and his wife’s ministry has taken them to 4 states and many communities, and I’m sure he learned a lot along the way.