I’m Jill Lagerberg Hileman, and this is my Live Deeply story.
“When I was twenty-one months old, my mother won a baby grand piano on the game show The Price Is Right. She started teaching me how to play it when I was two. I began formal lessons at seven and continued to study through college. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read music. I also grew up singing and probably would have become a professional musician anyway, but I like to think the piano played its part! My mother passed away several years ago, and her piano now has its well-loved place in my home. I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home with parents who deeply loved God, each other, and us four children. Loving and serving the Lord were central to our family’s life. By the age of nine, I knew absolutely that I needed Jesus as Savior and was baptized. Our parents impressed upon us the importance of doing things with excellence and living a life worthy of our calling as believers. I think the desire to please those who love us and whom we love is part of God’s beautiful plan for us, but it can so easily be twisted into something negative in our broken world. As a born perfectionist and people pleaser, I wanted to please my parents, and I very, very much wanted to please God. I truly enjoyed setting high standards and achieving goals, but I also worried that if I didn’t live up to what I expected of myself and what I thought God wanted, He would still love me, but maybe not as much. He would be disappointed in me, and I would be disappointed in myself. But at the same time, I had a close relationship with Him. I knew He loved me. I loved Him. I studied the Bible and prayed and wanted to know Him better. These contrasting feelings of loving and being loved while worrying about disappointing Him (and myself) prompted a fair amount of alternating joy and anxiety through the years.
I completed doctoral studies in voice performance and moved to Knoxville to teach at Johnson Bible College (now Johnson University). I met my husband Gregg there, and after our daughter was born, I stepped down from my teaching position but remained active in community and church music, as both singer and conductor. In the late 1990s I was serving as choir director at a church that went through a painful split. Leaving that ministry was heart-wrenching, and I remember standing in my living room and saying to myself, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do moving forward, but one thing is for sure: I will NEVER work in church music again.’ God must have been chuckling that day. Some months later I was taking a morning walk through our neighborhood, praying and trying to come to terms with all that had happened. I said to God, ‘All I’ve ever wanted to do is serve You through music. If I can’t give You my music, what can I give You?’ Immediately I had a strong sense of His answering very gently, ‘I don’t want your music. I want YOU.’ This was a life-changing moment. I came to understand that He was not asking me to EARN His love through pleasing Him, but simply to be in relationship with Him and serve in joyful response to the love He ALREADY had poured out on me. I had a strong sense of my own sinfulness- my infinite imperfection in comparison to His perfection. As a frail and broken human, it was impossible ever to be ‘good enough’ to be worthy of His holiness, no matter how good I was. And at the same time, I knew it didn’t matter! He loved me anyway. The beauty of His love pouring over me filled me with joy. He was NOT disappointed in me; I was His cherished daughter! These were truths I had known in my head for many years, but now they sank deeply into my heart for the first time.
I began attending Sunday evening services at CSPC. The worship was quiet, contemplative- a welcome respite and nourishment to my soul. In 2001 I started singing in a small ensemble that provided music for those evening services, and in 2003 I was asked to step in as interim choir director while a search was conducted for a new worship director. I had never led such a large choir before or served in such a large church. I am by nature goal-oriented rather than people-oriented, and I remember praying, ‘Lord, I think I have the musical skills I need for this, but I know I don’t have the people skills. I’m willing, though. Please, please help me.’ After several months -during which I had an ongoing sense of God saying, ‘Wait and see what I will do.’- the position of choir director was offered to me as permanent part-time, and it was such a sweet season. I think there are times when God gives us the gifts we need for the particular task at hand. I know the love that grew in my heart for all those choir folks was His gift to me. I had been taught in school that directing a choir is a ‘benevolent dictatorship,’ but as I worked with the CSPC Choir, God showed me that being a leader means being a servant. When I’m asked now what the most important quality of a good choir director is, my answer is always, ‘LOVE your choir. Honor and encourage them as singers AND as people. Everyone -singers and director- plays an equally important part in contributing to the whole. People can tell when you genuinely love and respect them- and when you don’t.’ In 2005, the choir was invited to do a short-term mission trip in Peru. Along with some handbells (carefully packed in bubble wrap inside a cooler!) and instruments, we spent ten days singing concerts at various universities in Lima. Some of us had children who went on the trip, and they sang songs together as well. The program was partly traditional American music and partly sacred music, and we learned a few songs in Spanish. Afterward, the missionaries we partnered with told us our concerts had opened doors and made new conversations possible for them. The trip had blessed their work, and it certainly had blessed US.
After we returned home, we began to pray that we would have more opportunities to use music to share Christ in our community. And God began to move. We started doing annual Christmas concerts at Knox Area Rescue Ministries (KARM). We sang at a nursing home where the husband of one of our members was a patient. We formed a men’s ensemble that sang at many senior care facilities. A man in the choir worked in the Tennessee prison system, and through him we were invited to do a Christmas concert at the women’s prison in Nashville. Even a Target store called and asked if we could provide a small ensemble to spend a couple of hours singing Christmas songs for shoppers! They didn’t care that we were a church group singing sacred carols. CSPC is a missional church, and as the choir’s outreach opportunities grew over the next few years, the church leadership became interested in developing a performing arts outreach ministry. They asked me to lead it, and in the summer of 2009, after much prayer, Knoxville Christian Arts Ministries (KnoxCAM) was founded as a community-wide ministry with the specific mission of using music, drama, and dance to share the gospel of Christ outside the walls of the church building, wherever God might lead. Our membership included believers from many Knox-area churches, ages 16-80, all dedicated to sharing Jesus through the performing arts. It was easy to see the ministry’s roots in that mission trip to Peru: presenting the gospel outside the Church, including handbells and instruments, taking a multi-generational approach with families serving together. We weren’t sure in the beginning where God might lead, and we have done concerts in many venues over the years, but it became clear early on that His primary leading was into prisons. We now serve annually at five prisons across Tennessee, at KARM, and in support of various other ministries working in East Tennessee and surrounding areas.
At KnoxCAM, we are storytellers. Jesus knew the power of stories to engage people’s hearts and minds in life-changing ways, and we seek to follow in His footsteps- using the God-given power of the performing arts to break through people’s barriers of anger, bitterness, fear, guilt, and shame and bring them to the feet of Jesus. Most of our stories are from the Bible because many of the people we serve have a minimal connection to God’s Word. They’ve told us that seeing the stories brought to life on stage has made them eager to study the Bible for themselves. Back when KnoxCAM was first getting started, our leadership team was praying, ‘Please let KnoxCAM grow in such a way that no one can ever say anything except ‘God did this.’’ And that’s exactly what happened. Over the last seventeen years, He has been faithful in so many ways. When you are traveling with 80 people and a 12-foot equipment truck, there are always challenges, and God has sustained us through bad weather, bus and truck breakdowns, last-minute illnesses of crucial actors and instrumentalists, as well as restrictive and often-changing prison policies. During Covid, we were not able to travel for two years. Instead, we made two films that were distributed to prisons throughout the Southeast. God has met us at every turn. We call these kinds of things ‘adventures with KnoxCAM’ and ‘opportunities to trust God.
Most of all, we have seen God working in the lives of the men and women we serve. We have seen big, strong, tatted-up men with tears streaming down their faces, raising their hands to trust Jesus as Savior. We have seen women crushed by a lifetime of abuse and drug addiction finally finding hope in Jesus. We hear from prison chaplains about baptisms and ongoing discussions that occur after our visits. The prisoners themselves send cards and letters so full of gratitude and personal testimony that they bring tears to your eyes. What a humbling privilege to see how God has chosen to work through KnoxCAM to bring people to Himself. I’m an introvert, and I always felt guilty about not being more outgoing and ‘evangelistic’ (one of the many things I worried about). That God has allowed me to use the gifts He has given me to reach people for Jesus in this truly unique way fills me with inexpressible gratitude. And the love and support the members of KnoxCAM have shown me through the years, especially when my husband Gregg died of cancer in 2017, have been an immeasurable blessing. What an absolute joy it has been to serve them. They truly are an embodiment of Jesus’s love, both to me and to all those we serve.
About five years ago, I began to sense that my time as director of KnoxCAM was coming to an end. I didn’t know if God wanted the ministry to continue after my tenure, and I began to pray that if He DID, He would provide the next generation of leadership. And He has! In May of this year, I was delighted to pass the baton to our new executive director, Caleb Leach, and our new director of music & resources, Gabe Loving. Both these men love the Lord, are highly skilled, and are deeply committed to the mission of KnoxCAM. I can’t wait to see how KnoxCAM grows and develops in its next chapter! So, what’s next? In 2024, God gave me the totally unexpected and beautiful gift of marrying again. My new husband Dave Hileman is a retired pastor and church planter who lost his wife Cindy to cancer. Our families have been friends for 40 years. We are getting involved with the Global Mission Group at CSPC and praying about ways to serve together. And I’m not ‘retired!’ I know I will continue to write, compose, and conduct from time to time. (A sweet project right now is composing special songs for my new baby granddaughter.) I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what God has next. I continue to sing in the Sanctuary Choir and occasionally help with rehearsals. It’s a great joy to look out into the congregation on the Sundays we’re in the loft, watching people wholeheartedly lifting up their praises to God. Truly the best seat in the house! And a beautiful picture of the body of Christ worshipping together, mutually blessing and encouraging each other.
After my husband Gregg died, Psalm 34:5 became very meaningful to me: ‘Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces will never be covered with shame.’ In times of sadness, I would contemplate the beautiful face of Jesus looking at me with so much love, and I would be comforted. As I have continued to meditate on this verse over the years, I have recognized that WE are radiant because HE is radiant. Like Moses, we stand shining in the reflected, dazzling brilliance of His unfailing love. I still sometimes confront the fear of falling short of my own expectations or wonder if I’m doing what I’m doing out of love and gratitude or out of a desire to have people love and praise me. I think many of us grapple with these questions and none of us has perfectly pure motives. But, as C.S. Lewis says, eventually you just laugh at your own absurdity, ask forgiveness, and move on, trusting in God’s grace and mercy (and sense of humor!). God has shown me more about His unfathomable and unconditional love than I ever could have imagined and has given me back, pressed down and overflowing, my heart’s desire to live deeply with Him through music.”
NOTE: For those who are interested, you can see KnoxCAM’s film ‘Lost and Found’ at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbgHO7BFBjY. The story is a modern-day retelling of the parable of The Prodigal Son and reflects in some ways Jill’s own faith journey.
And you can link to KnoxCAM’s 2026 joint concert with the CSPC Sanctuary Choir and Orchestra, ‘Set Free,’ the story of Paul and Silas in Philippi, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2stQc5WIZN8.