Bryan Rust (he/him/his)
Born and raised on the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers, living a street away from his paternal grandparents, Bryan Rust began playing the piano at age 3, learning choral music at age 7, and playing the organ at his home church at age 13. Bryan has studied church music, music education, and theology at Concordia University and the University of Texas. Bryan’s teachers throughout his life include musicians Jane Hass, Thomas Engler, Bernard Gastler, Harold Rutz, and Thomas Pavlechko, and Gerre Hancock.
Bryan was installed as Director of Music at First English on October 7, 2012.
Throughout his 28-year ministry, Bryan has been a leader with large and small, urban, rural, and suburban Lutheran, United Methodist, and Episcopal churches in Central Texas, with the University of Texas Lutheran Campus Ministry, and with the Lutheran Seminary Program in the Southwest. Bryan was an Interim Artistic Director of the Austin Children’s Choir. Bryan’s spiritual passions include music and liturgy education and leadership, inter-generational music making, and ecumenical, interfaith, and human partnerships. He participates in several organizations, including the American Guild of Organists and the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians. In addition to hymn festivals, concerts, and workshops, Bryan has served in music and worship planning and leadership at regional and churchwide levels. Bryan has served on the staff of the Texas Conference of Churches, and he has also had a career in real estate and mortgage financing. Bryan served as Office Administrator at First English from July 2016 to July 2023.
In February of 2024, the FELC Administration Team and the Worship Ministry Team finalized the Cantor job description. What is a Cantor, you ask? The Cantor is a role in the Lutheran church that is broader than a “Director of Music,” encompassing a greater sense of vocation, purpose and ministry to cultivate a richer worship life. (Read this article if you’d like to delve deeper.) We believe that the Cantor title is a better reflection of the role at First English historically as well as our vision for the role in the future, as defined by this high-level role description:
The Cantor leads First English Lutheran Church’s music ministry and plans, guides and leads the people in singing and offering musical worship. The Cantor leads people of all ages and differing abilities in the congregation and in the broader community to develop and grow a robust, multi-faceted worship and arts ministry. The Cantor prays daily for the mission, ministry, growth, and outreach of the congregation, its organizations, leaders, members, friends, and seekers.
We are excited to work together with Bryan Rust to bring this newly defined and branded to life within our congregation in the months and years to come.
Bryan is a father, partner, son, grandson, brother, nephew, uncle, godson, godfather, friend, colleague, and musician. There’s lots of different things Bryan enjoys. Ask him; he’ll tell you.