Influential Woman · Worship Ministry
Jenni Fansler
Songwriter, Worship Leader, Songs for Solitary
Branson, MO 65616
Her Story
About Jenni
Jenni Fansler is a worship director, musician, songwriter, and doctoral student. She currently serves as the associate worship director at Church 316 in Forsyth, MO, working two days per week leading the worship ministry. Her responsibilities include attending staff meetings, planning services, directing the band, ensuring musicians have the necessary music, rehearsing with the team, and managing communication and scheduling. She also leads youth worship on Wednesday nights and, on Sunday mornings, participates in early discipling time with the worship team before rehearsals and corporate worship. Alongside her church leadership role, Jenni is pursuing doctoral studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her doctoral project focuses on developing a scalable system to help small to mid-sized churches write and produce their own worship music. She is also an active composer and publisher of original worship music under the imprint Songs for Solitary. Approximately a year and a half ago, she launched her YouTube channel, which has since grown to more than 38,000 unique viewers, with her music being played in 35 countries. Jenni serves on the board of Take the Challenge International, a mission organization dedicated to training pastors and disciple-makers worldwide. A significant portion of her songwriting contributes directly to their global discipleship curriculum, including setting memory verses to music for use in training programs. In her personal life, she also spends three days per week caring for her grandson, allowing her to balance family responsibilities with her professional, academic, and creative work. Jenni holds a Bachelor of Science in Music from Southwest Baptist University, completed partial graduate studies in music composition at Truman State University, and earned a Master of Arts in Worship Studies from Dallas Baptist University. She is currently completing doctoral work at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where her research is centered on building systems that equip small and mid-sized churches to write and produce worship music.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jenni
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received was to bring your own shoes. When you come into a new role, don't try to fill someone else's shoes, bring your own shoes. This advice has helped me understand that I don't need to replicate what someone before me did, but rather bring my own unique approach and strengths to each position I take on.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't be afraid to take life in chapters. When I dropped out of grad school when I was young, my professors objected, saying, “You have so much potential—why are you dropping out?” But I knew I wanted to be a mom. So when I had my son (and three daughters), I chose to stay home, and I was home for 20 years. Then I picked up going back to do my master's degree and my doctorate and the things that I'm doing now. I have no regrets about that at all, because I was able to focus on my children when they were little, and now that they're young adults, and they're getting married, and they're having kids, and going into their own professions, I can kind of do that in parallel with them. I don't regret being there for those times with them when they were little that I can't get back.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think there can be a lot of strong opinions about music in church, and that can be kind of a challenge sometimes. Also, the roles of women in church can be a challenge. But the biggest opportunity I see right now is for smaller to mid-sized churches to write and release their own worship music. For the last couple of decades, worship music has been dominated by these big names, like Bethel and Elevation and Passion and Hillsong, these big companies that were putting out music. But many of these are not at the forefront anymore. So there's an opportunity there. And with the advance of technology and how much easier it is to produce and release your own music through venues like YouTube and the streaming platforms, the bar is so much lower to be able to do that. I think that there is such an opportunity for smaller to mid-sized churches to have an entry point into writing and releasing worship music. This is what I'm getting ready to write my dissertation about.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I think living by the Truth and being consistent with that are the values most important to me in my work and personal life.
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