Each week, you may find information here about the music in the traditional worship services at First United Methodist Church in Lewisville, Texas. Some of this information is original; most of it is copied from other websites such as Wikipedia, GBOD, and hymnary.org. It is my hope that this information will enhance your understanding and enrich your worship experience.
About the Organ Music:
Azmon - David M. Cherwien
(c. 2001, Augsburg Fortress)
"O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" was written by Charles Wesley, who wrote over 6,000 hymns. Wesley was suffering a bout of pleurisy in May, 1738, while he and his brother were studying under the Moravian scholar Peter Böhler in London. At the time, Wesley was plagued by extreme doubts about his faith. Taken to bed with the sickness on May 21, Wesley was attended by a group of Christians who offered him testimony and basic care, and he was deeply affected by this. He read from his Bible and found himself deeply affected by the words and at peace with God. Shortly, his strength began to return. He wrote of this experience in his journal and counted it as a renewal of his faith; when his brother John had a similar experience on the 24th, the two men met and sang a hymn Wesley had written in praise of his renewal.
One year from the experience, Wesley was taken with the urge to write another hymn, this one in commemoration of his renewal of faith. This hymn took the form of an 18-stanza poem, beginning with the opening lines “Glory to God, and praise, and love Be ever, ever given” and was published in 1740 and entitled “For the anniversary day of one's conversion”. The seventh verse, which begins, 'O for a thousand tongues to sing', and which now is invariably the first verse of a shorter hymn, recalls the words of Peter Böhler who said, “Had I a thousand tongues I would praise Him with them all.” The hymn was published first in John Wesley's A Collection of Hymns for the People Called Methodists in 1780. It has appeared first in every Methodist hymnal since that time.
The original 10 verses are:
O For a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer's praise!
The glories of my God and King, The triumphs of His grace!
My gracious Master and my God, Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the world abroad The honors of Thy name.
Jesus! the Name that charms our fears, That bids our sorrows cease;
'Tis music in the sinner's ears, 'Tis life, and health, and peace.
He breaks the power of cancell'd sin, He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood avail'd for me.
He speaks, - and, listening to his voice, New life the dead receive;
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice; The humble poor believe.
Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb, Your loosen'd tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come, And leap, ye lame, for joy.
Look unto him, ye nations; own Your God, ye fallen race;
Look, and be saved through faith alone, Be justified by grace.
See all your sins on Jesus laid; The Lamb of God was slain;
His soul was once an offering made For every soul of man.
Awake from guilty nature's sleep, And Christ shall give you light,
Cast all your sins into the deep, And wash the AEthiop white.
With me, your chief, ye then shall know, Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below, And own that love is heaven.
Dr. David Cherwien (b. 1957) is currently serving as Director of Music at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN, and in 2002 was appointed Music Director for the National Lutheran Choir, also based in the Twin Cities. He has also held full time parish music positions in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, Chicago, Seattle, and Berlin. He completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance, and the Master of Arts degree in Theory and Composition, both from the University of Minnesota. His undergraduate work was in organ performance and music education at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, where he was honored as distinguished alumni in the fall of 2000.
About the Piano Music:
I Need Thee Every Hour - Mary McDonald
(c.2008, Lorenz Publishing)
Annie S. Hawks’ (1836-1918) poems first began appearing in newspapers when she was 14 years old. She married Charles H. Hawks in 1857. They lived in Brooklyn, New York, and attended the Hanson Place Baptist Church, where Robert Lowry was pastor. She wrote 400 hymns in her life, mostly for use in Sunday schools.
“I Need Thee Every Hour” was written by Hawks in 1872. She showed Lowry her poem, and he wrote the lyrics of the refrain and the tune NEED. The song was first sung publicly at the 1872 meeting of the National Baptist Sunday School Association in Cincinnati, Ohio. Its first publication was in 1873 in a Sunday School hymnbook compiled by Lowry and William H. Doane, Royal Diadem for the Sunday School.
When this hymn was first published in 1873, this Bible verse was included underneath the title: “Without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5 KJV). Each of the first four stanzas of this hymn dwells on a different facet of our dependence on God: our need for His peace, our inability to resist temptation alone, our need to find true meaning in life, and our desire to see God's promises fulfilled. The fifth stanza is an intense plea for God's presence.
I need Thee every hour, Most gracious Lord;
No tender voice like Thine Can peace afford.
I need Thee every hour, Stay Thou near by;
Temptations lose their power When Thou art nigh.
I need Thee every hour, In joy or pain;
Come quickly and abide, Or life is vain.
I need Thee every hour, Teach me Thy will;
And Thy rich promises In me fulfill.
I need Thee every hour, Most Holy One;
Oh, make me Thine indeed, Thou blessed Son.
I need Thee, oh, I need Thee; Every hour I need Thee;
Oh, bless me now, my Savior! I come to Thee.
Mary McDonald’s sacred music career spans over thirty-five years. More than eight hundred anthems, seasonal musicals and keyboard collections testify to her significant contribution to sacred literature. In 2000, Mary became the first ever woman President of the Southern Baptist Church Music Conference. In addition, she has served as accompanist for the Tennessee Men's Chorale since 1985. Her greatest desire is "to give God glory for the songs He has allowed me to compose. He alone, is the true Creator behind my pen." In 2011, after serving as sacred music editor for The Lorenz Corporation in Dayton, Ohio for more than twenty years, Mary answered a new call. Now she takes her tremendous passion and love for music making directly to churches as an independent artist by holding Composer Weekend workshops.
About the Choral Music:
Back to the Church in the Wildwood - Mary McDonald
(c.2012, Lorenz Publishing Co.)
Mary McDonald has arranged a medley of gospel hymns: “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”, “Sweet By and By”, “Shall We Gather at the River”, and “The Church in the Wildwood”.
“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” was published in 1887 with music by Anthony J. Showalter and lyrics by Showalter and Elisha Hoffman. Elisha Hoffman (1839-1929) after graduating from Union Seminary in Pennsylvania was ordained in 1868. As a minister he was appointed to the circuit in Napoleon, Ohio in 1872. He worked with the Evangelical Association's publishing arm in Cleveland for eleven years. He served in many chapels and churches in Cleveland and in Grafton in the 1880s, among them Bethel Home for Sailors and Seamen, Chestnut Ridge Union Chapel, Grace Congregational Church and Rockport Congregational Church. In his lifetime he wrote more than 2,000 gospel songs including "Leaning on the everlasting arms" (1894). The fifty song books he edited include Pentecostal Hymns No. 1 and The Evergreen, 1873. Anthony J. Showalter received letters from two friends who had lost their wives about the same time. He wrote back to express his sympathy, and included a verse of Scripture: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27 KJV). As he thought about that text, he wrote the music and refrain to this hymn. He asked Elisha Hoffman to write the stanzas. The hymn was first published in 1887 in The Glad Evangel for Revival, Camp, and Evangelistic Meetings, for which Showalter was an editor. The text has three stanzas and a refrain. The theme of the text is the peace that comes from knowing that God will protect us, and how that knowledge removes our fears.
“In the sweet by and by” is a genuine product of the Midwest United States. It jumped into life as
the result of an impromptu conversation between Samuel Fillmore Bennett (1836-1898) and his
musician friend, Joseph P. Webster (1819-1875) in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Webster came into
Bennett’s office one day looking depressed. When Bennett asked him what was the matter, he
replied that “I will be all right by and by.” That phrase leaped into life for Bennett. “The sweet by
and by,” he mused. “That would make a good hymn.” Then and there he started to write the
verse. Webster caught his friend’s enthusiasm, hummed out a melody, and bringing in a friend
with his violin the three men soon were singing the song.
"Shall We Gather at the River?" or simply "At the River" are the popular names for the traditional Christian hymn titled "Hanson Place," written in 1864 by American poet and gospel music composer Robert Lowry (1826–1899). He studied theology at the University at Lewisburg (now Bucknell University) and on graduating, in 1854, became ordained as a Baptist minister. He had charge of churches in a number of places including the Bloomingdale Baptist Church in New York City; the Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn; and others in West Chester, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He wrote a number of hymns with members of his congregations. At the Hanson Place Baptist Church he wrote songs with Annie Hawks, and he established a similar partnership with Fanny J. Crosby at Sixth Avenue Bible Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. He is most remembered as a composer of gospel music and a hymn writer, and also worked as a music editor at the Biglow & Main Publishing Company. He was responsible for around 500 compositions, including "Nothing But the Blood," "Christ Arose" ("Low in the Grave He Lay") (words and music)," and "How Can I Keep From Singing?". He also wrote the music and refrain for "Marching to Zion" (words by Isaac Watts). Despite his success as a hymn writer, it was as a preacher that Lowry would have preferred to be recognized. He once stated: "Music, with me has been a side issue... I would rather preach a gospel sermon to an appreciative audience than write a hymn. I have always looked upon myself as a preacher and felt a sort of depreciation when I began to be known more as a composer." However, it is as a hymn writer that he remains renowned. The title "Hanson Place" is a reference to the original Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn. The original building now houses a different denomination. The song's lyrics refer to the Christian concept of the anticipation of restoration and reward, and reference the motifs found at Revelation 22:1-2 - a crystal clear river with water of life, issuing from the throne of heaven, all presented by an angel of God.
“Church in the Wildwood” was composed in 1857 by a young music teacher named William S Pitts as a result of a June visit to Bradford, Iowa. Pitts was on a stagecoach ride that stopped at the town. Pitts wandered through the woodlands there. He happened upon a particularly beautiful spot in a valley close to the Cedar River and an image formed in his mind of a church building at the location. Returning to his home in Wisconsin and unable to forget about the image, Pitts wrote a poem that he later set to music, saying at its completion, “only then was I at peace with myself”. When Pitts returned to the area with his wife in 1862 he discovered a church being erected where he had imagined it to be. The church members had been meeting in a variety of temporary rooms until Rev. J.K. Nutting led the drive to create a permanent home for the congregation. Providentially, the very plot where Pitt imagined a church would stand was donated by the family that owned it and soon a church building was erected on the exact spot. Not only that, the church was being painted brown, the color mentioned in the song. At the time, Ohio Mineral Paint’s brown paint was the cheapest paint to be found. During the winter of 1863-1864, Pitts taught a singing class at Bradford Academy. He resurrected the song and tutored his class to sing the song at the dedication of the new church in 1864. This was the first time the song was sung by anyone other than Pitts himself.
In 1865 Pitts moved to Chicago, Illinois, to enrol at Rush Medical College. To pay for his enrolment fees, he sold the rights to the song to a music publisher for $25. He completed medical school, graduating in 1868, but the song was forgotten once again. After the church closed in 1888 due to an economic downturn in the town, the Society for the Preservation of The Little Brown Church was founded. In the 1890s evangelists Arthur Chapman and Charles Alexander helped to popularize the song. By 1914, services were again held in the church. Shortly afterward, the small congregation experienced a revival that attracted new attention to it and to the song, Church in the Wildwood. Among those who found and loved the song at this time was the Weatherwax Brothers Quartet who journeyed throughout Canada and the USA in the 1920s and 1930s and used The Church in the Wildwood as their trademark song. As the song grew in popularity, the church has become a popular tourist spot, and remains so today. It attracts thousands of visitors every year to see or be married in the little brown church in the vale.
Mary McDonald’s sacred music career spans over thirty-five years. More than eight hundred anthems, seasonal musicals and keyboard collections testify to her significant contribution to sacred literature. In 2000, Mary became the first ever woman President of the Southern Baptist Church Music Conference. In addition, she has served as accompanist for the Tennessee Men's Chorale since 1985. Her greatest desire is "to give God glory for the songs He has allowed me to compose. He alone, is the true Creator behind my pen." In 2011, after serving as sacred music editor for The Lorenz Corporation in Dayton, Ohio for more than twenty years, Mary answered a new call. Now she takes her tremendous passion and love for music making directly to churches as an independent artist by holding Composer Weekend workshops.
Take me back to the church in the wildwood, where the Folks make me feel so at home.
How I love going back to my childhood, where we’d sing all the old, old songs.
It was there where I first met Jesus. It was there where I knew I belonged.
How I love going back to the old, old church, where we’d sing all the old, old songs.
What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms.
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms.
In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.
In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.
Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod;
with its crystal tide forever flowing by the throne of God.
Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river that flows by the throne of God.
There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood, no lovelier spot in the dale;
No place is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the vale.
O come, come, come, come,
Come to the church in the wildwood, O come to the church in the dale.
No place is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the vale.
It was there where I first met Jesus. It was there where I knew I belonged.
How I love going back to the old, old church, where we’d sing all the old, old songs,
where we’d sing all the old, old songs! Sing the old, old songs!
God Be With You Til We Meet Again
Written as an expansion on the root sense of “good-bye” (God be [with] ye/you), “God Be with You till We Meet Again” has appeared in more than 900 hymnals and remains a prominent example of nineteenth-century gospel song in The United Methodist Hymnal and other collections today. Jeremiah Eames Rankin’s (1828-1904) text is often amended to include a refrain, mimicking the style and content of other hymns used to close camp meetings, revivals, or sung on the occasion of the departure of a church leader to a new assignment. This practice of singing a goodbye may also be linked to the history of shaped-note singing schools concluding with a goodbye or farewell song.
Rankin, a congregational minister and later the president of Howard University (Washington D.C.), was a prolific hymn writer and preacher. He also helped to compile several hymnals. First appearing in the collection Gospel Bells (1880), Rankin’s best-known hymn, “God Be with You till We Meet Again,” begins and ends each stanza of poetry with the same line, providing only the two interior lines for variety in the text.
As Carl P. Daw, Jr. writes in his commentary on Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal: “[The task of varying the text] is somewhat limited by the invariable ending of those lines with “you,” so that the rhyming word before each such occurrence must be a transitive verb or a preposition. This sort of two-syllable rhyme is generally doggerel except in the most expert hands. Yet it may be the pedestrian qualities of this text that have so endeared this hymn to many. It is the poetry of the common person, eager to find yet another rhyme to fit before the next you.”
Hymn historians Harry Eskew and Hugh T. McElrath echo Daw’s sentiment about the poetry of the common person. Discussing the music of the camp-meeting, Eskew and McElrath write, “Singing was an important means of expressing the emotional fervor of these revival meetings. The need for simple and contagious songs, enough to appeal to unlettered folk, brought into being a simplified folk hymn… with repetition of text, the addition of a chorus to the hymn”. These types of hymns became a major force in the musical landscape during the period of urban revivalism in the 1870s led largely by the meetings of evangelist Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899) and his musical associate, Ira D. Sankey (1840-1908).
What accounts for this sending hymn’s continued popularity over 125 years later? And, perhaps more importantly, what purpose does it serve in the lyrical, sung theology of the body of Christ? Sending is a key moment in worship; it is our transition to the world where we will respond to God’s call and continue to experience God’s blessing”. “God be with You till We Meet Again” situates itself as a message of assurance in that sending. Additionally, it serves as a prayer for one another.
William G. Toner (1833-1896) wrote the tune GOD BE WITH YOU for Rankin’s text. Tomer studied singing and sang in the choir in Finesville, New Jersey, and began teaching school at age 17. He served in the Union army during the American civil war, then worked as a clerk in Washington, DC, served as music director for Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, and taught school in New Carpentersville and Greenwich, New Jersey.
God be with you till we meet again, By His counsels guide, uphold you,
With His sheep securely fold you, God be with you till we meet again.
God be with you till we meet again, ’Neath His wings protecting hide you,
Daily manna still divide you, God be with you till we meet again.
God be with you till we meet again, When life’s perils thick confound you,
Put His arms unfailing round you, God be with you till we meet again.
God be with you till we meet again, Keep love’s banner floating o’er you,
Smite death’s threatening wave before you, God be with you till we meet again.
Till we meet, till we meet, Till we meet at Jesus’ feet;
Till we meet, till we meet, God be with you till we meet again.
About the Hymns:
Jesus Calls Us
Cecil Frances Alexander (1823-1850) married William Alexander, an Anglican clergyman who later became the Anglican Archbishop for all of Ireland. Alexander was an outstanding young woman by virtue of ability, education, and service. While still quite young, she and her sister operated a school for the deaf, and she also published a highly successful book of hymns for children––designating the profits for the benefit of the school. Her hymns are mostly for children, and were published in her Verses for Holy Seasons, with Preface by Dr. Hook, 1846; Poems on Subjects in the Old Testament, pt. i. 1854, pt. ii. 1857; Narrative Hymns for Village Schools, 1853; Hymns for Little Children, 1848; Hymns Descriptive and Devotional, 1858; The Legend of the Golden Prayers 1859; Moral Songs, N.B.; The Lord of the Forest and his Vassals, an Allegory, &c.; or contributed to the Lyra Anglicana, the S.P.C.K. Psalms and Hymns, Hymns Ancient & Modern, and other collections. She wrote 400 hymns during her lifetime –– mostly children's hymns––but "Jesus Calls Us" and "All Things Bright and Beautiful" are the best known.
Impressed by her hymns, her husband, Bishop Alexander, asked her to write a hymn for use during the coming Sunday worship on St. Andrew's Day based on the call of Simon, Andrew, James, and John (Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-18). She wrote this hymn, "Jesus Calls Us," for that occasion. The first verse of this hymn begins, "Jesus calls us o'er the tumult of our life's wild, restless sea"––acknowledging the call of those first disciples by the Sea of Galilee. A recurring theme is "Christian, love me more"––"Christian, love me more than these" ––"serve and love thee best of all." Those words were inspired by John 21:15, where Jesus, after the resurrection, asked Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" Her text was published in the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge's (SPCK) Hymns for Public Worship (1852). Though written for a relatively minor saint's day, this hymn quickly gained popularity.
The tune GALILEE was written for this text by W. H. Jude in 1887. William Herbert Jude (1851-1922) was an English composer and organist. He was a precocious child, and attended Wisbech Grammar School where records note that by age eight he was composing incidental music for school plays. He later attended Liverpool Organ School and Liverpool College of Music. By 1881, he was organist for the Blue Coat Hospital and Stretford Town Hall near Manchester, as well as being a lecturer and teacher. As a recitalist, he was asked to "open" over 1000 new organs across the UK, Ireland and Australia. He was frequently referred to as "the most brilliant organist of the day". Christian texts and topics appear frequently in Jude's compositions. He was an admirer of the British evangelist Rodney "Gipsy" Smith, and published a collection of Gipsy Smith's Favourite Solos in 1903. Jude appears to have supported the temperance movement; "Fight the Drink", a song by Jude with lyrics by A Sargant, appears in a collection of his music with the note that it was "sung at the Crystal Palace Festival by 5000 people". Between 1890 and 1894, the composer embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand. Beginning in 1904, he served as editor for several musical periodicals, including Monthly Hymnal, Minister of Music, and Music and the Higher Life. He also compiled several hymnbooks: Mission Hymns in 1911 and Festival Hymns in 1916.
Jesus calls us o'er the tumult of our life's wild, restless sea;
day by day his sweet voice soundeth, saying "Christian, follow me."
As, of old, apostles heard it by the Galilean lake,
turned from home and toil and kindred, leaving all for his dear sake.
Jesus calls us from the worship of the vain world's golden store,
from each idol that would keep us, saying "Christian, love me more."
In our joys and in our sorrows, days of toil and hours of ease,
still he calls, in cares and pleasures, "Christian, love me more than these."
Jesus calls us; by thy mercies, Savior, may we hear thy call,
give our hearts to thine obedience, serve and love thee best of all.
Trust and Obey
This hymn was inspired in 1886 when the composer of the music, Daniel B. Towner (1850-1919), was the music leader during one of Dwight L. Moody’s famous revivals. Towner provided the following account cited by Moody’s musical partner, Ira D. Sankey, in his biography, My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns: “Mr. Moody was conducting a series of meetings in Brockton, Massachusetts, and I had the pleasure of singing for him there. One night a young man rose in a testimony meeting and said, ‘I am not quite sure—but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.’ I just jotted that sentence down, and sent it with a little story to the Rev. J. H. Sammis, a Presbyterian minister. He wrote the hymn, and the tune was born.”
Sammis is said to have composed the lines of the refrain upon receiving the letter:
“Trust and obey—for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
As is the case with most gospel songs, these lines provide the central theme around which all of the stanzas were written. The text and first Towner’s tune, TRUST AND OBEY, appeared in the 1887 collection, Hymns Old and New, and has been included in countless hymnals since. Methodist hymnals in the United States have carried it since 1897.
When we walk with the Lord in the light of his word, what a glory he sheds on our way!
While we do his good will, he abides with us still, and with all who will trust and obey.
Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share, but our toil he doth richly repay;
not a grief or a loss, not a frown or a cross, but is blest if we trust and obey.
But we never can prove the delights of his love until all on the altar we lay;
for the favor he shows, for the joy he bestows, are for them who will trust and obey.
Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at his feet, or we'll walk by his side in the way;
what he says we will do, where he sends we will go; never fear, only trust and obey.
Trust and obey, for there's no other way
to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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