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:
Somos del Senor - Emma Lou Diemer
(c.1993, Augsburg Fortress)
This gentle Spanish-language hymn reflects on the fact that no matter what may happen to us, we belong to God. The author of the first verse is unknown, but verses 2-4 were written by Roberto Escamilla.
Roberto Escamilla was born in 1931 near Monterry, Mexico, close to the border with Texas. The first verse of “When we are living” (from the Spanish “Pues Si Vivimos”) was one he learned as a young boy. It is based on Romans 14:8: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” It is a statement that offers a strong sense that, if we are living in a way that focuses closely on God’s love, then nothing else really matters. Verses 2 to 4 were written when Roberto was in his early fifties, out of an experience of real uncertainty about his future career. To the idea of always endeavouring to be Christ-like, he added the importance of giving and receiving in our Christian lives. The hymn concludes with an affirmation that echoes St Paul’s declaration in his letter to the Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8: 38-39). “Hard times will prove us, never remove us;” writes Roberto Escamilla, “we belong to God, we belong to God.”
Escamilla had a distinguished career as a pastor and a teacher culminating at Perkins School of Theology, specialising in the area of worship, the sacraments, and preaching. He edited a landmark collection of Hispanic hymns for the Methodist church in the USA.
This hymn has been rendered into English by John L Bell (b.1949), a minister of the Church of Scotland and member of the Iona Community and its Wild Goose Resource Group, hymn writer, broadcaster, composer, and international workshop leader on music and worship.
When we are living, it is in Christ Jesus,
and when we're dying, it is in the Lord.
Both in our living and in our dying,
we belong to God; we belong to God.
Through all our living, we our fruits must give.
Good works of service are for offering.
When we are giving, or when receiving,
we belong to God; we belong to God.
'Mid times of sorrow and in times of pain,
when sensing beauty or in love's embrace,
whether we suffer, or sing rejoicing,
we belong to God; we belong to God.
Across this wide world, we shall always find
those who are crying with no peace of mind,
but when we help them, or when we feed them,
we belong to God; we belong to God.
Emma Lou Diemer (1927-2024) has written many works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, keyboard, voice, chorus (women's, men's), and electronic media. Diemer is a keyboard performer and over the years has given concerts of her own organ works at Washington National Cathedral, The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, Grace Cathedral and St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco, and others. Diemer's compositional style over the years has varied from tonal to atonal, from traditional to experimental. She has written works for non-professional and professional performers, originally under the "Gebrauchsmusik" philosophy, but has produced many works, particularly for keyboard, that are difficult and challenging. She was professor of theory and composition at the University of Maryland 1965-70, and joined the faculty of the University of California (UCSB) in 1971. She is professor emeritus, 1991–present. While at UCSB, Diemer helped to establish the computer/electronic music program.
United at the Table - Edwin Childs
(c.2012, Madurga and San Pablo Internacional, admin OCP)
Both the text and tune of "United at the table" (Unidos en la fiesta) were written by Joaquín Madurga Oteiza (1938-2017), a Spanish priest, composer, and lyricist. He released 22 records in catholic labels. He founded Coral Santiago De Pamplona chorus in 1975 in the Chantrea district church of Pamplona. He is best known for the "Jota de San Fermín" that is sung every July 7th for the procession of San Fermin by the Council of Pamplona.
We will praise God, we will sing Alleluias with hymns and with psalmody;
We will praise God for the love That sustains us eternally.
We will praise God; we will feast At the bountiful table of life and grace;
We will praise God and give thanks For communion with ev'ry race.
We will praise God; we will play Alleluias with rhythm and instruments;
We will praise God for the love That invites all creation to dance.
United at the table, All our joy is joined in song;
United in the faith, All our joy to God belongs.
Edwin Childs is a professor and a composer of church music in the Chicago area. He is a graduate of Wheaton College, IL (B.M., 1967), and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D., 1973). He has taught at Philadelphia Biblical University, Biola University (California), and Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Childs is an organist and in 2009 released a CD of his organ music performed by Brenda Heck Portman. He has also written and recorded two CDs of vocal solos performed by baritone, Gerard Sundberg. In 1998, he won the American Choral Directors Illinois Chapter Composition Contest for his middle-school choir piece entitled, "Three Songs From the Chinese,". In 2008, he again won the same contest with an SSAA work entitled, “Peace." Childs is a member of the American Guild of Organists (AGO), American Choral Director's Association (ACDA), and the Hymn Society of America and Canada (HSA).
About the Piano Music:
All Are Welcome - Paul Tate
(c.2006, GIA Publications)
Our world is a place of brokenness and alienation. Jesus calls us to wholeness and reconciliation. As disciples of Jesus, we seek justice and healing among people. We affirm that each person is God’s unique creation and by God’s grace, each is called a child of God. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28.
Marty Haugen was raised in the American Lutheran Church (ALC) in Minnesota, and is now a member the United Church of Christ. He writes contemporary hymns and liturgical music for the Lutheran church, and despite being a non-Catholic, his music has found favor in the both Catholic and Protestant congregations. Haugen holds a B.A. degree in psychology from Luther College and an M.A. degree in pastoral studies from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. For the past 25 years, Haugen has pursued a career as a liturgical composer and workshop presenter.
Haugen said he wrote “All are Welcome” for a priest who was raising money for a new parish. "Jesus ate with prostitutes, Pharisees, tax collectors and sinners," said Haugen. "I don't remember him refusing anyone, and that was the spirit in which I wrote it."
Let us build a house Where love can dwell And all can safely live,
A place where Saints and children tell How hearts learn to forgive.
Built of hopes and dreams and visions, Rock of faith and vault of grace;
Here the love of Christ shall end divisions;
Let us build a house where prophets speak, And words are strong and true,
Where all God's children dare to seek To dream God's reign anew.
Here the cross shall stand as witness And a symbol of God's grace;
Here as one we claim the faith of Jesus:
Let us build a house where love is found In water, wine and wheat:
A banquet hall on holy ground, Where peace and justice meet.
Here the love of God, through Jesus, Is revealed in time and space;
As we share in Christ the feast that frees us:
All are welcome, all are welcome, All are welcome in this place.
Paul A. Tate, a graduate of the University of Georgia, is a professional musician living in Sugar Hill, Georgia. As an active workshop presenter and concert performer, Paul has released a dozen recordings and published over 100 original songs and arrangements. His liturgical compositions appear in a number of hymnal resources, and his voice has been heard around the world on Sirius Satellite Radio.
About the Choral Music:
In Remembrance of You - Paul Tate
(c.1997, Wold Library Publications)
This is a song of petition about the Eucharist. The text and tune were written by American professional musician, composer and workshop-presenter Paul A Tate (b 1968), and released in 1997 by World Library Publications. The song was included in Gather Comprehensive.
Paul A. Tate, a graduate of the University of Georgia, is a professional musician living in Sugar Hill, Georgia. As an active workshop presenter and concert performer, Paul has released a dozen recordings and published over 100 original songs and arrangements. His liturgical compositions appear in a number of hymnal resources, and his voice has been heard around the world on Sirius Satellite Radio.
Jesus, hope for all, teach us to believe.
Reach us, hope for all, in water, wine, and wheat.
Gathered at table, gathered in love,
food for the journey sent from above.
Strengthen and feed us in all that we do,
gathered at table in remembrance of you.
Jesus, Son of God, you are living Word.
Teach us, Son of God, to share what we have heard.
Gathered at table, gathered in love,
food for the journey sent from above.
Strengthen and feed us in all that we do,
gathered at table in remembrance of you.
Jesus, Lamb of God, bearer of our sin,
Free us, Lamb of God; come heal us from within.
Gathered at table, gathered in love,
food for the journey sent from above.
Strengthen and feed us in all that we do,
gathered at table in remembrance of you.
About the Hymns:
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
“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.
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
Leaning on Jesus, leaning on Jesus, safe and secure from all alarms;
leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.
O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, leaning on the everlasting arms;
O how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms.
What have I to dread, what have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms.
He Leadeth Me
Although Joseph Gilmore (1834-1918) became a distinguished university and seminary professor, an author of several textbooks in Hebrew and English literature, and a respected Baptist minister, he is best remembered today for this one hymn, hurriedly written when he was just twenty-eight. Gilmore scribbled down these lines in 1862, while visiting with friends after preaching about the truths of the 23rd Psalm at the Wednesday evening service of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He left this account:
At the close of the service we adjourned to Deacon Watson’s pleasant home, where we were being entertained. During our conversation the blessedness of God’s leading so grew upon me that I took out my pencil, wrote the text just as it stands today, handed it to my wife, and thought no more of it.
Without telling her husband, Mrs. Gilmore sent the verses to the “Watchman and Reflector Magazine”, where it first appeared the following year. Three years later Joseph Gilmore went to Rochester, New York, as a candidate to become the pastor of Second Baptist Church. He recalls:
Upon entering the chapel I took up a hymnal, thinking—I wonder what they sing here. To my amazement the book opened up at “He Leadeth Me,” and that was the first time I knew that my hurriedly written lines had found a place among the songs of the church.
William Bradbury, an important American contributor to early gospel hymnody, added two additional lines to the chorus: “His faithful foll’wer I would be, for by His hand He leadeth me.”
He leadeth me: O blessed thought! O words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate'er I do, where'er I be, still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me.
Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom, sometimes where Eden's flowers bloom,
by waters calm, o'er troubled sea, still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me.
Lord, I would clasp thy hand in mine, nor ever murmur nor repine;
content, whatever lot I see, since 'tis my God that leadeth me.
And when my task on earth is done, when, by thy grace, the victory's won,
e'en death's cold wave I will not flee, since God through Jordan leadeth me.
He leadeth me, he leadeth me; by his own hand he leadeth me:
his faithful follower I would be, for by his hand he leadeth me.
The Spirit Sends Us Forth to Serve
“Let us bring to life and liturgy the gifts that differ . . . for the building up of our sisters and brothers into the one Body of Christ,” proclaims Delores Dufner in her introduction to her hymn collection, Sing a New Church. She actively motivates us in this collection to “Sing a new church into being, one in faith and love and praise.” Sister Dufner (b. 1939), a member of St. Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, Minn., has published over 155 hymns in her lifetime, much to the acclaim of Alan Hommerding who named her the foremost female Roman Catholic hymn text writer in the United States in the October 2000 issue of the journal, The Hymn.
Sr. Dufner holds master’s degrees in liturgical music and liturgical studies and is a very active member of her monastery as well as the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minn. She has received several awards throughout her lifetime for her contributions to liturgy and music following Vatican II (1962-1965), from institutions such as St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Ind., and the University of Notre Dame. Her work has taken her to various conventions, hymn festivals and meetings throughout the United States and the world. Music consultant work has even taken her on a 15-month journey to the Diocese of Ballarat, Victoria in Australia. Several of her texts have appeared in anthems, cantatas and even an opera/oratorio by prolific contemporary composers. One of her most famous texts is “Sing a New Church,” commissioned for the 1991 convention of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.
Her hymnody is derived from her experiences of the Roman Catholic Church during Vatican II along with her involvement with liturgy and music. Sr. Dufner writes texts that function within Catholic liturgy, as well as texts which speak centrally from the Word of God. It was her realization that the Catholic Church was in need of English texts after the Vatican II reforms which challenged her to follow in the ways of Martin Luther. She began her hymn writing by creating texts for specific public domain tunes, free of copyright restrictions.
Her texts challenge congregations to keep the church progressing into the future and have earned her a respected presence in hymnals of several denominations throughout the world. Sr. Dufner is also known for her award-winning hymn texts centered on the Virgin Mary and her passion to speak out about women’s rights and injustices.
“The Spirit Sends Us Forth to Serve,” based on Isaiah 61:1-4 and Luke 4:16-22, highlights our Christian mission here on Earth by challenging readers to live out the gospel. Sr. Dufner’s modern English writing style is simple and dynamic, calling the assembly into vibrant prayer and action. This hymn flourishes with action verbs: bring, comfort, help, serve. Sr. Dufner cleverly reiterates the first stanza through the last stanza, as she sends the congregation forth in Jesus’ name through the working of the Holy Spirit. Her texts are often paired with familiar hymn tunes, for practical purposes and to remind us as citizens of the world of our rich ecumenical heritage shared between all. We sing tunes from the past to connect us with our past, and by pairing a fresh text with a durable and loved tune, we bridge the gaps between the past and present and become active witnesses to our evolving faith and church.
LAND OF REST is an American folk tune with ballad roots from Northern England and Scotland. It is traced back to The Christian’s Harp, published in 1832, and has associations with the Appalachians as a shape note tune. Previously assigned the title NEW PROSPECT in the 1844 edition of The Sacred Harp, it was named LAND OF REST for its pairing with the hymn, “O Land of Rest! For Thee I Sigh.” Annabel Morris Buchanan is responsible for the common harmonization of this tune, as she published it in her 1938 Folk Hymns of America.
The spirit sends us forth to serve; we go in Jesus' name
to bring glad tidings to the poor, God's favor to proclaim.
We go to comfort those who mourn and set the burdened free:
where hope is dim, to share a dream and help the blind to see.
We go to be the hands of Christ, to scatter joy like seed
and all our days, to cherish life, to do the loving deed.
Then let us go to serve in peace, the Gospel to proclaim.
God's Spirit has empowered us; we go in Jesus' name.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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