Dear Father Charles

Dear Father Charles,

Once again your birthday approaches, number 301 this coming December 18, 2008. The Winter Solstice comes three days later, bringing the hope and promise of longer days, more sunlight, and warmer temperatures. But for now, on this your birthday, we are deep into Advent, and we think more of the hope and promise of God's coming to us once again.

It has been an eventful year since we celebrated your 300th birthday last year with concerts, programs, publications, and worship services. The General Conference met in Fort Worth, Texas, this year. We United Methodists gathered from all over the world to do the church's business and enjoy Texas hospitality. The worship was diverse, full of spectacle as well as simplicity, planned and led by a woman and an African American man. It was all sent out to the world through streaming Internet broadcast so that those not present could participate as it happened; and it was preserved through archived video for delayed viewing. Voting delegates from outside the USA this year edged closer to the fifty percent mark, a result of both the growing church in Africa and Asia and the declining church in the U.S.A. The largest annual conference within the UMC is the West African country of C�te d'Ivoire with 700,000 members. It was admitted into full membership this year.

Two Wesley scholars, S T Kimbrough and Kenneth Newport, have edited a new version of your manuscript journal for the years 1736-1756 in two volumes. For years, many of your shorthand passages, abbreviations, and other coded writings remained a mystery, but these have now been made known.

Your British Methodists are engaged in producing a new hymnal for the Methodist Church in Great Britain. It will be called Sing a New Song. The preliminary listing of its contents recently released reveals that your native brother and sister Methodists will be singing many new and contemporary songs, hymns, and choruses as they worship.

On our side of the Atlantic Ocean, we have seen recent hymnals published by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the Congregational Christian Churches. And just this past summer the Southern Baptist Church, the largest non-Roman Catholic denomination in the U.S.A., issued their new Baptist Hymnal with much use of current and new technology designed to enhance congregational worship and singing. Other denominations here are also at various stages of hymnal development, including the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and the Presbyterian Church (USA). In addition, the Christian Reformed Church in North America and the Reformed Church in America are working on a joint hymnal.

We United Methodists, not to be left out of what The Hymn Society is calling "a new cluster of hymnal projects," are just beginning our revision of the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal. General Conference this year, meeting in Ft. Worth, Texas, approved the new hymnal, and we have constituted a committee to do the work and bring a proposal back to the 2012 General Conference. The first meeting of the revision committee will be in January 2009. It is my privilege and honor, along with Mr. Gary Alan Smith of The United Methodist Publishing House, to serve as co-editor of the new hymnal.

There are two other major Methodist hymnals being produced, one for the United Methodists in Cameroon, Africa, and one for the United Methodists in Latvia, formerly part of the USSR and now an independent nation once again. The Cameroonian hymnal will be multilingual, primarily serving French and English speakers. Both hymnals' development is being guided by an editorial committee consisting of local worship and music leaders, and both hymnals are receiving additional financial, editorial, and production support from Discipleship Ministries and the General Board of Global Ministries and other groups, including annual conferences, churches, and individuals. Both are truly global and cooperative efforts on behalf of local, indigenous churches. These are exciting times.

General Conference this year took another important step related to hymnody and worship: it approved a four-year joint study by The United Methodist Publishing House and Discipleship Ministries into the need for an Africana hymnal. This study will examine the people living in North America who are descended from African ancestors. They came to all parts of the hemisphere and the Caribbean over a period of nearly 500 years. We want to know who they are, how many there are, where are they located, how they worship and sing, and what they want and need for congregational worship. This important study will bring back a recommendation for future action to the 2012 General Conference.

Your 301st birthday finds the world in difficult times. Despite great wealth and resources, rapid technological innovation, and instantaneous communications, poverty, disease, and hunger persist. Terrorism remains a threat around the world and we continue to fight two wars -- Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S.A. remains the most powerful nation on the planet, and the richest. Nevertheless, we have entered the worst financial crisis we have seen in seventy years, and we have brought most of the rest of the world into it with us. Americans worry about losing their homes, their jobs, their health coverage and their retirement plans. Our education system continues to fail us. Some churches continue to decline in vitality and numbers, while others are dynamic and growing. But it is Advent, and that means we have hope and promise -- that Jesus has come, is coming still, and will come again. We take joy on this your birthday in the words that you wrote 264 years ago:

Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee.
Israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art;
Dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.

Happy birthday, dear Father Charles!