Dear Father Charles

December 18, 2007

Dear Father Charles,

It has been a year since I last wrote to you on your birthday, and this is the one we've been preparing for -- your 300th. Despite your age, you remain an important influence on Methodists everywhere. All over the world, Methodists have been celebrating your day with services, sermons, studies of your life and contributions, books and articles, concerts, hymn festivals, musicals, new recordings of your hymns, and even group travel tours of the places where you lived, worked, and preached.

On our own website we published something called a "hymnical" by one of your modern British countrymen. It is a musical-dramatic telling of your life and contributions, using settings of the hymns you wrote.

Most music publishers have issued some kind of commemorative volume, including hymn collections, organ settings, piano books, handbell arrangements, and many releases for choir and singers. When we observed your brother's 300th just four years ago, the commemorative publications included far fewer musical releases. But because of the many musical celebrations, I believe the people were actually able to enter more completely into the festivities than with those for your brother. Many will continue to celebrate the occasion throughout the coming year.

In a great ecumenical event to mark your 300th birthday in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, Italy, Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists filled the church to sing your hymns and to share in worship and prayer.

It has been an eventful year for Methodist music and worship since I wrote last year. Here are just a few of the highlights:

• We completed the joint study of the music and worship needs of our church that was done by a joint committee of Discipleship Ministries and The United Methodist Publishing House. We released the study with all of the data, statistics, observations, needs, and recommendations. These will be considered by the General Conference in 2008.
• We have two hymnal proposals for General Conference to consider. One is for a four-year study into the possibility and need for an official United Methodist hymnal for African Americans and other Africana people. The other is to develop a new hymnal and worship book for United Methodists in the U.S.A. It is hoped that this new hymnal will be a resource for the church to use with the many new styles and trends of worship and music today -- a resource that will help reach younger members.
• Abingdon Press released Zion Still Sings, a collection of mostly contemporary songs and arrangements that will appeal to African Americans and contemporary worshipers. It follows in the tradition of the older Songs of Zion.
• Musicians, dancers, and liturgical artists of all kinds gathered in St. Louis this past year for the national convocation of The Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts (FUMMWA). With great vigor and variety of styles, we worshiped and sang, learned, celebrated, and enjoyed great fellowship.
• Simultaneously and in conjunction with the St. Louis FUMMWA convocation, many of your United Methodist preachers gathered at Preaching from the Center to hear and learn from some of the best preachers today: Barbara Lundblad, Cleophus LaRue, Tom Troeger, and Bishop Scott Jones.
• All over the nation and world, Methodists gathered in a variety of events related to music and worship. They did so to learn, to experience new things, to renew their spirits, and recommit themselves to ministry.

You may wonder how the UMC is doing. It's mixed. Even as we continue to lose members in the U.S.A. and most of Europe, our worship and music remains strong. There is a great amount of experimentation and change afoot. Perhaps it is true that such things are never static that we never have and never will reach a point where we say, "OK, THIS is how we will continue to worship." Things are always changing. But my sense is that we are in a time that is unusually rich in diversity and change.

Elsewhere in the world the church is exploding, especially in Africa. There are new conferences, new churches, new pastors, new life, new growth. Around forty percent of the global United Methodist Church is now outside the United States, and that percentage continues to rise dramatically. The church is growing in Russia, the Balkan nations, Asia, the Philippines, Cameroon, Nigeria, Namibia, Congo, Angola, and elsewhere. Even in Albania, which used to be the most politically repressed and closed society in the world -- officially an atheistic nation by law established by its brutally oppressive Communist government -- The United Methodist Church has taken root and is growing. There is a new bilingual French-English United Methodist songbook being readied for publication in Cameroon, and work on a similar collection continues in Namibia. The United Methodist Church in Lithuania issued a new hymnal this past year, and a new one has been begun in Latvia. These efforts join others recently completed in Cambodia, Vietnam, Russia, Denmark, Germany, for the Hmong United Methodists, and Spanish and Korean hymnals in the United States. In your own home country, the British Methodists have announced work on a new hymnal. And the United Methodist Publishing House has already embarked on a new translation of the Bible that will undoubtedly have an impact on worship and music.

All of this official and semi-official work being accomplished in the area of music and congregational singing, while offered in response to changes in worship and music globally, also serves to bring change to the church and the pews. The day is long past when a single hymnal and worship book will serve United Methodists. This causes us to struggle with the problem of how to maintain some sense of unity and identity as a denomination when our people are so different -- culture, history, language, experience, needs, and worship and music practice. Among the things that bind us have been our reliance on the centrality of Scripture, our liturgical heritage, the writings and sermons of you and John, and the tradition of song provided by your hymns. Among the things that continue to divide us are political disagreements and how to best promote the social gospel, generational differences, and coping with the many worship and music style trends and changes.

But now we join in celebration of this 300th anniversary, giving God thanks for your life, your witness, and the great inheritance we have in your hymns. We dedicate ourselves anew in order that we may, in your words, keep the charge we have, glorify our God, serve the present age, and fulfill our calling.

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For Charles Wesley 300th resources, see www.wesley300.org

Dear Father Charles (Dec. 18, 2006)

Happy Birthday, Charles Wesley

Happy Birthday, Charles Wesley (December 18) bulletin or newsletter insert