Dear Father Charles

December 18, 2009

Dear Father Charles:

It is again time to wish you a happy birthday -- number 302. I wish we could make more of it in our churches and choirs; that is, I wish we could take time to celebrate all that you have given to us in your life and especially in your hymns. But coming deep into the season of Advent and just one week before the big Christmas celebrations, we are concentrated in worship, singing, observance and celebration of other things. We are decorating, attending parties, ordering poinsettias for the sanctuary, shopping for and wrapping gifts, preparing and presenting all manner of concerts and programs, and otherwise receiving God's great gift of Jesus. Your birthday, however, is still important; and it provides an opportunity to recall some of the highlights of our church over the past year.

One year ago, we were feverishly making plans to develop a new hymnal for the United Methodist Church, a momentous task that comes along only once a generation. General Conference had approved the revision at its 2008 quadrennial meeting in Fort Worth, Texas. By this time last year, the committee had been constituted with gifted and eager musicians, theologians, clergy, laity, professors, and worship specialists. As the committee gathered in Nashville in January for its first meeting, it began its editorial work in texts, tunes, and ritual. Before departing the meeting, the committee learned that the economic downturn in the U.S. economy was having a major impact on the ability to fund and sustain the work of revising the hymnal and new, creative ways would have to be found and employed to continue the work. During the next weeks, it became clear that the economic conditions were rapidly deteriorating to a point where even with creative ways of working, the process could not continue. The work was first slowed and then halted as conditions worsened in the nation and world. The committee did not meet again after its first meeting, but the Discipleship Ministries and United Methodist Publishing House (UMPH) pledged to consult and include committee members in other ongoing work in worship and hymnody.

The deep recession experienced in the U.S.A. and around the world, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, continues to have an effect upon the church. For general agencies, it has meant significant cutbacks in staff and a reorganization of their programming. Two of those agencies have cut more than ninety jobs. The United Methodist Publishing House will not distribute payments to retired clergy for the first time in fifty years. Only 17 of the 63 regional U.S. United Methodist conferences paid their full share of the denomination-wide expenses last year, down from 23 in 2007. Fifty bishops of the USA church have taken a four percent salary cut for 2010. For local churches it has also resulted in staff reductions, including many musicians, reduced budgets, and lower salaries and offerings, all of which impact the church's national and global ministries. It has been a difficult and painful year as all levels of the church have had to cope with economic conditions. Now, at the end of the year, there are some signs of hope and recovery as the church seeks to remain faithful to its mission.

UMPH and Discipleship Ministries, as part of their ongoing work of resourcing the church in worship and music, are engaged in a joint project to produce two new volumes, both of which will be available in digital and print formats. One volume will contain hymns and songs; the other worship resources. Both will include a wide variety of traditional, contemporary, global and ethnic resources. It has been almost ten years since a similar project resulted in the 2000 release of The Faith We Sing. The anticipated release of the new volumes is early 2011, and we're looking forward to an exciting national introductory event in Nashville. Our prayer is that these two new collections will serve the church as well as has The Faith We Sing.

There have been many changes and innovations to congregational singing in the 302 years since your birth. In the United Methodist Church we have been through a generation of unsettled change as new styles of singing have been incorporated into our worship. In recent years we have seen a change in attitude toward traditional hymns, including your own. There was a time when many contemporary musicians sought to replace these with more modern songs and styles, melodies, accompaniments, and instrumentation. Today the trend is toward recognizing the great value of traditional hymns and texts in modern worship, but this is often accomplished through updating the musical style -- contemporizing -- the hymns and songs. You would likely be surprised, and I believe pleased, to hear how contemporary praise bands and rock groups are incorporating your hymns into vital, meaningful, contemporary worship.

We know that you and your brother John were strong advocates for social justice, equal rights, and the end of slavery. Progress in the world and the USA has come hard and has been often delayed. But this year we celebrate two milestones: the election of Africa's first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a United Methodist, and the inauguration of the USA's first African American president, Barack Obama.

The 2008 General Conference approved a four-year study into the need for a new United Methodist Hymnal to serve Africana people, that is, those United Methodists descended from the African diaspora. This certainly includes African Americans, but also people of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and others, many of whom are in immigrant communities in the USA. The study is to investigate who these people are, how many, where they are, how they worship now, what resources they currently use, and what they need for the future. The committee will bring its report and recommendations to the 2012 General Conference when it meets in Tampa, Florida.

There are four hymn-related milestones to note this year:

• William J. Reynolds, hymnologist, composer, hymn leader, died March 28, 2009.
• Fred Kaan, noted composer of hymns, died October 4, 2009.
• Paul Manz, composer, educator, organist, died October 29, 2009.
• Herbert Brokering, hymn writer, died November 7, 2009.

Finally, I must mention the continuing evolution of change in hymnody resulting from technological innovation. Your musicians -- directors, singers, players, writers -- are immersed in new technology you could not have imagined. We get our news today more by Internet services than printed newspapers and magazines. We communicate by text message and e-mail more than by telephone and written communication. We interact and keep up with one another and our people through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, RSS feeds, and other developing technologies. We increasingly sing in worship from words projected on a screen rather than from a printed book. We purchase music through electronic, digital, and satellite sources instead paying a publisher for a book, although we continue to redefine and use the terms "book" and "hymnal." Our libraries are increasingly stored on little round disks and digital devices the size of your thumb, replacing the need for many books on many shelves in offices. We are constantly engaged in improving these technologies and developing new ones. It is an amazing time to be a church musician.

Happy birthday, dear Father Charles!

Dean McIntyre

Previous Dear Father Charles greetings:

• 2008
• 2007
• 2006

Happy Birthday, Charles Wesley

For a bulletin or newsletter insert, see "Happy Birthday, Charles Wesley (December 18)"