Hymn Blog - June 14, 2009

This Sunday we celebrate our Christian Development program, particularly Children’s Church, and look at the parable of the sower and the seeds.

 

VU 584 – Through the Heart of Every City.  This text was written by the late Sylvia Dunstan, United Church minister, hymn poet and Fellow of the Hymn Society. It was commissioned for the 250^th anniversary of First and Central Presbyterian church in Wilmington Deleware. The tune, HERMON, was composed in 1935 by Charles Venn Pilcher, professor of New Testament at Toronto’s Wycliffe College, and precentor at St. Alban’s Anglican Church.

 

We Are One in the Spirit. This folk hymn was extremely popular in the sixties, and went on to become the banner song of the Jesus Movement. It was written in 1966 by Rev. Peter Scholtes, a Roman Catholic priest from the south side of Chicago.

 

VU 703 – In the Bulb There Is a Flower.  This “Hymn of Promise” was written by Natalie Sleeth as an anthem and it was later adapted for congregational singing. It was dedicated to her husband, a Methodist pastor and homelitics professor, who was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the anthem was written. It was first sung at his funeral.

 

VU 299 – Teach Me, God, to Wonder. This hymn text is by former United Church moderator Walter Farquharson of Saltcoats, Saskatchewan, and the tune by his frequent collaborator, Ron Klusmeier, who serves the congregation of Knox United Church in Parksville, British Columbia as Minister of Music.