RICHMOND, Va. — It’s said that the Reformer Martin Luther once stood in his pulpit on a Sunday morning, held aloft a Bible and told his congregation, “This is the gospel.” Then raising a hymnal in his other hand, he added, “And this is how we remember it.”
Something of the same spirit was reflected in the Virginia Baptist Historical Society’s hymn festival May 17, as participants at the society’s annual meeting celebrated hymnody in several musical genres in the sanctuary of Grace Baptist Church in Richmond, Va.
Fred Anderson, the society’s executive director, said the hymn singing would have earned the approval of Andrew Broaddus, an early 19th-century Virginia Baptist minister who compiled some of Baptists’ earliest hymnals. Anderson displayed a tiny, pocket-sized version of one of Broaddus’s hymnal, part of the society’s collection.
Fred Anderson (left) displays a 19th-century pocket-sized hymnal to musicians Deborah Carlton Loftis and Bill Roberts. The hymnal is in the Virginia Baptist Historical Society's collection.
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“Andrew’s father hoped he would be an Episcopal priest, but he was lured away to the Baptists because of the music, which he said sounded like choirs of angels,” said Anderson. “We are a singing denomination in part because of him.”
The hymn festival was planned as a highlight of the society’s annual meeting “in hopes that together we will sound like one of Andrew Broaddus’s choirs of angels,” said Anderson.
Underpinning the singing of about a dozen hymns was diverse musical accompaniment, including a folk arrangement of God of Grace and God of Glory, with two guitars; a jazz version of It Is Well With My Soul, with keyboard and brushed cymbals; and a triumphant Holy, Holy, Holy, with pipe organ and oboe.
“Sometimes when we sing very familiar hymns, we let our minds go on autopilot and we don’t think much about what we’re singing,” said Deborah Carlton Loftis, executive director of the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada. “That’s OK sometimes, but on occasion, singing a favorite in a new way can awaken us to fresh understanding and appreciation. That’s what we’re about tonight.”
Loftis, who also is visiting professor of church music at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, organized the hymn festival along with Bill Roberts, professor of church music at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va.
“I hope that the additions and changes will add new meaning and enjoyment to your singing — maybe a little like new spices added to a favorite recipe,” said Loftis. “With the new hymns, we’ll have a taste of what poets and composers are contributing in our time to the body of hymnody to help praise God through song.”
Added to the mix of hymns was a song from the Taize tradition, featuring a congregational ostinato, or repeated chorus, beneath cantored verses. Betty Pugh Mills, Grace Baptist’s pastor, sang the cantor’s melody.
“The Taize community in France centers its worship around short, repeated songs that are sung prayer,” said Loftis. “Using just a few words they express a basic reality of faith, quickly grasped by the mind. As the words are sung over many times, this reality gradually penetrates the whole being. Meditatiave singing thus becomes a way of listening to God.”
Among the instrumentalists at the hymn festival were several from the American Youth Harp Ensemble, whose home base is at Grace Baptist. The group uses music education as a catalyst to develop children’s personal growth and sense of community service.
“I wanted to make sure you knew about this treasure right here in Richmond,” said Loftis, “The group has played at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the White House and in other prestigious concert settings around the world.”
In other action at the annual meeting, the Historical Society recognized the winner of this year’s Roots and Wings Young Leaders Essay Contest, an annual competition sponsored by the society’s companion organization, the Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies.
“Compassionate Churches” was the theme of the contest, which Anderson said offered writers an opportunity to describe churches’ “acts of compassion and to imagine ways in which their church or churches in general could practice extraordinary ministries that could impact the lives of individuals and even help transform the world in which we live.”
First place winner was Marlee Baucom, a senior at Langley High School in Fairfax, Va., and a member of Columbia Baptist Church in nearby Falls Church, Va. Her essay focused on “Spend Yourself,” a global campaign to reduce world hunger launched by her church.
“Compassionate Churches” was also the topic of the center’s 2010-2011 Heritage Fellows — Andrew Gardner, a junior at the College of William and Mary, and Patrick Trail, a junior at Virginia Tech. The two spent a year visiting congregations across Virginia, and compiled their descriptions of the churches’ ministries in a booklet published by the center.
Daniel Bagby, professor emeritus of pastoral care at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, told participants at the annual meeting that the DNA of a compassionate church is one “filled with the empathy of Christ.”
Such a church is “committed to express care, grace, initiative and relationship in contrast to detachment, judgment and rejection in its message to people,” he said.
Two Virginia Tech students — Sloan Gutkin and Matthew Robinson — were selected as Heritage Fellows for 2011-2012, and introduced at the meeting.
Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.