Hymn of the Week

The Rev. Dr. Mike McMahon, executive director of The Hymn Society, offers this note about Ascension’s Hymn of the Week for December 4, 2022: This Chinese hymn, translated by Francis P. Jones and adapted by Mary Louise Bringle, FHS, celebrates God’s goodness and high regard for humans and the entire […]

Darkness hangs, the world is aching, yearning for the coming light. In His rising hope awaking, love has come to steal the night. In our hearts true east we’re facing. toward the coming of our Lord. Morning rising, gloom now fleeing; Christ returned! His word is true. Ascension’s sending hymn […]

Billy Foote is a singer/songwriter/podcaster who has settled in Amarillo, TX, after a time of itinerant music ministry with his wife and daughters.  A longtime guitar player and worship leader, Billy started to write songs for “himself, Jesus, and the small events in which he led.”  The third song he […]

New Zealand hymn text writer Shirley Erena Murray grew up Methodist and studied music and classics at university.  She became a Presbyterian upon marrying her husband, a minister in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand.  Her work with Amnesty International and the Labour Party of New Zealand has influenced her […]

Arabella Katherine “Kate” Hankey was a banker’s daughter in London in the mid to late 1800’s.  A devout evangelical Anglican, Miss Hankey was active in Bible societies, promoting the abolition of slavery, teaching Bible classes to shop girls, visiting the sick, and improving the lives of the English working class.  […]

This coming Sunday, October 30, is Reformation Sunday at Ascension, a day when we lift up and recognize the events that led to the Protestant Reformation and the establishment of the Lutheran church.  Martin Luther, the reluctant charismatic leader of the Reformation, found that bringing faith and the church to […]

John L. Bell (b. 1949) is a widely published hymn text writer who is part of the Iona Community in Scotland.  A minister in the Church of Scotland (Anglican), he has produced many collections of hymns as part of the Wild Goose Resource Group.  Perhaps his mostly widely known hymn […]

Hymn text author Frances R. Havergal (1836-1879) shares this story about the inspiration for this hymn text:   “I went for a little visit of five days. There were ten persons in the house, some unconverted and long prayed for; some converted, but not rejoicing Christians. He gave me the […]

David Bjorlin (Christ Still Rises) wrote the text of this week’s hymn of the day and offers this note. In much of classic Western hymnody, doubt is always cast in a negative light. Yet, as Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “Doubt often brings me to poke at what I believe. And […]

The gathering hymn this Sunday is an arrangement of two hymns from the “paperless music” tradition. The words for “To the Bath and the Table” came from the old church bell at West Denmark Lutheran Church, a congregation established by Danish settlers on the western shore of Little Butternut Lake […]