Occasions for hymns are all around us. Are you looking for a special reason to write one? It’s recently hit me how many congregations are having big anniversaries! My own, here in Oklahoma, just celebrated 90 years last year, but one of my previous congregations is wrapping up 100 years! To celebrate, they commissioned a hymn, so I’ll go ahead and link that, along with a respectful nod affectionately turned to Lisa Clark, wordsmith, and Kevin Hildebrand, musician extraordinaire.
Our 100th Anniversary hymn, “As Stone on Living Stone Is Set,” picks up on our anniversary theme – “Our Hope for Years to Come” – by both thanking God for His grace for 100 years and looking to the future of proclaiming His works of salvation in Christ Jesus. Lisa M. Clark, a daughter of Hope congregation, wrote the text, and Kevin Hildebrand, kantor at Concordia Theological Seminary (Fort Wayne, IN), composed the new tune, appropriately named NEOSHO, after the street on which we have been located for all 100 years.
Source: Anniversary Hymn – Hope Ev. Lutheran Church
The text and music is copy-written so seek permission if you’d like to use it.
Personally, I love how the tune is named Neosho. Hope’s beautiful Spanish-tiled (?) building is on a road named Neosho, but I just so happen to have additional history with the name. I was born off the Neosho River in Miami (pronounced Miama), Oklahoma. (Mom used to fertilize our garden with its river mud. Ha ha haaaa, it was totally, infamously polluted but God still used that garden for good!)
Maybe I can try to write something up for my congregation’s 95th and 100th anniversaries. Maybe I can find time by then!
Anyway, happy anniversaries if you have any coming up, and happy writing in whatever genre catches your attention!