Music for November 8, 2015 + The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Lord, Make Us Servants (hymn 593)– Lee Hastings Bristol (1923-1979)

Instrumental Music

• Processional Celebration – Anna Laura Page (b. 1943)
• What a Friend We Have in Jesus – Linda R. Lamb (b. 1947?)
• Festival Piece – Craig Phillips (b. 1961)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew.)

• Hymn 686 - Come, thou fount of every blessing (Nettleton)
• Hymn 429 - I’ll praise my maker while I’ve breath (Old 113th)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life, and let it be (Hollingside)
• Hymn R172 - In my life, Lord, be glorified (Lord, be glorified)
• Hymn 705 - As those of old their first fruits brought (Forest Green)

This Sunday we feature our Good Shepherd Handbell Choir in two works. The opening voluntary is an original composition by Anna Laura Page. Active as a composer, clinician and organist, she served on the Music Committee of the Southern Baptist 1991 Hymnal Committee and has received the ASCAP Standards Award for the past several years. She has taught organ as an adjunct faculty member at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, and theory/organ as an adjunct faculty member at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina. She served as director of the Austin Peay Community Children's Chorus in Clarksville, Tennessee for three years. She is married to Dr. Oscar C. Page, President of Austin College in Sherman, Texas.

Processional Celebration was written in two parts - the first section is written with 4 lines of music. Each one enters after the preceding line is played once. It was designed to be played in procession from memory - which is why we are playing it

The communion voluntary is a setting of the old hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" by Linda R. Lamb. Lamb has been involved with handbells since 1992, as director, composer, and sometime ringer. She is the handbell director at Lexington Park Baptist Church, Lexington Park, Maryland, where she directs one adult choir and one youth quartet. She graduated from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, with a B. A. in sociology, and from Concordia University in Wisconsin with a Master of Church Music (emphasis in handbells).

This arrangement makes use of both our set of English Handbells and our smaller set of choir chimes, which Lamb uses on the second verse to highlight the melody.

The offertory anthem is a hymn setting of a poetic rendering of the famous Prayer of St. Francis by Lee Hasting Bristol. Though Bristol was studied music at Ham­il­ton Col­lege, Clin­ton, New York (BA); Trin­i­ty Col­lege of Mu­sic, Lon­don (or­gan stu­dies); and the In­sti­tute for In­ter­na­tion­al Stu­dies, Ge­ne­va, Switz­er­land (grad­u­ate stu­dies), he worked in New York for the Bris­tol-Me­yers Com­pa­ny (the fam­i­ly bus­i­ness) in ad­ver­tis­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions from 1948-62. From 1962-69, however, he served as pre­si­dent of West­min­ster Choir Col­lege, Prince­ton, New Jer­sey. In 1972, the Hymn So­ci­e­ty in the Unit­ed States and Ca­na­da made him a fel­low of the so­ci­e­ty.