Hymn Writers Included in This Festival
Mary Louise Bringle was born on July 31, 1953, and has lived most of her life in North Carolina. The two notable exceptions are a year in Paris, France, on a Fribourg Foundation grant (after completing her . B. in French and Religion at Guilford College), and seven years in Atlanta, Georgia, where she held a Danforth Fellowship for completion of a Ph.D. in Theological Studies at Emory University.
Prior to her accidental discovery of hymn-writing as a vocation, her work has been principally in the area of pastoral theology, with two books (Despair: Sickness or Sin? and The God of Thinness: Gluttony and Other Weighty Matters) published by Abington Press. She writes regularly on pastoral care issues for Lectionary Homiletics and served as a contributing editor to the journal Preaching Great Texts.
Since beginning to write hymns in 1998, she has won several competitions in the field, and was recognized as an Emerging Text Writer at the annual conference of the Hymn Society of the US and Canada in 2002, which society she came to serve as president from 2008–2010. She is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Brevard College in Brevard, NC, where she chairs the Humanities Division. She currently serves as chair of the Presbyterian Hymnal [revision] Project.
Delores Dufner, OSB (b. 1939) is a member of St. Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, a Benedictine women’s community of 345 members. Sister Delores holds Master’s Degrees in Liturgical Music and Liturgical Studies. She is currently a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), The Notre Dame Liturgy Network, the Benedictine Musicians of the Americas, and the Hymn Society in the US and Canada, for whom she has served on its Executive Committee.
Sister Delores was full-time director of the Office of Worship for the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota, from 1979–1989, frequently giving presentations on liturgy and music. She subsequently worked as a liturgical music consultant for the Diocese of Ballarat, Victoria, in southeast Australia for fifteen months. Since then she has been writing hymn and anthem texts which have a broad ecumenical appeal and are contracted or licensed by publishers in the United states, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. One noteworthy example, the recent hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Worship, contains nine of her hymns!
Sister Delores frequently receives commissions to write texts for special occasions and needs. In May of 1996 she was one of five winners in an international English-language hymn competition to updates Mary’s image in song. In the October 200 issue of The Hymn, journal of the Hymn Society, she was named as one of three outstanding Roman Catholic hymn text writers since Vatican II. In June of 2002 she was one of four recipients of the Spirit and Truth award, granted by the Notre Dame Center for Pastoral Liturgy in recognition of her leadership and vision in the ongoing renewal of Catholic liturgy.
Sylvia Dunstan Born in 1955, Sylvia attributed her love of song to her grandparents, who kept singing alive in the family and entrusted Sylvia’s formal musical education to one of the nuns at the local convent. Silvia began writing songs in the early seventies and soon after met Sister Miriam Theresa Winter, who encouraged her to write songs based on Scripture. She eventually realized that her talents did not lay with musical composition and concentrated instead on the lyrics. She was further shepherded and encouraged by Alan Barthel.
Her undergraduate degree was earned from York University, and she received graduate degrees in Theology and Divinity from Emmanuel College, Toronto. In 1980 she was ordained by the Hamilton Conference of the United Church of Canada, During her career she served as a minister, a prison chaplain, and editor of a Canadian worship resource journal, Gathering.
In the summer of 1990 she was invited to lead the annual conference of the Hymn Society in the US and Canada in a session exploring her hymnody. Robert Batastini, senior editor of GIA Publications, approached her after the presentation and asked if she was published. She replied that she was not, and he asked if she would like to be. This led to the publication of In Search of Hope and Grace. A smaller collection where the Promise Shines was published posthumously in 1994. Many of her texts have been set by a broad range of contemporary composers.
Sylvia Dunstan died on July 25, 1993, almost four months after being diagnosed with liver cancer. She left behind a ministry that combined a compassionate concern for the needy and distraught with a consuming love of the liturgy.
Jacque B. Jones has been writing in various forms all her life but it has been only in recent years that she has taken up the challenge of writing hymn texts. Following a stint as a leader of a hymnody group in her church, and influenced by the events of 9/11, Jacque wrote her text Creator of the Intertwined which won the Macalester Plymouth United Church Hymn Writing Contest for 2004. Quick to say that she is not a musician, she has been writing texts ever since.
As a writer, she considers herself a story teller, which is reflected in many of her texts. Jacque has been an active member of the Hymn Society in the US and Canada since 2003, and has served on its Executive Committee since 2008. She is a member of the laity at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights NY, where, in 2004-2005, she chaired the 150th anniversary celebration of the publication of The Plymouth Collection hymnal.
A native of Texas, Jacque attended Baylor University and The University of Texas at Austin, where she received a BFA in theatre. For the last 17 years, she has worked in educational fundraising at a private school in the Brooklyn neighborhood where she lives with her husband and three children.
Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr was born on April 2, 1923 in Clarion, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Susquehanna University (A.B., 1945), Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettsburg (B.D., 1946), Union theological Seminary, New York, (S.T.M., 1967), and Southern California School of Theology at Claremont (Th.D., 1971).
From 1947 to 1959, Rev. Stuempfle served as pastor pf parishes in Pennsylvania and Maryland. In 1959, he joined the staff of the Board of Social Missions of the Lutheran church in America. In 1962 he became a Professor of Preaching at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, a position retained until his retirement in 1989. Dr. Stuempfle also served the seminary as Dean from 1971–1976, and as President from 1976–1989.
Upon retirement, he began devoting significant time to writing hymns. His texts are noted for their direct relationship to specific gospel passages. His output totals more than 600 hymns, of which 300 have been published in four successive volumes: The Word Goes Forth (GIA 1993), Redeeming the Time (GIA 1997), Awake Our Hearts to Praise (GIA 2000), and Wondrous Love Has Called Us (GIA 2006). His hymns have appeared in virtually every English-language hymnal published in the United States and Canada in the past twenty years.
He was named a Fellow of the Hymn Society in the US and Canada in 2004. Herman Stuempfle died on March 13, 2007, after a long battle with ALS.
John Thornburg (born 1934) is a fourth generation United Methodist minister. His grandfather, Amos, toured with Homer Rodeheaver and served on the editorial committee of the 1966 Methodist Hymnal.
In 2001, after 22 years in parish ministry in North Texas, John pursued a new calling by starting an itinerant ministry of song leading and worship consultation called A Ministry of Congregational Singing. (www.congregationalsinging.com)
John’s texts appear in 18 different hymnals, hymnal supplements, single author collections as well as octavos from six publishers. Composers who have set John’s texts include Alice Parker, Sally Ann Morris, Jane Marshall, John Ferguson, Austin Lovelace, Gerre Hancock, Craig Phillips, Bruce Neswick, John Yarrington, Amanda Husberg, Joel Martinson, Thomas Pavlechko, Dan Damon, Joao Faustini, Simei Monteiro, Sandra Gay, Michael Ekbladh, Suzi Byrd and Taylor Davis.
Since 2005, John has been working alongside the music leaders of the 30 United Methodist churches in the West African nation of Cameroon in the production and distribution of their first hymnal/worship book. The printing was completed in May of 2009. John continues to travel to Cameroon to encourage song enliveners and learn new songs.
Inspired by the HOLY CITY events of the Iona Community in Glasgow, Scotland, John has started a community of creativity in Dallas called HOLY CITY, Dallas. The community has already produced songs for worship and is beginning to make plans for worship events in and around Dallas.
Adam M. L. Tice was born on October 11, 1979, in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, and grew up in Alabama, Oregon and Indiana. After graduating from high school in Elkhart, Indiana, Adam went to nearby Goshen College, a Mennonite liberal arts school. He majored in music with an emphasis on composition and completed a minor in Bible studies and religion, graduating in 2002. He bean working as a church musician and choir director while still in college.
Adam took his first course at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in the fall of 2003, which led to the writing of his initial hymn text. Four years later (including a year-long interlude as a full time marionette puppeteer), Adam graduated with a Master of the Arts in Christian Formation with an emphasis on worship. He completed a thesis on the life of Jesus as presented in Mennonite hymnals of the twentieth century. The Conrad Grebel Review published his research into ways that hymnody shaped the Mennonite practices of communion.
He has led singing at numerous Mennonite and ecumenical events, including the 2008 Hymn Sing for Peace on the steps of the United states Capitol reflecting pool.
Adam was the winner of the tenth annual Macalester Plymouth United Church (St. Paul, MN) hymn competition. More Voices, a hymn supplement for the United Church of Canada, was the first collection to include one of his texts (“Breath of God, Breath of Peace”). Adam is a member of the Executive Committee of the Hymn Society in the US and Canada.
In November of 2007, Adam and his wife María moved to the Washington, DC, suburbs, where Adam was installed as Associate Pastor of Hyattsville Mennonite Church, Hyattsville, Maryland. A collection of 50 of his hymns was published in 2009 by GIA Publications, under the title Woven Into Harmony.
Composers
Roy Hopp was born 1951. His studies included Calvin College (A.B. 1976; Michigan State University (M. Mus, 1982). In 1984 Roy Hopp became the first full time Director of Music in the Christian Reformed denomination when he began his work at Hillcrest Christian Reformed Church in Denver, CO. Since then he has served several churches in West Michigan in both the RCA and the CRC.
Currently he is the Director of Music at Woodlawn Christian Reformed Church and a composer of over 80 published choral anthems and hymn tunes. His anthems are published by Augsburg Fortress, earthsongs, GIA, Kjos, MorningStar, and Selah and his hymn tunes appear in over two dozen hymnbooks in the United States, Canada, Scotland, England and Wales. He became an Adjunct Professor of Choral Music (2001), and serves as the director of the Calvin Theological Seminary choir.
Sally Ann Morris (b.1952) lives and works in North Carolina. In 1990, she discovered the joy of composing hymn tunes, and since that time has written about 100, most of which appear in two collections from GIA Publications, Giving Thanks in Song and Prayer (1998) and To Sing the Artist’s Praise(2009). She has hymn tunes (and a Mass setting) in Gather Comprehensive II, the New Century Hymnal of the United Church of Christ, The Hymnal 21 in Japan, the 2005 Hymnal of the Church of Scotland and in other collections, hymnal supplements, and recordings. Other publications include hymn and choral anthems by The Pilgrim Press and in the forthcoming 2010 catalog of ECSchirmer Publishing. She appears frequently as a guest artist, clinician, composer, cantor, and conductor in churches nationwide, and at national conferences including The Presbyterian Association of Musicians Worship and Music Conferences at Montreat, NC, the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, and The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.
Sally serves as Director of Music Ministries at Parkway Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem, NC.