Throughout April we collected supplies for Harmony and Hope House, a transitional living facility for women striving to get back on their feet. Justin Miller delivered the items last week and spent time with Ann Davis, who oversees the house, and the women who live there. They expressed deep gratitude to our congregation for our help to them and for the beneficial effect we are having in the community.

Harmony and Hope House is the female counterpart of the Brothers for Christ Community Response ministry run by Stephen Davis. Both ministries focus primarily on providing a safe and stable environment for those recently released from prison or suffering from addiction. As a new addition to the ministry, the women’s house needed many home essentials, such as bedding and kitchenware, and our FPC community generously donated much of what was needed. We are looking into future projects to further assist Harmony and Hope House as we continue to develop partnerships with these ministries.

Memorials and honoraria are published in the newsletter only after the family has been personally notified by our business office. Today we gratefully acknowledge the following gifts in memory of:

This week we focus on two pieces by Wilbur Held (1914–2015). A deeply thoughtful and meticulous musician, Held crafted elegant preludes, postludes, and hymn settings that remain central to the repertoire of church organists around the globe. Substantial yet accessible, his music reveals the truths of Scripture in the shape of a line, the content of a progression, the evolution of an idea across a work, and the attitude of humility they embody. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in his setting of the early American shape-note hymn KEDRON, our prelude. In 1946 (when this photo was taken) Held was named professor of organ at Ohio State University for what became a 30-year tenure. His organ studio grew quickly. Former students recall him as detailed and thorough, patient and kind. Hospitality was the order of the day as Held and his wife, artist Virginia Held, frequently hosted students in their gracious home.

Peter Scholtes (1938–2009) wrote the hymn “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” while he was a parish priest at St. Brendan’s on the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s. At the time, he was leading a youth choir out of the church basement and was looking for an appropriate song for a series of ecumenical, interracial events. When he couldn't find such a song, he wrote the now-famous hymn in a single day. I believe “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” personally resonated with Wilbur Held, who as a conscientious objector in WWII, served his country as a civil servant. Held published his organ setting (our postlude) in 1984 and it remains to this day one of the very few settings of this hymn.

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