We will return to Doe River Gorge for another afternoon of fun and fellowship August 7. The event is free. The lake and its sandy beach, the blob, ziplines, obstacle course, and sports all will be at our disposal. Bring your friends and family for a day of celebrating all God has done for us as a church family. The evening will conclude with baptisms in the lake followed by dinner. If you would like to be baptized, please contact Pastor Sam.

We probably won't need to feed 5,000, but we will need to know how many people to plan for, so please fill in the online registration form. Doe River Gorge is at 220 Doe River Gorge Road in Hampton, Tennessee.

Last week, I hopped on a bus loaded with high schoolers and headed west. I had the privilege of joining one of our mission partners on their summer trip to Colorado. Young Life is a Christian ministry that reaches out to middle school, high school, and college students in all 50 of the United States and in more than 100 countries around the world. Their mission is to introduce adolescents to Jesus and help them grow in their faith. Bristol Young Life is directed by Matt Richardson, an active member of our church. One of the ways Young Life fosters faith growth is by encouraging and helping students find a church. FPC Bristol has built a beautiful partnership with Young Life and works to help bridge the gap from meeting Jesus to growing in faith with a church family.

Young Life meets weekly for a gathering called club. Club is an outreach with games, skits, music, and a gospel message, and students are invited to bring all their friends. It’s high energy, fun, and a safe place, particularly for those who have never experienced church or have been turned off to the church. Leaders are trained to build relationships with teens, show up in their world, be their friend, and point them to Jesus. In the summer, Bristol high schoolers are invited to a week at a Young Life camp.

Last week, 86 students (a few from FPC Bristol) and leaders jumped on buses and headed to Crooked Creek Ranch in Fraser, Colorado. The founder of Young Life, Jim Rayburn, said, “We talk about the King of Kings; let’s act like He’s the one in charge! We’re going to get the classiest camps in the country … We are trying to create an atmosphere where we can communicate the Gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ to each individual guest.” Crooked Creek Ranch is a beautiful camp nestled in the middle of the Rockies. High schoolers spent the week swimming in a giant hot tub, ziplining, go-carting, taking part in lake activities, taking on the high ropes course, riding horseback, hiking, and playing games. The camp food is the best there is, and the facilities are resort quality. There are rodeos, western dance nights, Christmas in June, Carnivals, crazy games, messy games, skits, singing, and tons of laughter.

From the outside it looks like a lot of silliness and entertainment. I got to be behind the scenes to hear the vision and intentionality behind all the fun and activities. A gospel message is presented every day during club, but the gospel is also woven throughout everything the campers do during the week. Jesus is on display through beautiful creation, relationships, adult presence, sweet conversations, and laughter. Many Bristol students met Jesus last week or rededicated their life to Christ. High schoolers from our area returned from the week excited to share their faith, invite their friends, and get involved in serving.

It was a gift for me to experience Young Life camp, grow in relationship with Bristol teens, and learn under the leadership of Matt Richardson. Our community is blessed to have an incredible Young Life Area Director who is walking with our teens, pointing them to Jesus, and encouraging them to be discipled within a church family. I’m grateful that we financially support Young Life as a mission of our church. Let’s celebrate our partnership with this wonderful ministry, pray for Matt and his leaders, and pray for our teens who are back from Colorado and discovering what it looks like to grow in Jesus and live out their faith. /Katie Arnold

June 26: Sunday’s prelude and postlude are based on the day’s hymns.

Joseph Parry (1841–1903) is the composer of the hymn tune aberystwyth, named for the city where Parry was professor of music at Welsh University College from 1873 to 1879. It was not paired with the text “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” (Charles Wesley, 1740) until 1910. Parry was born into a poor but musical family. Although he showed musical gifts at an early age, he was sent to work in the puddling furnaces of a steel mill at the age of nine. His family immigrated to a Welsh settlement in Danville, Pennsylvania, in 1854, where Parry later started a music school. He traveled in the United States and Wales, performing, studying, and composing music, and he won several Eisteddfodau (singing competition) prizes. Parry studied at the Royal Academy of Music and at Cambridge, where part of his tuition was paid by people in the community who were eager to encourage his talent. After establishing private schools of music in Aberystwyth and Swansea, he was lecturer and professor of music at the University College of South Wales in Cardiff from 1888 to 1903. Parry composed oratorios, cantatas, an opera, orchestral and chamber music, and some 400 hymn tunes.

Ashley Grote (b. 1982) has given aberystwyth a sturdy setting for our organ prelude. Grote shortened the meter from 4/4 to 3/4, which propels the music forward. Grote is Master of Music at Norwich Cathedral and a fellow of the Royal College of Organists. He grew up in Colchester and attended Eld Lane Baptist Church with his family, where he sang in the choir and first played the organ. He joined the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, at the age of eight in response to a newspaper advertisement for voice trials. He then attended Uppingham School and returned to King’s in October 2001 as an organ scholar. He won first prize in the 1999 Royal College of Organists’ Young Performers’ Festival. In 2000 he was the first organist ever to win a place in the keyboard final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition.

Robert Robinson (1735–1790) was an English Dissenter, an influential Baptist, and a scholar who made a lifelong study of the antiquity and history of Christian baptism. He wrote “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” at the age of 22 after converting to Methodism. We sing his words to the tune nettleton, named in honor of hymnal compiler Asahel Nettleton (not its composer).

Diane Bish (b. 1941) has set nettleton to the tempo of a gallop. With the pedal notes played on the off-beats through the entire piece, the performer can’t help feel that one small misstep, and “horse and rider” will come crashing down!

July 3: Our prelude, an arrangement of “Amazing Grace,” is by a well-known local composer. A native of Johnson City, Kenton Coe (1930–2021) began his musical training at the Cadek Conservatory in Chattanooga and continued studies in Knoxville before attending Sewanee Academy, Hobart College in upstate New York, and Yale University, from which he graduated as a History of Music major. He then worked privately for three years in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, at both the Paris Conservatory and the Fontainebleau School, and received two French Government scholarships at her request. The Opera of Marseilles premiered his first full-length opera, South, in 1965.

An active member of the Episcopal Church, Coe was commissioned to write numerous anthems for various parishes. He also composed the film scores for Universal’s Birds in Peru and for five full-length documentary films by director Ross Spears. The Tennessee Music Teachers’ Association named him Composer of the Year and commissioned the cantata Handwriting on the Wall. He also received awards from Tusculum College, The Lyndhurst Foundation, and the State of Tennessee. After living a number of years in Paris, New York, and Johnson City, Kenton Coe retired to South Carolina where, in December 2021, he succumbed to complications from COVID-19.

Our communion music is a setting of “O Jesus, My Savior, My Song in the Night” arranged by Gladys Jameson (1889–1973). Jameson was an organist and teacher at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, from 1915 until her retirement in 1954. She championed Appalachian music and Sacred Harp Singing, and stayed active in music at Berea College until about a year before her death.

Our postlude, “Praise the Lord with Drums and Cymbals,” was composed by Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877–1933), who intentionally wrote it to mimic the style of the famous baroque composer Georg Frederic Handel. Karg-Elert was a German composer of the early twentieth century who is best known for his compositions for pipe organ and reed organ.

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