2 churches mark
Wesley’s conversion

Austin hymn festival
celebrates key date
in Methodist history

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
Two Southwest Texas Conference congregations were jointly to mark John Wesley’s Aldersgate conversion experience Wednesday, May 24.
Choirs from Coker UMC, San Antonio, and Westlake UMC, Austin—about 100 singers and musicians in all—were to lead a hymn festival at Westlake to celebrate the key date in Methodist history.
Wesley, founder of the worldwide Methodist movement, wrote in his journal about his profound spiritual awakening May 24, 1738, in London:
“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
From the time of Wesley and his brother, Charles, Methodists have been a “singing people,” said Diana Sanchez-Bushong, Westlake worship and music director. Charles Wesley wrote some 9,000 hymns.
“They (John and Charles Wesley) knew the best way to teach, to reach the unchurched, was to bring church out to the people,” she said. “A lot of them couldn’t read. How do you teach them? Through singing.”
Hymns “helped get Methodist theology out there,” said the Rev. Dave Collett, Coker UMC music director.
“John was more the preacher, Charles the poet who wrote the hymn text,” Collett said.
The Wesleys were “very attuned to the fact that if you have a melody to go with God’s words, the melody knits the words into your memory,” he said.
The hymn festival would remind United Methodists that faith “is both the spoken word and the sung word,” Collett said.
“If you remember the tune, songs stay with you,” Collett said.
Sanchez-Bushong said the hymn festival would draw music from The United Methodist Hymnal, using the Apostles’ Creed as the outline.
“Charles wrote about faith and Christianity, our creeds, what we believe,” she said. “The Methodist movement is entrenched in music. The best way to celebrate Aldersgate is through singing rather than talking. The Wesleys had both, but singing is what carried it.”
If the hymn festival was well-received, Collett said, he would hope to extend it to other Southwest Texas Conference districts.
“The bottom line for me,” Collett said, “is I would like to just encourage Methodists to sing because it is so much a part of who we are. An event like this reminds us of the importance of the sung word.
“It’s a rich tradition. A lot of churches are using nontraditional music, which is good, but we need to keep the traditional songs alive as well.”