Songs

It feels like we are on a roll with beautiful recordings from Emu Music. (See also last months featured hymn "Crown Him With Many Crowns".) Here for your enjoyment is the well known favourite - "How Great Thou Art".

How Great Thou Art, © 1949 & 1953 Stuart Wesley Keene Hine Trust, CCLI No #14181

A beautiful acoustic performance of the Hymn "Crown Him With Many Crowns", from the wonderful folks at Emu Music.

Crown Him With Many Crowns, Emu Music, © 2022 Matthew Bridges, Godfrey Thring, Alanna Glover & Jamie Dallimore, CCLI Song No: 7192547

A recording of the worship song "In Christ Alone", performed by the Boyce Worship Collective.

Fisk Jubilee Singers - I Want Jesus To Walk With Me (feat. Ruby Amanfu) [Official Music Video]

Our featured hymn for this month is "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing" by Charles Wesley. Not having a recording of our own worship team performing this song we were left with a question. Which of the many thousands of recordings on Youtube should we use?

We settled on this one. Congregational singing (Shepherds’ Conference) Grace Community Church - Sun Valley, California 

This is the well known hymn "Amazing Grace" - performed with a bit of Nashville flair by OSLC worship director Nancy Unsworth. The words were written in 1772 by English clergyman John Newton. The hymn was published in 1779. It is an immensely popular hymn and we hope you enjoy this recording. 

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace for more information.) 

The hymn "It Is Well With My Soul" has a fascinating and truly inspiring back story. The lyrics were written by Horatio Spafford after a series of devastating events in his life - the loss of his family's wealth and the loss of all four of his daughters in a tragic shipwreck - all occurring within a short period of time. You can read about it in this Wikipedia article. 

The version of this song that we are featuring is a piano solo recorded by Dean McIntyre. It is part of a collection of hymns from the United Methodist Church that has been made freely available to use as a worship resource. (https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/piano-accompaniment-recordings)

We hope that you enjoy this beautiful recording and that it can be a source of solace and hope, as it has for so many over the years. Note that 2023 marks the 150th anniversary of the tragic shipwreck that partly inspired Horatio Spafford to write the lyrics for this hymn.

Performed by the OSLC Easter Choir in 2021, this beloved hymn will be familiar to many, although it is not found in the Lutheran Book of Worship. The hymn was written by Fanny J. Crosby and first published in 1875.

An interesting note on the recording and production of this video - our Easter Choir for 2021 was not able to meet in-person, due to COVID isolation protocols. A decision was made to record the choir in separate sessions, and then the individual performances were edited together to produce this video. We would like to thank the choir members for their contributions to our Easter worship, and in addition we want to thank the following people for their work "behind the scenes".

• Nancy Unsworth - Choir Director and Production Coordinator
• Larry Unsworth - Sound Recording
• Daniel Fraser - Video Editing
• Jayson Dayman - Audio Production

A Note About the Hymn's Composer

Frances Jane van Alstyne (née Crosby; March 24, 1820 – February 12, 1915), more commonly known as Fanny J. Crosby, was an American mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer. She became blind at the age of 6 weeks, from maltreatment of her eyes during a spell of sickness.

Fanny Crosby was a prolific hymnist, writing more than 8,000 hymns and gospel songs, with more than 100 million copies printed. She is also known for her teaching and her rescue mission work. By the end of the 19th century, she was a household name. 

For more information see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Crosby.

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