BETHEL COLLEGE MENNONITE CHURCH
January 19, 2025
Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Christ Candle Lighting                                          

Centering Music–Adoration (Florence Beatrice Price)– Will Wiebe-Friesen                                                         

Welcome & Prayer–Ada Schmidt-Tieszen                                                            

*Hymn–Here in This Place–VT 10                                         

Children’s Conversation–Barb Koontz                           

Worship Music–Veni Jesu (Luigi Cherbini)–Chancel Choir; Joel Garber, director; Will Wiebe-Friesen, accompanist       

Cherubini ‘s choral setting of the Latin text, “Veni Jesu Amor mi” loosely translates “Come to me, O Jesus, my love.”        

Scripture Reading–John 2:1-11–David Sprunger                         

*Hymn– Over My Head–VT 594                                         

Sermon–Prompting Miracles–Joanna Harader                                    

*Hymn– Lift Every Voice and Sing–VT 611                                     

Prayers of God’s People

*Hymn–You are Salt for the Earth–VT 297                                   

*Benediction

Postlude–Improvisation on We Shall Overcome–(Carl Haywood)          

* You are invited to stand
VT—Voices Together
Audio visual—Ken Lamp

Today’s centering music and postlude are both pieces composed by black American composers. Florence Price (1887-1953), composer of Adoration, is noted as the first African American symphonic composer. She composed prolifically, producing chamber music, symphonic works, choral music, art song, and works for piano and organ, the vast majority of which was only published many decades after her death. Carl Haywood, a long-serving professor of organ and choral music at Norfolk State University, a historically black university, composed his Improvisation on We Shall Overcome for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2012. This hymn (VT 803) is a gospel song deeply associated with the U.S. civil rights movement, and it still bears a message important to us today. The limited available organ repertoire composed by African American women and men is expanding, and I look forward to sharing more of it with you in the future. 
While the bulk of commonly played organ literature is the work of white male composers, these pieces by two African American composers are both moving and thrilling and have been fun to work up. I look forward to sharing more of their music with you in the future.   —Will Wiebe-Friesen