Former Fellowship president Janet Lee shares this piece of history: “Enclosed is my Christmas letter from Genevieve Lehman, a former Fellowship North Central Jurisdiction Representative. Gen says, ‘I enclose a copy of an essay I wrote about the Candle Choir we had for many years at Topeka (IN) UMC. I was ill-prepared to lead it but we sang the best music we could as well as we could. God asks no more of us.’”
Directing a children’s choir: a most blessed experience
by Genevieve Lehman
I
t is only by looking back over the years that we can sometimes see what God was doing when we were clueless as to what was going on. From the 1940’s through the ’80’s, God provided about twenty girls in one generation in a small congregation and gave them voices to sing. I grew up singing. My oldest memory is of singing a song I learned in Sunday school and my father noting what I was doing. Our church choir welcomed me when I was twelve and I sang in it until I was married. In fact, the director scolded me for getting married on Easter and being unable to help with the music. It was the first weekend Kenny had free from medical school.
When we were looking for a place for him to set up his practice, we had agreed that we would like a small town not far from Goshen, IN, where our parents lived. We talked with people from several communities but none of them felt “right,” until we came to Topeka. Wayne Yeater, whom I had known in college, had just been appointed to the Topeka church and we became Methodists. During Lent 1951, Rosemary Cheney and I groused that we had no special music for Easter. We did not feel much like Moses, but we did as he was bid – looked to see what we had: little girls. We corralled seven of them and drilled them in Praise Him, Praise Him, All Ye Little Children. They sang for the service and a number of people urged us to have them sing again.
Although the church did include a $25.00 item in the budget [for music], we chose to sing from the hymnal. That fall when school began, we started rehearsing once a week. The older girls chose not to stay with the group but we started with several
WORSHIP ARTS • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2010
girls who could not yet read or find numbers in the hymnal with more than two digits. My daughter Becky later sang in [former Fellow- ship president] Bob Schilling’s North United Methodist Church choir (Indianapolis, IN) for five years and only once did he ask for a hymn she had not sung!! I am possibly the poorest prepared person to direct a choir who ever fell into that post. I loved God, I loved the church and its music. It became the most blessed learning experience of my life. I had help from a number of people, especially the Meth- odist Music Fellow- ship when I learned of its existence. I felt the girls were singing well enough that I wanted them to learn to sing a second part. I think God himself pushed me into what turned out to be the right thing. I sang the alto part along
with a recording of a good choir singing God Be with You and we never had problems hearing two, three or four parts afterwards. Perhaps the choir’s best times besides singing for regular services were the Christ- mas Eve services we began in the ’50s, in the lessons and carols format familiar to many congregations. The first one had almost as many in the congregation as in the choir. By the ’80’s we regularly filled the church and made a substantial addition to the Bishop’s Fund for Children through the freewill offering taken.
Genevieve Lehman
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