Cameroon Hymnal Initiative - Phase Three - October 2006

Editorial Work Begins

There really is going to be a hymnal/worshipbook for the Cameroon Mission. That’s the real news of Phase Three. The dream is becoming reality.

Here is some of the evidence:

• Four Cameroonians came to Yaoundé for a week of intense prayer, singing and decision making. There were two pastors; Solomon Mbwoege, an Anglophone from Kumba in the Southwest Province, and David Sen, a Francophone from Yaoundé in the Central Province. There were two musicians; Thèrese Nomo and Alexis Godonou, both Francophones from Yaoundé. They got up early in the morning and they worked all day with a very generous and enthusiastic spirit.
• We chose nearly 90 hymns, songs and choruses for inclusion in the book. Almost all of them are currently available in both French and English, and the process of translating the others is well under way.
• We made the major decisions about what liturgical materials to include.
• A dream within the bigger dream also started to come true. I had hoped that the book might have what one might call “New Methodist Songs Written by New Methodists”, i.e. songs which spoke to core realities of Wesleyan Christianity but did so in modern, context-appropriate idiom and melody. Alexis and Thèrese each wrote such a song during our week together.
• The group considered publication details and made helpful recommendations.
• We recorded nine of Th rese’s children’s songs, and several new songs by Alexis.
• We agreed on a tentative plan of action leading to the unveiling of the book at the Cameroon Mission’s Annual Meeting in early 2008.

Trust Opens Doors

On our first morning together, I wrote the words to a song which Thèrese had taught me during the Phase Two trip on a big white board. It is called Il marche avec moi (He walks with me). It’s a lovely paraphrase of Psalm 23. Thèrese was delighted to see that I remembered the song, so I invited her to stand with me so we could present it to the group together. That led Thèrese to sing a song which she had learned from me during Phase Two. This was the first of many moments during the week when we realized that God really had brought us to this venture to teach each other and to learn from each other.

I told them about how receptive people in the United States have been to songs from Cameroon, and they told me about how the songs we taught during the Phase Two festivals are still being sung. This led to two fun stories about how children had reacted to the song teaching that Mitzi Scott and I had done during the Phase Two festivals. Alexis told us that whenever his young daughter, Eunice, sees a white person, she says, “Look, Daddy, it’s a Bombalalom” (Bombalalom is the song from Argentina that Mitzi taught at the festivals). Then Thèrese said that when she showed her four-year-old son a picture of me, he said, “There’s Monsieur Siyahamba” (I taught Siyahamba at all the festivals). We laughed with a kind of joy that is sacramental.

Some of our Decisions

• The hymnal will be in French and English, on facing pages. It will be a words-only book, but will be accompanied by a CD with the tunes so that local church song enliveners can teach the new songs to their congregations. The recordings will be done with Cameroonian singers and with simple accompaniment.
• There will be blank pages for congregations to write in the songs of praise that are in their own particular local languages. Since there are over 270 local languages (with some spoken by as few as 2,000 people), the politics of language would be far too complex.
• There will be as many songs as possible written by Christians in other parts of the developing world, including other African nations. These songs will appear in their original language as well as French and English. It is our hope that these songs will provide common ground for the Francophones and Anglophones because everyone will be singing outside the ‘language of their hearts.’
• The poor eyesight of many Cameroonians dictates that the type size be as large as possible on the page and that the paper not be bright white.
• People in the churches must not be given the books for free. An affordable price will be determined when the publication date approaches.
• One edition of the book will be printed in Cameroon for the use of the churches, and one will be printed in the United States for the purpose of raising money for the Cameroon Mission.

The Contents

• The order of service (the basic pattern of Sunday morning worship)
• 150-200 hymns, songs and choruses in three basic categories; hymns that teach the faith, songs that are gifts from other parts of the world, and some of the most well known of the short choruses, especially those written by members of the team
• The Lord’s Prayer
• The Apostles’ Creed
• The Covenant Prayer of John Wesley
• A few devotional lessons based on the teachings of the Wesleys
• A chart of the Church Year
• The Service of Holy Communion (the pastors of Cameroon have slightly adapted the service used by United Methodists in Côte d’Ivoire)
• The Service of Baptism (similarly adapted from Côte d’Ivoire)
• The Service for the Reception of New Members
• The Service for Covenant Renewal
• A group of well known psalms

So, it appears that we are envisioning a book of about 400 pages.

What’s Ahead

• The texts of the 90+ hymns and the liturgical material already selected will be edited and typed. Permissions for copyrighted material will be secured.
• I will prepare a sampler of 15 songs and some liturgical material to present to the pastors at their annual retreat in January. The sampler will be accompanied by a CD so that the pastors may also have a foretaste of how the hymnal/CD combination will work. The 15 songs will be in a variety of styles and will mainly be from other parts of the world. This will give local church song leaders a head start in learning the new songs that will appear in the book. Pastors Mbwoege and Sen will present the sampler at the retreat and solicit feedback.
• Phase Four will occur in March 2007. At that meeting, the editorial group will review the progress of compiling the songs, will hear feedback from the pastors, and will make a second round of decisions about what hymns, songs and choruses to include.
• Phase Five will be in October 2007 and will be the final editorial meeting.
• The book will be sent to the printers on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Phase Six will be the presentation of the book at the Annual Meeting in April of 2008.

Some fun anecdotes

• As we sat around the lunch table at a restaurant in Yaoundé called Dabar Burger, we explored the differences in jokes in our two cultures. I got to hear a classic joke about a certain tribesman who went to Paris and saw many people eating cheese between two slices of bread and then came home and sliced up a bar of soap and put it between two slices of bread. I told them some lawyer jokes.
• Mallory Magruder, the seven-year-old daughter of Wes and Leah Magruder, our missionaries in Cameroon, can’t stop singing the song Allons, Chanter à Sion, a song she learned from Thèrese Nomo at one of the Phase Two festivals. It was a delight to hear Mallory walking through the halls of her home singing that song over and over.
• On the weekend between our two weeks of work, the Magruders took me to Kribi, a town on the Atlantic, to see a beautiful sunset, to enjoy splashing in the waves, and to eat fish just brought out of the water. If only the ants had stayed in the bathroom drain!

This project is proceeding well largely because of the wonderful support of people like you. I can’t tell you how much your prayers and financial support have meant to me and to the members of the team.

The publication phase will be expensive, and once we have drawn up a budget, I will come to you asking for support. In the interim, I ask for your continued prayers, that God will prosper the work of our hands and lead us to produce a really fine book for Cameroonian United Methodism.