We have a Gospel to proclaim

In 1968 the Bishop of Blackburn, Charles Robert Claxton, issued a ‘Call to Mission’ in his Lancs diocese. The call centred on 4 local meetings in each area (deanery), concentrating in turn on Christ’s Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension/Pentecost. Edward J Burns was then the recently-appointed Vicar of St James, Chorley, and wrote his hymn in the spring of that year, originally for the Chorley Deanery’s share in this enterprise. The 4 inner stzs follow this outline, with opening and closing ones providing the ‘frame’ and a clearly evangelistic thrust. It proved to be just in time for inclusion in the A&M supplement (the first of its kind), 100 Hymns for Today, and from there it rapidly gained acceptance among churches and hymnals wishing to recall some Christian fundamentals in their sung praise to God. It is now found in more than 50 books. The original stz 1.2, ‘good news for men in all the earth’, had been modified by the author by at least 1987, but is regrettably still seen on hymn sheets, even in some books, in its unrevised form.

In June 2009, Gordon Giles wrote, ‘While this straightforward hymn is very much a product of a particular time and place, its message and power transcend its origin and purpose…It is the singing of this good news hymn that gives it its power, and the distinctive tune to which it is invariably sung seems so fitting that no others have ever seriously been proposed’ (Church Music Quarterly, June 2009).

FULDA (=WALTON) has been the tune associated with the words from the beginning; for notes see 95.

b Nelson, Lancs 1938. Baines’ Grammar Sch, Poulton-le-Fylde nr Blackpool, Lancs; Liverpool Univ (BSc Chemistry, 1958), St Catherine’s Soc Oxford (BA Theology, MA), and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford 1958–61. He was ordained in 1961. After curacies at Leyland (1961– 64) and Burnley (1964–67), both in Lancs, he then served as vicar at Chorley, and from 1975 at Fulwood, Preston, until his retirement in the same area in 2003. He was also a hospital chaplain at Preston 1981–94 and Hon Canon of Blackburn 1986–2003. In retirement he sometimes finds himself preaching 3 times on a Sunday, having rarely done so more than twice while in office; he has avoided any official attachment to one congregation, but the parish church he now normally attends has a 70- strong choir of men and boys. It is hard now to find any major hymn-book which omits his best-known credal hymn, which among other gospel truths has asserted the fact of Christ’s empty tomb during a period where this was being doubted or denied. This was his first hymn (see notes in EP1) and although he says that ‘none has taken off quite like it’, several others are in print and/or use. His ‘other’ text in HTC is the ‘scientist’s hymn’ O God, you give to all mankind/…who gives to humankind which features in The Worshiping Church (1990) and other N American books. Among others, he has also written hymns for a Trades Union Congress event in Blackpool (this one commissioned by the then bishop, but never used); one for a Good Friday 3-hour service, including all 7 ‘words from the cross’; a Trinitarian baptismal hymn; a 60th-anniversary hymn for Christian Aid; God of life and health and love for a St John’s Ambulance Service in Blackburn Cathedral; and All-loving Father, hear our prayer, grown from his long experience as chaplain to a maternity unit, and involvement there in some 136 peri-natal funerals. No.632.