In Lutheran and seminary circles, Stuempfle is known for having taught preaching to a generation or more of pastors and again for his decade of service as president of the historic school. But an increasing number of people will say that his most lasting contribution among future generations of Christians will be his hymn writing. When alumnus and seminary board member Allen Riethmiller caught the reference to the mention of “Risen Lord” in a local newspaper story about the Roman Catholic event and sent the clipping to Gettysburg, he provided proof that this hymn writer is making news in ever widening circles.

A fourth career for him, after distinguished pastoral service, a widely respected professorship of preaching, and a seminary presidency, Stuempfle has written close to 600 hymns, many published by GIA in three separate volumes and in resources such as Augsburg/Fortress’s With One Voice and the Renewing Worship Songbook and GIA’s Hymns for the Gospels.

This “fourth” vocation comes in the midst of a time that some say is an explosion of hymn writing. According to Mark W. Oldenburg, seminary chaplain and Professor of Worship, “There have been more hymns written in English in the last 30 years than in the preceding two centuries. And that's just so-called ‘traditional’ hymns, not counting praise choruses and other contemporary Christian music, or hymns written in South America, Africa, and Asia. This hymn ‘explosion’ started in the 1970's in Britain, but soon spread to the United States and around the English-speaking world.”

Gettysburg has offered a fertile field of creativity for hymn writing. Several ingredients converge to make the soil ready: appreciation for the word and writing, other writers at work in the same craft (Oldenburg among them), the musical guild of composers and arrangers, performers and performance opportunities. Stuempfle even wrote a hymn text that was put to music by a talented 14 year old young man, Bud Wolfe, a fellow member of Christ Church in Gettysburg. The hymn was sung during Bud's confirmation rite in the spring of 2002.

Lutherans Still taking Hymnody Seriously
It never hurts to have the keen Lutheran interest in hymnody working for you, and Lutherans still pay close attention to their hymns. Take for example the people of Bethesda Lutheran Church in New Haven, Conn. Bethesda’s organist and music director, William Speed, and its pastor, Michael Merkel, amplified the proclamation of the Gospel for the day (the Prologue to John) by giving the congregation the hymn: “Your Word Went Forth and Light Awoke.”

One worshipper that day, a pastor and musician Henry Morris, “was enchanted by this hymn” and the tune it was paired with, in part, because the text does not fit any of the standard hymn meters. He said the “text and tune work beautifully together. This was a hymn made to order for this day.” And he continued “I didn’t realize at the time that this is literally true. Speed found the hymn in GIA’s Hymns for the Gospels, a collection which includes a good many texts by Dr. Stuempfle, who seems to include a focus on Sunday Gospels in need of hymns when he writes.”

According to Randall Sensmeier, an editor at GIA, organist and composer himself, not quite half of Stuempfle’s growing corpus of hymns are published to date. Many of these hymns began as commissions and gain exposure slowly, such as the "Risen Lord, We Gather Round You,” a 2000 commission of the Diocese of Western PA upon its 50th anniversary. Ironically, Stuempfle’s hymns were sung in Great Britain before America, but the hymnic word is spreading.  Stuempfle confesses having “been inspired and instructed by these leaders in the resurgent hymnody of the late 20th Century” which he said began with F. Pratt Green and Timothy Dudley-Smith and continued on this side of the Atlantic with writers such as Thomas Troeger, Carl Daw, Sylvia Dunstan, Jaroslav Vayda and Brian Wren.

Exposure in surprising places
Occasionally, worshippers will have the opportunity to sing a Stuempfle hymn during one of the renowned weekly Sunday evening hymn sings at Chautauqua in Western New York. Attended by thousands, these hymn sings bring broad exposure for a contemporary hymnwriter. And Chautauqua is an institution that prefers favorite and traditional hymnody to the new.

A Ministry of Words
Stuempfle says that hymn writing is a “natural extension of the preaching task” – a ministry of words that still carrying the proclamation of the Word in a powerful way for the community of faith. Oldenburg recognized the preacher in these hymns: “He brings a preacher's art to the task of hymn writing. Like many of his sermons, most of his texts begin with a Biblical story and connects it with present-day life. His language is simple, glorious, and deep, whether he's preaching or writing. And he speaks from common experience -- it's easy for people to recognize that he's putting their own thoughts and faith into words

Stuempfle acknowledges the preaching parallels: “In homiletics classes, I used to tell students that sermons emerge from the space where three inter-secting circles overlap: 1) the biblical text; 2) the situation of the parish and its individual members; 3) the persona and gifts of the preacher. These three realities must always be in dynamic interaction with each other in the creation of a sermon. I believe the same model applies to the creation of a hymn text.”

Randall Sensmeier noted that Stuempfle was well into his "sixties" when he began to devote time to writing hymns. And while the hymnwriter views this as a “subtle career change,” he knows he is working with a powerful medium: “hymns are the sung testimony to God’s mighty acts of grace and judgement...attaining their fullest expression in Jesus Christ.” And while hymnwriting has become his fourth and perhaps most lasting and “global” calling, it remains for him a part of his “fundamental vocation to communicate the Gospel.”

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This article by John R. Spangler, republished from the Winter/Spring edition of the Seminary Views, volume 41, no 1, with permission.
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Hymn Festival at Gettysburg
Stuempfle’s work will be recognized with a hymn festival this spring, April 17th in the seminary’s Music, Gettysburg! concert series. This recognition is part of a broader project to highlight the best contemporary hymn writing and so music publisher GIA is underwriting the instrumentalists, including the organist, who is also Stuempfle’s editor Randall Sensmeier. The Association of Lutheran Church Musicians will be taping the festival and releasing it as a CD in its series of recordings featuring living hymn writers. And Stephen Folkemer’s Schola Cantorum will lead the assembly singing.