For additional hymns see the indexes for:
Celebrating Mystery (General Progressive Worship Resources)
Seasoned Celebration (Worship Resources for Nature’s Seasons)
Children’s Songs from the Sing Young, Sing Joyfully Collection
Bill Wallace’s hymns on the Website of the Methodist Church of New Zealand
William Livingstone Wallace (Bill) a retired New Zealand Methodist Minister is one of our most prolific contributors. Bill says that his work springs from communicating with the fire in his gut and his observation of both the internal and external aspects of the Cosmos. Since an early age he has been both sympathetic to and critical of the church, announcing at 13 his belief in evolution. In youth he struggled with the disconnection between art and spirituality in his own and other denominations and with the way in which all of the liturgy prior to the sermon was regarded as preliminaries and longer sermons were viewed as superior to more concise ones.
At varsity he found an intellectual home in the ecumenism and radicalism of the Student Christian Movement and at theological college was frustrated to discover that neither these nor liturgy were regarded as major elements in the curriculum. In parish life he found that writing hymns was a more acceptable way of presenting radical thoughts than sermons. They allowed these thoughts to slide into the mind on the back of music.
His radicalism sprang from his experiences as a labourer and his exposure to great inequality in the Philippines. It was these that led him to abandon the idea that wealth is a gift from God and with it the belief in an intervening deity.
Bill found his true spiritual home when he was introduced to the Christian mystics, especially Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart. This explains why he has sometimes been called a prophetic mystic.
Amongst other things, along with his parish work, Bill was the hymn selector for the Praise Be Television Programme, chaired Contemporary Hymns N.Z. Ltd. and was the convenor of the N.Z. Methodist Media and Communications Committee. He has also been the inaugural chair of the N.Z. branch of the interfaith World Conference on Religion and Peace and has initiated the formation of a Citizen’s Advice Bureau, an adventure playground, a suburban team ministry and initiated and coordinated a Community Care Centre.
He holds a B.A. in philosophy and a Dip.Ed. and is the author of seven published collections of his hymns as well as the material on this website. His aim is to help people be empowered by the divine within them and the Cosmos and to work to overthrow the forces of personal and institutional greed which destroy both the ecosystem and human society.
Bill’s hymns have appeared in 13 different denominational hymn books and 17 other hymn collections. Other worship material has been included in 15 different anthologies. Material on this website includes the over 140 hymns and songs of the “Boundless Life” collection, 48 children’s songs of the “Sing Young, Sing Joyfully” collection, his “Sacred Energy / Mass of the Universe” and over 260 pages of other worship material.
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