God's Wonderful People -- Lanny Wolfe

This was the scene in 1974, Salt Lake City, in what is known as the Salt Palace (see picture). Lanny Wolfe was 32 years old, and he was feeling something like a warm blanket come over himself, as he thought about “God’s Wonderful People”. It wasn’t a one-time occurrence for Lanny, a songwriter who had grown accustomed to this sensation, and knew what to do with this moment. He wasn’t seeking attention, but really reveled in that moment, that he was just one of the crowd. Lanny didn’t need the stage to feel the music flow inside, and he didn’t need to know everyone in the crowd on a first-name basis to have this warm feeling. These were the people with whom he felt a visceral sense of belonging, a sense of contentment at the same time that he felt overwhelmed. With all of these impressions flowing in his being, is it any wonder that a song soon emerged?

 

Lanny Wolfe had shared many times with crowds not unlike the one where he found himself one night in Utah in 1974 (or about that time), as a result of his chosen profession. He had been part of bible college music departments in California and in Missouri by the mid-1970s, and would go on to the same role in Mississippi for the next nearly 20 years, and then on to worship director positions in Texas, Florida, and Indiana after that. All the while, Lanny was building ‘family’ memories, so perhaps in 1974 it’s not a stretch to say that he was already conscious that his part in the kingdom was a gift, one which gave him a deep sense of devotion to the Giver. Perhaps that was most evident when the 10,000 people sang together at the conference where Lanny found himself, something that would have struck a special chord in his musical being. Lanny was off to one side, in some bleachers that were not central to the events in the Salt Palace. Did that allow him to more easily observe the assembled, to identify some people’s faces, and to recall his own personal history with them? Lanny says the good and bad times with these people were part of what he imagined, both in the past and what he expected would come about in the future. Celebrations and lamentations, it didn’t matter, because Lanny knew he could depend on this family to be present in his life no matter what the circumstances. All these thoughts welled to the surface, so the speak, and Lanny did not ignore what was happening – in fact, he’d used many similar episodes to concoct new songs. He already had the chorus for ‘God’s Wonderful Family’ written by the time he returned to a nearby motel, and remembers distinctly sharing it with two people who had been part of his musical family. Some people take pictures to remember special moments, and others like Lanny compose musical portraits to commemorate those times.  

 

The song chorus he wrote while sitting in Salt Palace was probably really the only way for Lanny to express adequately what was going on in his head and his heart that evening in Utah. He already had the pictures in his mind of people there, so all he needed were sounds and musical notation to capture and take to another level what was spinning inside himself. He dedicates this song, and another similar one named ‘God’s Family’ (see blog entry for June 26, 2021), for someone he considers pretty special in his life – someone named George. ‘George’s Song’, which Lanny writes on the front page for these two song stories, refers to his childhood/teenage-days pastor, George Chambers. But Lanny hastens to add that many, many people are part of his ‘family’ of believers. It seems as if they’ve helped keep Lanny rooted, in touch with himself and his role in the family. Sound familiar? It’s great to be in a family!      

 

 

See this site to obtain the book “More than Wonderful”, where the story to the song is found: https://paradigmmusic.net/

 

Author’s biography is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanny_Wolfe

 

Source for the picture: Salt_Palace_-_West_Temple_entrance_-_12_September_2012.JPG (2392×3528) (wikimedia.org)

 

God's Family -- Lanny Wolfe

 

He was just 35 years old, but had grown enough to appreciate deep down the people whose paths he’d crossed, folks he called ‘family’. Some things like a unique odor, or a visual reminder, or a certain sound in a song, perhaps anything that touches one of our five senses (taste and touch are the other two) can spur memories like Lanny Wolfe encountered one Wednesday night in Jackson, Mississippi. Did the speaker to whom Lanny and others were listening know his words had prompted a song to emerge from Lanny’s spirit about “God’s Family”? This fellow was a missionary, and his stories captivated his listeners, so that a songwriter like Lanny Wolfe goes where he senses the Spirit wants him to go – musically, poetically. Songwriters have the intuition to have scrap paper handy, and to capture a moment, and not just one moment, but countless others that present themselves in the mind. That kinda sums up Lanny’s ‘family’ episode one Wednesday night.

 

By the time in his life when he was in Mississippi in the mid-1970s, Lanny Wolfe had spent significant time also in Ohio (his native state), California, and Missouri, accumulating memories and family relationships that he recalled years later. And, was it an accident that Lanny was hearing from another traveler, Fred Hyde, who told stories from faraway places in Asia about people and places and episodes that had bonded him with ‘family’? Lanny says he was crying one moment, and laughing the next as Fred shared, and so the recollections that Lanny’s mind accessed were not far below the surface of his being. Not much was required to make him remember all the people who had educated him in one way or another – Catherine Ruh and Elsie Dillon, two elementary Sunday school teachers; musical mentors, role models, and instructors like Frank Meier, Ruth Morgan, Lois Ann Newstrand, and Aiko Onishi; other teachers who had nothing to do with music, like a certain statistics professor at Ohio State, and his high school English teacher, Dorothy Moore; and mentors like Janice Moore, James K. Stewart, and George Chambers, some of whom may not have been completely aware of their influence on Lanny. Lanny writes that all of these people touched his life, and so it was difficult to single out any one person to whom he could dedicate ‘God’s Family’, though George Chambers, a pastor when Lanny was growing up, came the closest (Lanny does dedicate another song, “God’s Wonderful Family”, to George). Lanny’s own family, his parents and brothers and sisters are among the pictures he includes in the cast of characters, of course.  Family reunions, including those Christian family get-togethers, are among Lanny’s treasures, with one picture among his collection, in which he singles out his father and mother (Pearl Leo and Precious Ida), Golva Chambers (George’s wife), Grace Stith, Mary Gianvito, Carolyn Cooper, Pam McClain, Paul and Bonnie Brown, and Alice McComb. Would it surprise us if Lanny said there were many, many others?

 

It’s also no surprise that Lanny’s family memories contain not only tears and laughter (chorus), but expectations of this family’s reunion time, forever. It’s no accident that this theme runs through all three verses and his chorus. Lanny must have concluded, even at the 30-something age when he wrote the song, that the gift of God’s family is so special, that God will not contemplate our eternity without such a group. He (God) knows you and I need others. Now and in what’s to come. Thank you Lanny, for sharing your family with us who’ve heard your story! You make me think about my own family. Do you think we have in common some of the same family members? Just think….I’ll meet yours, and you’ll meet mine someday for the first time. What an introduction-reunion that will be!

 

 

See this site to obtain the book “More than Wonderful”, where the story to the song is found: https://paradigmmusic.net/

 

Author’s biography is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanny_Wolfe

Surely the Presence of the Lord -- Lanny Wolfe

Surely the Presence of the Lord -- Lanny Wolfe

It might alternately be called ‘Floyd’s Song’ because of the circumstances surrounding its genesis. That’s the subtitle that Lanny Wolfe gave to the words and the music for something he wrote back in the 1970’s (about 1977) for an event where he and his group were waiting to join in a celebration. Sure, Lanny and his friends had been asked, so their attendance at the church building dedication was not a surprise, but when Lanny heard a small but distinct voice tell him some words for a new song, that was unexpected (or, was it really?). “Surely the Presence of the Lord” was born on the spot as the Lanny Wolfe Trio prepared to sing, and the way it’s been used since then makes one think God must have had more than one episode in mind when he whispered the words to the composer that day.

Lanny Wolfe was certainly struck by how “Surely the Presence of the Lord” worked its way into his being the very first time, perhaps because of the multiple incidents over the following decades in which it played such a memorable role in his and others’ lives. The minister’s name at the church in Columbia, Mississippi was Floyd Odom, and he’d invited Lanny and his group to sing as the members of the church there marked the completion of the church building. So, Lanny must have thought that Floyd was the reason for the song’s origin - -without that moment and the gathering of joyful people eager to thank the Holy One for His work, maybe the song would not have come about. Indeed, Lanny tends to remember lots of the Trio’s songs with subtitles that say they are some person’s song…perhaps his way of saying that songs inhabit us personally, not just events or places in time. Lanny says the song’s words came quickly, such that he didn’t have the chance to run through any chords or even tell his fellow musicians, Marietta Wolfe (his wife at the time) and Dave Petersen, what had just popped into his head. So, he taught it to them the same moment the assembled church members heard it, with just the notes and flow of the song in his head. Lanny says it worked because there were people there, not just pews and stain-glassed windows. He wanted to be in them, not the building. And, that’s been the song’s recurring theme in at least four other episodes in many different circumstances, which Lanny relates in the book More Than Wonderful that he’s put together to tell his song stories.

 

The other episodes range from a personal one-on-one Midwestern U.S. incident in which someone’s life was in danger, to a megachurch in China where the song was a celebration sung in many languages. It’s been transmitted to countless people on a television broadcast, but also used in private family gatherings to shepherd a dear family member into eternity.  How varied are our people-centered experiences, but how common is the foundation that we believers have? That’s what Lanny Wolfe is communicating in the words he composed that day in Columbia, Mississippi. He’s present where His people are, be they just one or two, or perhaps many thousands. And, he comes during our many emotions. Just like Job, I can worship even though beaten down (Job 1:20), or I may instead be in a festive spirit like David (2 Sam. 6:16-21), though it offends others. I just know He’s inside. Who could contain what is surely there, Lanny says?   

Biographical information on Lanny Wolfe is from this website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanny_Wolfe

See this site to obtain the book “More than Wonderful”, where the story to the song is found: http://lannywolfe.com/