Thursday, April 30, 2009

An Evening with Fanny Crosby



Tomorrow night, the GospelFest Singers will be presenting "An Evening with Fanny Crosby" at the United Methodist Church in Douglass, IL. We've been doing this program now for several years and it's always popular.

Fanny Crosby is one of America's most prolific hymnwriters, having written over 8,000 hymns during her 95 years on earth. Blind from six weeks of age, she discovered her writing gift during her early teen years. She studied at the New York Institute for the Blind and later became a teacher at the school, along with her husband who was also blind.

Fanny only wrote the texts of her hymns. The melodies were written by many different hymn writers of the day, including William H. Doane, Phoebe Knapp, Robert Lowry and William J. Kirkpatrick. She used many different pseudonyms for her hymns. One reason for this was because at one time, she was the only writer on staff at the Bigelow & Main Publishing Company and her bosses didn't want their competition to know they could only afford one writer!

Our program is a biography of this great hymn writer and talks about her life while weaving in many of her most popular hymns. This was a woman who allowed herself to be used by God, despite her physical handicap, to share His love with others. What an inspiration!

Some of Fanny's more popular hymns include "To God Be The Glory," "He Hideth My Soul," "Redeemed," and of course "Blessed Assurance." If you'd like to have "An Evening with Fanny Crosby" at your church or event, please contact us by visiting our website at www.gospelfestradio.com.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Summertime GospelFest 2009

The 11th annual Summertime GospelFest will be here before you know it! This year, central Illinois' premier southern gospel event will be held Friday, June 26th at 7:00pm at Grace Evangelical Church in Morton, IL. Ticket information will be available soon.

The GospelFest Choir is a volunteer, community-wide choir made up of folks from all over central Illinois. If you'd like to join us in the choir, we'd love to have you! Rehearsals begin Wednesday, April 29th at 7:30pm at Grace Evangelical Church in Morton, IL. Rehearsal CD's and music will be provided...come on out and sing with us! We have a lot of fun!


Monday, April 13, 2009

Happy Easter

Hope you all had a wonderful Resurrection Day yesterday! Our church had 2 services and by noon we were already tired! The girls had great fun hunting eggs (at 6:00am, before Daddy had to leave for church!)

We're now up to 8 stations airing "Shawn Degenhart's GospelFest Hour," and the first program aired this past weekend. Looking forward to getting feedback from those stations.

Rehearsals for the 11th annual "Summertime GospelFest" will begin Wednesday evening, April 29th, at 7:30 at Grace Church in Morton, IL. All are welcome to join us...please pass the word along if you know someone who'd like to sing in GospelFest this year! Concert is Friday evening, June 26th, at 7:00pm.

Finishing up taxes and now have all the paperwork filed to incorporate "GospelFest Ministries" as its own non-profit entity! Pretty excited about that. Stay tuned for more info...