I have no business doing what I'm doing.  I'm a United Methodist pastor by training and spent 25 years in parish ministry.  But God's calling is never predictable.  Five years ago I took a leap of faith based on that new calling and founded a ministry called The Ministry of Congregational Singing.   I try to help congregations sort out why their singing has gotten timid or conflicted.

Then a year and a half ago, a colleague who now serves as mission director for United Methodism's new work in Cameroon emailed and said, in effect, "I need someone to come over here and encourage the young leaders of the church to create their first hymnal/worshipbook."  Since the first leap had been really energizing, I decided to leap again.

At one level, I was a fool to say yes.  I had no business thinking I could walk into a bi-lingual culture (French/English) with only a few years of high school French and act as an entrepreneur of hope for people who had more music in their index fingers than I had in my whole body.  But sometimes the call to do something comes before you have all the actual equipment to live in that call.

What I'll be doing in this blog is to tell stories about the journey I've had as a baby ethnomusicologist.  I'll report the stumblings and the victories.  I hope what will be most transparent is the degree to which what is happening in Cameroonian Methodism is nothing more or less than the grace of God taking amazing forms.

Blessings on the journey.

John Thornburg