OUR COMPOSERS
Terry W. York
Terry W. York, Associate Professor of Christian Ministry and Church Music, is dually appointed at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, serving on the faculties of the School of Music and the George W. Truett Theological Seminary. He joined the Baylor faculty in 1998 after serving three years as the Associate Pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from California Baptist University and his Master of Church Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
He has been Minister of Music in churches in California and Arizona. From 1984-1995 he served at the Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources) in Nashville, Tennessee. His duties at the Sunday School Board included being the Project Coordinator for The Baptist Hymnal, 1991. That hymnal contains five of his hymns including Worthy of Worship. Dr. York's hymns also appear regularly in Christian Reflection, the journal of Baylor University's Center for Christian Ethics. Sixteen of his hymns (set by David Bolin) appear in the 2005 Abingdon Press collection God in Time, one of collections in the Abingdon Press Hymn Series.
Dr. York has written a number of choral anthem texts (set by composers such as Bob Burroughs, David Danner, Tom Fettke, Benjie Harlan, Mary McDonald, Earlene Rentz, David Schwoebel, and Vicki Hancock Wright) as well as articles dealing with worship, church music, and hymnology. He is a frequent guest lecturer and conference leader on those same subjects. His most recent books are Rehearsing the Soul (Abingdon Press, 1999), Observing the Rests (Abingdon Press, 2003), America's Worship Wars (Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), and The Voice of Our Congregation, co-authored with David Bolin (Abingdon Press, 2005).
Dr. York and his wife, Janna, have two adult children, Matt and Melody