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The curious thing was to meet all three of them in the last 12 hours of my short midweek break, within half a mile of one another.

They were all quite different; I did not raise the subject, since we met for other reasons, yet they shared this common bond. Was I witnessing the birth of a new movement, or non-movement, for our times?

Margaret Clarkson, whose rarely-used first name is Edith, was born in 1915 into, as Margaret herself described, ‘a loveless and unhappy marriage’, which broke up when she was 12.

C. Stacey Woods (‘a name not widely known’) was well celebrated by Julia Cameron in November’s EN. Another of his hidden achievements came in Toronto in 1946. He asked Margaret Clarkson to write a hymn.

Worship & war

Before this series signs off (next month, after four years; believe it or not, it replaced Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the paper), and before postmodernism is eclipsed by something else, let's try out a bit of pm-ism here. That is, the text you are reading and singing from may sometimes be crucially defined by its context or its readers, whatever the author thought it meant.

For example, however you chose to remember September 11, November 11 still reverberates at least in the older national British consciousness. 'Armistice Day' may have been transferred to 'Remembrance Sunday', but it is 11/11 which defines the relevant religious observance-for some, the last surviving vestige of a liturgical year.

Unless a British Christian of the current generation has been stolidly attending only one church, or one kind of church, for the past 20 years, it is unlikely that he/she will have failed to encounter 'Mission Praise', in one of its many shapes or forms.

The success of this book has been phenomenal; in some congregations it has swept the board, and even in otherwise catholic, reformed, liberal or charismatic assemblies it has crept in at least as an alternative option for Sunday or the week night gathering. How come?

The Pimlico Plumbers (plc) have twice been voted Domestic Installers of the Year. Or so I believe from the information displayed on the side of the white van parked just up the road from us.

For the intelligent evangelical reader, this piece of free advertising raises several immediate questions. First, what is their phone number? Second, when did this happen - recently or around 1924, for instance? Third, were the years consecutive and, if so, what happened the third year? Fourth (multiple), who were the voters, was the result close, predictable, or contested, and were the results independently verified? I am sorry that to all these queries I have no firm answers.

'Come, ye souls by sin afflicted'. We sang that at least three times at Limehouse, as my annotated Anglican Hymn Book reveals; the last occasion being in 1984, a year of some personal affliction for me. It is a hymn found in other discerning books from Congregational Praise to Christian Hymns, among those still in use.

Whom were we addressing? Probably ourselves and one another; unlike Joseph Hart's marginally earlier 'Come ye sinners, poor and needy' (also in AHB) which made good preaching but not good singing. The one we did sing encapsulates some gospel Scriptures rare in hymns: 'Blessed are the eyes that see him' and so on. But the hymns came to life again as a precious part of local history.

Once upon a time an international mission (they used to be Missionary Societies) asked me for a list of 'missionary hymns' to use at its meetings and services. I drew up a core selection of 120 drawn from over 30 books

We wondered whether to classify them or simply list them A-Z. I offered two basic sections; God's initiative (Jesus shall reign; Thou whose almighty word) and our response (Facing a task unfinished; O Master, when thou callest)- and so on. But many classics (Ye servants of God; We have a Gospel to proclaim) include both, matching the perspective of the Great Commission in Matthew 28.

'But we sang that last week!' Do you know who chooses your church's hymns? Is more than one person involved? Prayerfully? Is it you? Are they chosen on the spot, or the day, week, or month before?

Most musicians, especially the non-expert, appreciate the early choosers. The church where the hymns were announced 12 months ahead, is an extreme case! However you answer my questions, the selectors affect us all.

Can our future be in Europe?

How fresh manuscript evidence can help us to face today's question . . .

From time to time, scholars poring over fragments of dusty documents startle the world with some amazing new discovery about the origins of the Christian church, and indeed of the faith itself.