Faith, mighty faith,
The promise sees,
And looks to God alone;
Laughs at impossibilities,
And cries, “It shall be done!”
In 2006 I was working at the International Linguistics Center (ILC) in Dallas, Texas. The ILC hosts Wycliffe Bible Translators and several of its partner organizations.
One day, I was preparing to lead a song at the center meeting. The song was “Faith Mighty Faith,” the de facto theme song for Wycliffe. It has long been sung in the organization since its early days. It is one verse of the Charles Wesley hymn, “Father of Jesus Christ, My Lord.” I’ve always liked the song, but for some time I had thought that the march-like melody (a genre that a friend of mine calls “thumpety-thump songs”) needed an update to something a bit more contemporary.
I was mulling this over as I closed up my guitar case and started to make the five-minute walk from my apartment to my office at the center. Suddenly the new melody came, almost instantly. I hurried to my office, grabbed a blank sheet of paper and scribbled down what I was hearing in my head. I left the paper on the desk and went to the meeting to lead the old version of the song. After the meeting I couldn’t remember the new melody, and I was afraid I had lost it. But when I got back to the office and looked at the page again, it came back. I was so glad!
The song appears on my self-produced CD entitled S.D.G. (2007). It is by far the best-selling song on the CD, in terms of digital downloads and streams. But when Jessica and I made the CD Let the Nations Be Glad, we took the opportunity to make a more polished version, including Jessica’s wonderful lead vocal.
– Ken Olson
Download “Faith Mighty Faith” at Amazon.
THE OLSONS 