Richard Kinsey Avery

Richard Kinsey Avery was an American Presbyterian minister, hymn writer, composer, worship leader, and publisher. Born in California’s Central Valley in 1934, he grew up active in First Presbyterian Church in Exeter, California. He earned a B.A. from the University of Redlands in 1956 and an M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1960. He then became pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Port Jervis, New York, serving there for more than four decades.

At Port Jervis, Avery helped make the congregation a center for creative worship, music, drama, concerts, and community ministry. He founded the Hope Center, a ministry serving people in poverty, and later participated in public theological discussion after retiring to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Beginning in the late 1960s, he and Donald S. Marsh took their songs and worship ideas to conferences and national assemblies and led contemporary religious-music seminars for about thirty summers at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.

Avery and Marsh wrote both the words and music of “We Are the Church” and collaborated on more than 150 published hymns, carols, and anthems. Their other widely circulated work includes “Every Morning Is Easter Morning.”