Roger Neil Deschner

Roger Neil Deschner was born in San Antonio, Texas, on December 1, 1927, and died in Richardson, Texas, on October 23, 1991. He earned a BA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1949 and a BD from Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1952, followed by graduate study at the Yale School of Music in 1955. Ordained an elder in The United Methodist Church in 1962, he united pastoral formation, performance, teaching, hymnology, and Wesleyan scholarship rather than treating church music as a merely technical specialty.

Deschner served as minister of music at Epworth United Methodist Church in Chickasha, Oklahoma, from 1958 to 1961 and at First United Methodist Church in Houston from 1961 to 1975. He then directed the Master of Sacred Music program at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, from 1975 until his death, serving as professor of church music and director of the Seminary Singers. He was also secretary to the committee that prepared The United Methodist Hymnal of 1989. His papers are preserved by Bridwell Library, and both a Perkins student prize and a professional church-music award have carried his name. His posthumously published Your Ministry of Singing in the Church Choir reflects his conviction that choral singing is ministry.

For Shalom, Deschner was the English translator, not the author of the anonymous Hebrew words or composer of the traditional melody. He prepared his translation in 1982; The United Methodist Hymnal printed the Hebrew and English together as hymn 667 and identified the translation as copyright 1982 by The United Methodist Publishing House. The database retains him in its existing lyricist field because no translator field is present, but his historical role should be understood precisely as translator.