Lord, for the years thy love has kept and guided 

Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926-2024) was commissioned to write this hymn in 1967 for the centenary of the Children’s Special Service Mission, which later became the Scripture Union, an interdenominational evangelical charity.  Dudley-Smith, educated in Pembroke College, and Ridley Hall, Cambridge, was ordained to the priesthood in 1951.  Much involved in the evangelical wing of the Church of England, he founded Crusade, the journal of the Evangelical Alliance, after Billy Graham’s three-month long mission in London.  He was appointed Archdeacon of Norwich in 1973 and Suffragan Bishop of Thetford in 1981.  Dudley-Smith wrote more than 400 hymns, beginning with “Tell out my soul” in 1961.  His hymns were published in seven collections, later gathered into three volumes entitled A House of Praise.  He published A Functional Art: Reflections of a Hymn Writer in 2017.  In 2003 Dudley-Smith received an OBE for service to hymnody.

 

The tune which has been attached to “Lord, for the years”from its inception is “Lord of the years” composed by Michael Baughen (b.1930).  Baughen, himself a hymn writer as well as a composer, collaborated with Dudley-Smith on several hymn collections in the Sixties.  Educated at a Grammar School in Kent and at the University of London and Oak Hill Theological College, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1957.  He was appointed Bishop of Chester in 1982, serving until 1996.  Baughen was the founding Chairman of the Jubilate Group (1980-1999).  He also co-founded, with Noel Tredennick, the annual Prom Praise events at the Royal Albert Hall.