Paul Westermeyer came to Luther Seminary in 1990 to teach church music, implement the master of sacred music program and serve as cantor for the Seminary. He had been at Elmhurst (Ill.) College since 1968, where he was professor of music, chair of the department, director of the choir and oratorio chorus, and organist. He was visiting professor of church music at the Yale University Institute of Sacred Music in 1989-90. Westermeyer served as cantor (choirmaster-organist) of Ascension Lutheran Church, Riverside, Ill., in 1982-90, and was assistant pastor from 1986 to 1990. He was ordained in 1986. He was choirmaster-organist for The Church of Our Saviour (Episcopal), in Elmhurst (1969-71); St. Luke Lutheran Church, Silver Spring, Md. (1966-68); Calvary Lutheran Church, Leonia, N.J. (1965-66); St. John's Episcopal Church, Lancaster, Pa. (1962-65); and Zion United Church of Christ, Chicago (1961-62). He was choirmaster at Grace Lutheran Church, Villa Park, Ill. (1971-82) and Bethel United Church of Christ, Elmhurst (1958-61). He is a member of the American Choral Directors Association; the American Guild of Organists for whom he served as national chaplain for two terms (1991-1998); the American Society of Church History; the Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society; the Hymn Society of America for which he has been Editor (1985-1990) and President (1998-2000) and named as Fellow (2004); the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Hymnologie; the Liturgical Conference, the Mercersburg Society, and the North American Academy of Liturgy. Westermeyer earned the B.A. degree from Elmhurst in 1962, and the B.D. degree from Lancaster (Pa.) Theological Seminary in 1965. He received the S.M.M. degree from the School of Sacred Music, Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1966. Both the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees were earned at the University of Chicago (1974 and 1978). Additional study has been done at The Schola Cantorum, Concordia Theological Seminary (1966); the liturgical studies program at Notre Dame (1969); and CPE at Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge, Ill. (1983). He has had applied study in violin, organ, piano, voice and conducting. He has written The Church Musician (1988, rev. 1997); With Tongues of Fire: Profiles in Twentieth-Century Hymn Writing (1995); Let Justice Sing: Hymnody and Justice (1998); Te Deum: The Church and Music (1998); The Heart of The Matter: Church Music As Praise, Prayer, Presentation, Story, & Gift (2001);Hymns for Lent (2003); Let the People Sing: Hymn Tunes in Perspective (2005);Rise, O Church:  Reflections on the Church, Its Music and Empire (2008); andHymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2010).

John is the son, grandson and great grandson of Methodist ministers. After graduation from Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, John served four appointments in the North Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church; as an associate in a large suburban congregation; as the editor of the North Texas edition of the United Methodist Reporter; in a central city cooperative parish; and, most recently, for ten years at Northaven UMC in North Dallas. He was the song leader of the North Texas Annual Conference for ten years. After 22 years in parish ministry, John pursued a new calling by starting an itinerant ministry of song leading and worship consultation called "A Ministry of Congregational Singing." His website describes this ministry as "building community through the power and grace of singing and putting an end to 'worship wars.'" He is also adjunct instructor in worship and preaching at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. now John is a published hymn poet whose hymn texts appear in six different hymnals. In addition to his work with Craig Philips on Dies Gratiae, he has written over 100 hymns, anthems and vocal solos with his friend and former parishioner, Jane Marshall. He has also written texts for extended choral anthems with Bruce Neswick and Joel Martinson. His articles about worship related subjects have appeared in Circuit Rider, Alive Now, Reformed Worship, The Hymn, andThe Chorister. Two different collections of his hymn poetry were published in 2003. 

André J. Thomas, the Owen F. Sellers Professor of Music, is Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Choral Music Education at The Florida State University. A previous faculty member at the University of Texas, Austin, Dr. Thomas received his degrees from Friends University (B.A.), Northwestern University (M. M.), and the University of Illinois (D.M.A). He is in demand as a choral adjudicator, clinician, and director of Honor/All-State Choirs throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, New Zealand, and Australia. Dr. Thomas has conducted choirs at the state, division,and national conventions of the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) and American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). His international conducting credits are extensive. They include conductor/clinician for the International Federation of Choral Musicians, summer residency of the World Youth Choir in the Republic of China and the Philippines, winter residency of the World Youth Choir in Europe, and a premier performance by an American choir (The Florida State University Singers) in Vietnam. He has been the guest conductor of such distinguished orchestras and choirs as the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in England, and guest Conductor for the Berlin Radio Choir in Germany. Since 1988 he has also served as Artistic Director of the Tallahassee Community Chorus. Thomas has also distinguished himself as a composer/arranger. Hinshaw Music Company, Mark Foster Music Company, Fitzsimmon Music Company, Lawson Gould, Earthsongs, and Heritage Music Company publish his compositions and arrangements. Dr. Thomas has produced two instructional videos "What They See Is What You Get" on choral conducting, with Rodney Eichenberger, and "Body, Mind, Spirit, Voice" on adolescent voices, with Anton Armstrong. He is a past president of the Florida ACDA, and the past president of the Southern Division of ACDA.

Jeffery L. Ames, Assistant Professor of Music, serves as Director of Choral Activities at Belmont University. His prior appointments include Assistant Director of Choral Activities at Baylor University and Director of Choral Activities at Edgewater High School and Lincoln High School in Florida. As a choral clinician, Dr. Ames has conducted senior and junior high school mixed and male choirs at the state and regional conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and the Music Educator’s National Conference, including the inaugural Florida Male All-State Chorus (2005). He has performed internationally in the countries of Italy (2005-2007) and Costa Rica (2005). An accomplished accompanist, he has performed with well-known conductors such as André Thomas, Allen Crowell, Dan Krunnfusz, Lynne Gackle, Bradley Ellingboe, and most recently with Anton Armstrong and the 2007 Texas All-State Mixed Choir. With a growing reputation as a distinguished and well-respected composer and arranger, Dr. Ames’ music has been premiered by the Florida Music Educators Association (1996), the Florida American Choral Directors Association (1998), the Southern Division of ACDA (2002), the National ACDA Conference in Los Angeles (2005), and most recently at the 2007 National ACDA Conference in Miami. His compositions and arrangements are published by Colla Voce Music, Earthsongs, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Walton Music Corporation. Professor Ames holds the Ph.D. in Choral Conducting/Choral Music Education and a Master of Choral Music Education degree from Florida State University, and a Bachelor of Music degree, with at double major in Vocal Performance and Piano Accompanying, from James Madison University. He is the first recipient of the 2005 ACDA James Mulholland Choral Music Fellowship

Christopher Anderson is Associate Professor of Sacred Music at the Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. His researches in late Romanticism, particularly the music of Max Reger, have yielded frequent essays in journals of the UK, Germany, Sweden, and the United States. His book Max Reger and Karl Straube: Perspectives on an Organ Performing Tradition appears with Ashgate. The study is the first such extensive survey of any aspect of Reger in English, and it is the winner of the prestigious Max Miller Book Award for 2006, given by The Organ Library of the American Guild of Organists via the Boston University School of Theology. A new book, Selected Writings of Max Reger appears with Routledge, and a translation of the second part of Jon Laukvik’s Orgelschule zur historischen Aufführungspraxis with Carus-Verlag/Stuttgart is forthcoming. Dr. Anderson has been a regular contributor to the biennial International Organ Academy at Göteborg University (Sweden), and in 2005 he was a featured lecturer at the Internationale Max-Reger-Tage of the Bruckner University in Linz (Austria). His archival researches have involved the central musical institutions of the cities of Leipzig and Meiningen, Germany. Christopher Anderson appears regularly as an organ recitalist with a repertory that extends from the 16th century to the newest music for the organ. Dr. Anderson holds the Ph.D. in Performance Practices from Duke University; there his mentors were Peter Williams, Robert Parkins and Zvi Meniker. Prior to Duke, he studied under Ludger Lohmann at the Staatliche Musikhochschule, Stuttgart, and Robert Anderson at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, where he earned degrees in organ performance and sacred music.

Michael Corzine, Professor of Organ, joined the faculty of Florida State University in 1973. He received the baccalaureate degree from the University of Wisconsin, Superior, and the master's and doctoral degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where he was also awarded the Performer's Certificate and the Artist's Diploma. Dr. Corzine has performed extensively throughout the midwestern, eastern, and southern United States. He has won numerous competitions, including first place in the American Guild of Organists Regional Competition in New York (1969) and the national Organ Playing Competition (1973). In addition to his studio instruction, Dr. Corzine teaches courses in organ history and literature, service playing, organ design, organ pedagogy, and hymnology. He has been a clinician at many conferences on church music, and was on the planning team for the 2006 Montreat Conferences on Music and Worship. Dr. Corzine serves as organist and choirmaster of the First Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee.

Larry Gerber, Professor of Voice and, Coord. of the Voice area at the FSU College of Music, received his Bachelor of Music degree from Fort Hays Kansas State University and his Master of Music degree from Colorado State University. A member of the voice faculty at FSU since 1979, Mr. Gerber teaches voice, vocal pedagogy and directs the Men’s Glee Club. An active performer, Mr. Gerber has performed opera, oratorio and recitals in the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, Central America and Pakistan. Among the many operatic roles Mr. Gerber has performed are: Tamino (The Magic Flute), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Rodolfo (La Bohème), Count Almaviva (Il barbiere di Siviglia) and Lysander (A Midsummer Night's Dream). As tenor soloist, he has been heard in numerous oratorios such as: Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, The Creation, Elijah, Bach’s St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion. He has been a principal artist with The National Opera of Costa Rica, Orlando Opera, Charlotte Opera, Birmingham Civic Opera, Atlanta Symphony, Charleston Opera, Dallas Bach Society, Jacksonville Symphony, The Classical Music Seminar in Eisenstadt, Austria, Shreveport Opera, Brevard Music Center, Greenville (SC) Symphony, Tallahassee Symphony, and Florida State Opera. Since 1990 Mr. Gerber has received four awards for outstanding teaching from The Florida State University. He has also held teaching positions at the University of Alabama and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. Mr. Gerber also is an active teacher for Florida State University International Programs. He has taught for FSU in London, Valencia, Spain and Munich. Mr. Gerber assumed the duties of coordinator of Voice and Opera at FSU in 2010.

Brian Hehn received his Bachelors of Music Education from Wingate University Magna cum laude. Brian is certified in children's church music (K-12) by the Choristers Guild, and is currently pursuing his Masters of Sacred Music at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. His interests include hymnody, worship theology, and drumming for worship. Brian is active in the Dallas area as a drumming clinician and is the Director of Music at Schreiber Memorial United Methodist Church of Dallas, Texas. Brian is active in the Choristers Guild and the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada, of which he was a Lovelace Scholar in 2009. Brian's articles on hymnody have been published by the United Methodist online periodical umportal.org.. He lives in Garland, TeXas with his wife and two dogs, Isabel and Ginger.

Jonathan Hehn is a brother of the Order of Saint Luke and Organist of Trinity United Methodist Church in Tallahassee, FL. A graduate of the Florida State University and the University Notre Dame, Jonathan has studied organ with Michael Corzine and Craig Cramer, respectively. He also holds the Choirmaster certificate of the American Guild of Organists and has studied choral conducting with Kevin Fenton, Nancy Menk, and Andre Thomas. Additional time was spent at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, where Jonathan studied organ, improvisation, continuo, and Gregorian chant. He is currently pursuing the Doctor of Music degree at the Florida State University, where he is a teaching assistant in the Organ and Sacred Music departments. An active recitalist, Jonathan appears frequently both as a soloist and chamber musician, having performed in Austria and across the United States. In 2007, he won the AGO Regional Competition for Young Organists (Region IV). Jonathan has been a finalist at the National Organ Playing Competition in Fort Wayne and the Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival in Wethersfield. As a scholar he has been the recipient of several awards. His work is now being published by the American Organist magazine, Saraband Music, and The Hymn magazine. In 2011 the Hymn Society in the United States and Canda awarded Jonathan the Austin C. Lovelace scholarship. Jonathan is the founding director of the Tallahassee Church Music Conference, held every two years in Tallahassee, Florida, and is the co-moderator of the Dallas Summit, a scholarly think-tank on church music. He resides in Tallahassee with his wife Kelly, daughter Edith, and dog Selena.

Dr. Charlotte Kroeker, Executive Director, came to Dallas from the University of Notre Dame where she held a faculty research position in church music. She is the editor of Music in Christian Worship, Liturgical Press, 2005. Dr. Kroeker is trained as a performing pianist and pedagogue, spending most of her career as a church-related college professor and administrator. Born and raised in the General Conference Mennonite Church, she has served as organist and/or choir director in Presbyterian, Episcopal, Catholic, Lutheran and Methodist congregations, concurrent with her academic appointments. She has devoted the last 10 years to studying foundational issues for effective music in worship. In this process she has had grants from the Lilly Endowment, Louisville Institute, Wabash Center, Indiana Arts Commission, the University of Notre Dame, the Lilly Library at Indiana University and private donors to fund research and to convene conferences, workshops, and focus groups of university/seminary faculty, church musicians, pastors and laypersons. The purpose of these projects was to discover how theologically and musically informed church music can be used as a vehicle for prayer and praise for congregations. She is currently completing a research project with nine congregations, three each of Presbyterian, Episcopal and Roman Catholic faith traditions, to determine musical leadership characteristics that contribute to “full, active and conscious participation” of the people in worship. In addition, she is editing a score and recording the Bach manuals-only chorale preludes on the piano.

Dr. Robert C. Mann is Director of the Music Resource Library at the Church Music Institute and Professor Emeritus of Music at Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in organ, musicology, and church music. He has served churches for over forty years as organist or organist-choirmaster and actively participated as recitalist in solo organ repertoire, organ duets, and music for two organs. He has been workshop clinician for AGO chapters and church worship groups at the state, regional, and national levels. Scholarly publications are in the areas of the organ duet and Mendelssohn's organ music. He has traveled extensively in Europe playing and studying historic organs and is editor of two published historical organ compositions by Eugene Thayer and Gustav Merkel. Dr. Mann joined the Dallas AGO Chapter in 2006 and was elected to the Executive Committee in 2009.

Michael Morgan, Seminary Musician at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, is a native of Pine Mountain, Georgia. He did his academic work in organ performance and church music at Florida State University, followed by a year of independent study at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. From 1973 until 1986, and from 1990 to the present he has served as organist at Atlanta's historic Central Presbyterian Church. During the years 1986- 1989 he was Organist/Director of Music at Westover Hills Presbyterian Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. Michael has served as organist for Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Christian Science, and Presbyterian churches on both coasts, and as organist/clinician for numerous Presbyterian conferences at Mo-Ranch and Montreat. He has played recitals and led worship in Arkansas, California, the Southeast, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., as well as in England, Spain, and Switzerland. Currently he serves on the national Board of the Presbyterian Association of Musicians and as Dean of the Atlanta Chapter, American Guild of Organists. Michael is an active member of the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada, and a frequent hymn writer. His singing version of the Psalms, The Psalter for Christian Worship, was published in 1999. That book is now in its second edition.

Lisa Prasse is currently the SUN Service Coordinator and worship leader at Trinity United Methodist church in Tallahassee, Florida. A native of Doctor’s Inlet, Florida, Lisa grew up playing piano and organ in the United Methodist church and earned her BME from The Florida State University where she studied under Dr. Andre Thomas. Lisa previously served as a faculty member at Hutto Middle School in Bainbridge, Georgia and Trinity Catholic School in Tallahassee, where she taught chorus, general music, and band. She taught private piano lessons for a number of years while raising her three young children before beginning her work at Trinity UMC in 2006. In addition to her worship leader responsibilities, Lisa enjoys leading the “Alpha” children’s choir and the youth praise team at Trinity while continuing to raise her three children alongside her husband, Ed.