Introduction

Biography

Colvin was a Church of Scot­land min­is­ter. He served in Af­ri­ca for 26 years, and for 8 years as min­is­ter to a Lon­don in­ner ci­ty com­mu­ni­ty church. He was a mem­ber of the ecu­me­ni­cal Io­na Com­mu­ni­ty for al­most 50 years.

As well as be­ing in pas­tor­al min­is­try in Gha­na and Ma­la­wi, he helped found and or­gan­ize Chris­tian Ser­vice Com­mitt­ees in those coun­tries.

He was deep­ly in­volved in serv­ing Mo­zam­bi­can re­fu­gees in Ma­la­wi, and for some years he was en­gaged in com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment train­ing in Zim­bab­we and oth­er parts of south­ern Af­ri­ca.

Throughout his min­is­try, he had a deep in­ter­est in help­ing the Af­ri­can Church to fully utilize its own mu­sic­al he­ri­tage in wor­ship and to write hymns ap­pro­pri­ate to and aris­ing from the Af­ri­can con­text.

This in­ter­est de­vel­oped in­to help­ing to share Af­ri­can hym­no­dy with the world church. The hymns he col­lect­ed and wrote were pub­lished in two vol­umes:

Works

• Come, Let Us Walk This Road To­ge­ther (Car­ol Stream, Il­li­nois: Hope Pub­lish­ing)
• Fill Us with Your Love (ar­ol Stream, Il­li­nois: Hope Pub­lish­ing)