Wilson Henderson has tried to retire twice. It has not worked.
The now-86-year-old, who celebrated his birthday in April, first stepped away in December 2000 after serving at Dalewood Baptist Church in Nashville.
Stay updated on stories like this — Get news delivered to your inbox
Then, after 60 years of ministry, he planned to step down from Highland Park Baptist Church in July 2016. But Westminster Presbyterian Church in Columbia called and asked if he would direct hymns on Sunday mornings.
Henderson said yes — and then, of course, he could not just do that.
“Why? Love of music is what I’d have to put up at the top, and I just never felt that the Lord was ready for me to be through,” he said.
What began as directing hymns has expanded into Christmas programs, Easter programs and, most recently, his 51st presentation of Handel’s “Messiah” this past December.
His wife, Charline, put it simply: “The Lord has just kept on giving him opportunities and laying it on his heart that he can still do it.”
Navigating challenges
That determination has not wavered even as Henderson has navigated challenges with his eyesight in recent years.
Henderson began serving as a minister of music at 16 at Eutaw Baptist Church in Eutaw, Alabama. After high school, he served other churches while attending Samford University in Birmingham and later Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
His love for music traces back to his father, Woodrow Wilson Henderson, and to Saturday nights at his grandparents’ house, where his dad and uncles gathered to sing.
“He was a wonderful bass and loved to sing. We had a piano in the home and I just played all the time — played and sang and played and sang. There just never was a question about what I was going to do,” he recalled.
After seminary, Henderson accepted the call as minister of music at First Baptist Church Decatur, Alabama, where he also married his seminary sweetheart, Charline Dunn, herself a pianist. Wilson and Charline will celebrate 59 years of marriage this July.
He served in Decatur for 13 years before accepting a call to First Baptist Church Columbus, Mississippi, in 1978, where he spent a productive decade before moving to Dalewood Baptist in Nashville in 1988.
Among the highlights of those years were music mission trips to England that Henderson organized and led until 2000.
In 1973–74, he and Charline relocated for a year to Gravesend, Kent, where they helped organize the music ministry across 10 British Baptist churches. He also led choir and mission tours to cities like Indianapolis and Denver, taking young people into inner-city ministry settings.
And the “Messiah” became nearly an annual tradition — presented at every church he served following seminary and college.
Jolene Dawson, a member of First Baptist Columbia, has played piano for Henderson for decades, first crossing paths with him about 50 years ago.
She has accompanied his programs at both Highland Park Baptist and Westminster Presbyterian.
“He was always prepared. He was always clear about the details and he was just very good to work with, always,” said Dawson, wife of Tennessee pastor Mike Dawson.
Among her favorites were the Christmas and Easter productions.
“He chose music that my husband and I called ‘singable’ music — tunes people could go home humming,” Dawson said.
Not finished
Henderson himself describes his programming philosophy as a “smorgasbord,” and doesn’t offer just one kind of music.
After 70 years in music ministry, he is still at the front — still serving, still leading and, apparently, still not finished.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Zoë Watkins and originally published by the Baptist and Reflector.
