RICHMOND, June 26 — Blessed ... Singing ... Praying ... Preaching ... Sharing.

"Do you see? These five themes are what the church is all about," says Helen Kemp. "So pay attention to the words you sing."

Kemp isn't much taller than the children she conducts, but all eyes in the stadium will be focused on this dynamo Sunday as she conducts the massed chorus of children, youth and adults in a performance of her original anthem, "O Blessed Church."

Kemp has been a woman of stature in the choral-music universe throughout her 63-year career.

"O Blessed Church" was commissioned jointly by the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) and the Presbytery of the James. Kemp wrote the music to a 2002 text by J. Edward Moyer.

"You have to find the text first," she says. "The text gets you started; then you work it out. I finally found this one, praising what holds us together as a church. It was commissioned to include children and adults together - not professionals, but faith-filled singers."

Each of the five verses addressed a different theme. Some are sung by all, some feature children alone, and one is sung without accompaniment. The Rev. Susan Andrews, moderator of the 215th General Assembly, will speak a verse, and women will take the lead in the last one.

"I've been reading Cokie Robert's Founding Mothers: Women Who Raised Our Nation, and I wanted to evoke all the women who have nurtured the General Assembly since the first one, the year before George Washington was president," Kemp says.

A lifelong advocate of music for children, she was determined that any anthem she composed would include children. "Our theology has to begin at that age," she says, "through hymns, things we memorize."

Kemp explained that she still loves to go to church conferences at age 86 and likes to challenge teachers in their mid-50s who think they're ready to retire. "I want to say you are an infant," she tells them. "You've got a whole life ahead of you. Great-grandmothers can be great music-makers. If you love children, it keeps your spirit young."

Kemp accepted her first church position as a college graduate in 1941. With her husband, John S.C. Kemp, she served lengthy terms at First Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma City and Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. An undisputed expert in children's choirs, she is known internationally as a specialist in training young voices. Her many books and other instructional materials are standard resources, and her choral compositions for children are widely performed.

Upon her retirement as a professor of voice at Westminster Choir College, she was named professor emeritus of voice and church music, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree.